By definition, a book town is “a small, preferably rural, town or village in which secondhand and antiquarian bookshops are concentrated… available to everyone…” Today, there are dozens of towns with the designation. - National Geographic
The rise of more inclusive YA has felt as much like a seismic shift as “The Hunger Games” did back in the day. It’s given teen books a new relevance, and a new energy. Alas, sales of young-adult fiction have been declining since 2021, in part due to well-organized efforts to ban books. - Los Angeles Times
If so — not to put too fine a point on it — is this a sign that the content AI stole, “scraped," from literary writers might have used the em-dash more often than it’s used in everyday communication? - Rolling Stone
Kaliane Bradley: “There was the absolute dread that it would go to people I know and respect and they’d talk to one another and say: ‘God, did you get that book? It’s shit, isn’t it? What do we tell her?’” - The Guardian (UK)
“The Trump administration, caring little for democracy and focused on hardness, is immune to the idea that literature, a supposedly feminizing kind of art, could ever be useful.” - LitHub
“Gatsby has now laid down roots in my brain — even into my dreams. In a way, that’s not just true of me but of the entire culture.” - The New York Times
The great historian had published some fiction while a student at Princeton, but nothing since then. While doing research in Caro’s archives, however, journalist Chris Heath discovered the drafts of a mid-career novel Caro had worked on but never finished. Naturally, Heath talked with Caro about it. - Smithsonian Magazine
Shadow Ticket, due out in October, will be the American novelist’s 10th book. Like his previous two, Inherent Vice (2009) and Bleeding Edge (2013), this new work is a noir novel about a private eye. - The Guardian
"Sexual jealousy is an emotion that was once thought to be so universal, such a commonplace experience of a person in love, that no one would think it needed explaining." But we "did not anticipate a world in which jealousy within a relationship would evolve into something that could be analogized to consumer rivalry." - Hedgehog Review
Today the wealth gap is just as significant as it was in Gatsby’s time, but now everyone has a phone. No matter our background, we can observe decadent lifestyles via celebrities and influencers. Social media allows us all to understand Gatsby’s very particular form of envy and social climbing. - The Guardian
Bryan Burroughs: “For sheer cushiness, there’s a case to be made that there has never been a more palatial home for writers than Vanity Fair during Graydon Carter’s twenty-five-year run as editor. … If I share my part of its story accurately, you will probably hate me.” - The Yale Review
According to a new NPR/Ipsos poll, reading is something a majority of Americans enjoy, and want to get better at. But it's nowhere near a top priority. - NPR
“The American Library Association (ALA) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), whose members include museum and library workers nationwide, have sued over what the ALA called, in a release, ‘the Trump administration’s gutting of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).’” - Publishers Weekly
