Words

The hyperbole on book jackets—both the plot summaries and the lists of adulatory adjectives that go with them—have long frustrated authors, but no one would dispute that a good blurb has crucial functions. – Prospect

“I want to say, of course literature is just as important [as the sciences and peace], but this is something in the dead of night I kind of worry about. … I’ve been saying for years, if you take away reading, take away literature, you take away something very, very important in the way we human beings communicate with each other. … We’ve got to be able to tell each other what it feels like to be in different kinds of situations. Otherwise, we don’t know what to do with our knowledge.” – The Washington Post

Beginning in 1744, he published about 100 storybooks for children, plus magazines and “ABC” books, becoming the leading children’s publisher of his time. – Washington Post

“The word ‘blurb’ was coined in 1907 by the comic writer Gelett Burgess but they have been around a long time. … One of the first major carnivals of blurbery came in 1516, when, ahead of the publication of his satire Utopia, Thomas More wrote to his friend Erasmus, urging him to make sure the book ‘be handsomely set off with the highest of recommendations, if possible, from several people, both intellectuals and distinguished statesmen.’ More’s shameless grasping is all too recognisable: then, as now, public knowledge of private connections was seen as an essential part of book promotion.” – Prospect

Most novels feature characters with an assortment of different backgrounds, and this can require narrators to voice characters with identities very different from their own. – Slate

The shop, founded 21 years ago, was a much-loved part of the local community and contained tens of thousands of books in various languages covering everything from philosophy and art history to fiction and children’s books. – The Guardian

Should the quality of my English matter? Last month a big English literature prize went to a novel that was written in dialect, something rural and very primitive. And what about all that authentic literature “from the streets”? N+1

A lack of clarity about why certain books are suddenly off limits has complicated decisions about which titles to stock. – The New York Times

Shelving exemplifies “two tensions, one which sets a premium on letting things be, on a good-natured anarchy, the other that exalts the virtues of the tabula rasa, the cold efficiency of the great arranging, one always ends by trying to set one’s books in order.” – Washington Post

“I am a writer, and I lived with a writer, Roger Zelazny, so I know perfectly well that living with a writer is sort of a weird experience.” – Wired

Almost entirely inaccessible since 1939, the library was put together by Victorian industrialists William and Alfred Law at the turn of the 20th century, and is a literary treasure trove that had experts dancing with excitement. – The Guardian

The way Internet Literature treats its relationship to the world—and the anxiety of that treatment—is what distinguishes it as a form, and that goes straight to the heart of what distinguishes the Internet itself as a technology: the link. – LitHub

“Eight years after it bought McGraw-Hill Education for $2.4 billion, Apollo Global Management has reached an agreement to sell the company to another private equity firm, Platinum Equity, for $4.5 billion. The proposed purchase comes about a year after MH and Cengage called off their merger following opposition from the Justice Department.” – Publishers Weekly

“After a protracted battle that nearly led to a workers strike, the staffers at three Condé Nast publications — The New Yorker, Ars Technica and Pitchfork — have come to an agreement on their first union contracts. … In the end, the unions got what they wanted. They secured salary floors of $55,000 a year upon the contracts’ ratification and an increase to $60,000 by 2023. There will be guaranteed annual raises of 2% to 2.5% and all units have organized compensation structures.” – CNN

“We all know people who we think are so cool, or interesting, or exciting, but a lot of times those stories vanish if no one is there to tell them.” – Poynter

All Seasons is staking out territory that some mainstream publishers are wary to venture into, by courting former Trump officials who staunchly supported the president through the bitter end of his administration. – The New York Times

As students of history know, fashions ebb and flow; it’s increasingly clear that the historical novel is being embraced and reinvented. – The New York Times

“The Justice Department has closed its year-old criminal investigation into former Trump national security adviser John Bolton and dropped a related lawsuit connected to the publication of his book about the ex-President’s diplomatic bungling. The … criminal investigation had scrutinized whether Bolton’s book illegally revealed national security information, while the lawsuit had sought to grab royalties from Bolton for publishing his book without the administration’s full approval.” – CNN

Responses to Golding’s work tend to be polarised, varying from the adulatory to the contemptuous. – 3 Quarks Daily

The little mark’s use in texts goes back at least to Aristarchus, the second-century BC compiler and editor of Homer’s epics; it continued through the Middle Ages, the birth of printing, the mass market for books, and the advent of text messaging. And it meant something different in each of those times; these days, it seems to serve at least three separate purposes. – Lapham’s Quarterly

“Germany has begun to open to travelers and the Frankfurt Book Fair is planning on hosting a live, in-person fair this October 20-24. ‘It will be smaller in scale and more focused,’ Juergen Boos, the fair director, told PW. A number of virtual events are also being planned and the city of Frankfurt will again host author events for the general public.” – Publishers Weekly

The unionization effort has created an uncomfortable moment for the writers at The New Yorker, who have the kind of jobs and influence every journalist wants but few attain. – The New York Times

Books can be intensely powerful for some people, especially when the books do the work of repairing past pain. “‘So many queer people ‘have been through immense pain growing up in our adolescence,’ Dr. Matos told me. Attempts by the broader culture to ‘limit who we loved, what we desire, what we do with our bodies’ abound. In these stories, then, we get the chance to imagine what it might have been like to grow up in the world depicted on the page or screen instead.” – The New York Times

First, meme well (and second, make She Memes Well the title of your memoir). In her new book, comedian and meme power user Quinta Brunson “breaks down her journey from struggling stand-up comedian to being recognized by strangers all over the world. The book includes hilarious anecdotes about growing up in West Philadelphia, being a Black woman, dating and life after internet fame. She also gives serious thought to the evolution of memes, and how they have emerged as a powerful tool to help people communicate and organize online.” – The New York Times

Living authors like Kate Mosse and Philip Pullman are worried because as Britain exits the EU, protections have changed. “Authors and publishers fear that changing the rules could mean that cheap international editions of a book would pour into the UK, eroding the money authors could make from a domestic sale.” – The Guardian (UK)