A majority of this year’s finalists at the national book awards made a collective statement calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war at the ceremony in New York on Thursday, amid a storm behind the scenes as sponsors pulled out in anticipation.
War Sows Disruption at the National Book Awards
Thanks Robin!
WSJ about new variations of book clubs, for people who don’t like the traditional ones – and it does feature a cool “not-a-book-club book club” at the public library in Woodstock, Vt.
His Preface, “The Freedom of the Press” was omitted from the first edition of the book, then disappeared, and was not rediscovered until 1971. From it, we learn that Orwell had considerable difficulty getting his fable published. That wasn’t principally because of wartime issues. There was a shortage of books and his was highly readable. Rather, British intellectuals of the day did not wish to hear any criticism of Stalin or allusions to his atrocities…
A Warning From the Unpublished Preface to Orwell’s Animal Farm
And he ends his Preface on a high note,
I know that the English intelligentsia have plenty of reason for their timidity and dishonesty, indeed I know by heart the arguments by which they justify themselves. But at least let us have no more nonsense about defending liberty against Fascism. If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
Author John Green's "The Fault in Our Stars" has joined hundreds of books that are no longer on Hamilton East Public Library's teen shelves thanks to a new policy that targets books deemed not "age appropriate."
Green, who lives nearby in Indianapolis, took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to respond to HEPL's policy and decision, saying moving the book is an embarrassment for the city of Fishers.
John Green book pulled from young adult shelf at Hamilton East library
But, in the meantime, the fear over AI is leading to some crazy and sometimes unfortunate outcomes. Benji Smith, who created what appears to be an absolutely amazing tool for writers, Shaxpir, also created what looked like an absolutely fascinating tool called Prosecraft, that had scanned and analyzed a whole bunch of books and would let you call up really useful data on books.
I Would Rather See My Books Get Pirated Than This (Or: Why Goodreads and Amazon Are Becoming Dumpster Fires)
We desperately need guardrails on this landslide of misattribution and misinformation. Amazon and Goodreads, I beg you to create a way to verify authorship, or for authors to easily block fraudulent books credited to them. Do it now, do it quickly.
%u2018Criminal liability for librarians%u2019: the fight against US rightwing book bansSkye Perryman of Democracy Forward, which helped block a controversial Arkansas law, says attacks will continue
Behold a Digitization of “The Most Beautiful of All Printed Books” The Kelmscott Chaucer
The history of the printed book stretches back well over a millennium, the title of the oldest known book currently being held by a Tang Dynasty work of the Diamond Sutra. But what about the most beautiful book? As a contender for that spot, Michael Goodman (previously featured here on Open Culture for his projects on the illustrations of Shakespeare and Dickens) has put forth the Kelmscott Chaucer, including the testimony of no less a literary figure than W.B. Yeats, who called it “the most beautiful of all printed books.” Goodman has also made the book freely available for our perusal on his new web site, The Kelmscott Chaucer Online.
https://resobscura.substack.com/p/why-early-modern-books-are-so-beautiful
Early modern printed books are a much wider category, encompassing the entire period between ~1450 CE and ~1800 CE (I tend to date the end of the early modern period to the end of the Napoleonic Wars, 1815). Printed books from this period cover a huge range of topics and dozens of languages, but for me at least, they have one thing in common: I almost always find them far more interesting — more beautifully designed, more strange, more intriguing — than modern books.
Librarians Are Finding Thousands Of Books No Longer Protected By Copyright Law
Up to 75 percent of books published before 1964 may now be in the public domain, according to researchers at the New York Public Library.
Librarians Are Finding Thousands Of Books No Longer Protected By Copyright Law
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