Category: words

There’s a lot of glitz going on in the college library funding race. A media room! A media room with a green screen! No, a Maker Space! And – perhaps the best idea of them all – a library escape room where students save a rare book! But actually … “Survey data and experts suggest that students generally appreciate libraries most for their simple, traditional offerings: a quiet place to study or collaborate on a group project, the ability to print research papers, and access to books.” – The Atlantic

Is this the most discouraging development ever, or is it just a sign of how many writers are forgotten as the relentless pressure of the new takes hold? Nancy Hale holds the record for the most short stories to appear in The New Yorker in a year – 12 between July 1954 and July 1955 (TWELVE?!). “She also put out seven novels and was a 10-time recipient of the O. Henry Prize for short fiction. Her writing is progressive and tackles issues such as infidelity, abortion, domestic abuse, motherhood, mental illness and female sexuality. … And despite this, most readers of short stories haven’t even heard the name Nancy Hale.” – NPR

The decision to remove fines is a growing nationwide movement. Already, dozens of U.S. libraries have fully or partially eliminated overdue fines (usually for teens and children), according to a “fine-free” map from the Urban Libraries Council (ULC). – CityLab

“Reading books is something I was once did compulsively, willingly and joyfully. But as I get older and spend more of my life online, reading books has become harder. Studies suggest I’m not alone – research in both Australia and the US suggests reading novels for leisure has declined.” – The Guardian

The two unopened scrolls that will be probed belong to the Institut de France in Paris and are part of an astonishing collection of about 1,800 scrolls that was first discovered in 1752 during excavations of Herculaneum. Together they make up the only known intact library from antiquity, with the majority of the collection now preserved in a museum in Naples. – The Guardian

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm assembled their book of stories as folklorists, not children’s authors, and they intended their book for adult students of German culture, not for parents to read to the kiddies at bedtime. And the stories themselves could be violent: for example, “Cinderella” ends with white birds pecking out the stepsisters’ eyes. – National Geographic History

Major publishers will do right by their cookbook authors, who are usually already established, but there’s a larger set of small publishers who work with newer writers. “With these smaller publishing companies, there isn’t always an advance, and if there is, it’s often less than $10,000. Royalties aren’t always offered, and most expenses aren’t covered. … Authors are occasionally asked to sign nondisclosure agreements before even viewing a contract.” – The New York Times

Published in September, Lara Prescott’s The Secrets We Kept tells of how the CIA planned to use Doctor Zhivago as a propaganda tool during the cold war. But Anna Pasternak revealed in the Sunday Times that she had sent a legal letter to Prescott, claiming that the novel features “an astonishing number of substantial elements” copied from Pasternak’s 2016 biography Lara, which is about Olga Ivinskaya, Pasternak’s lover, muse and inspiration for his character Lara. – The Guardian

What would our debates about fiction look like, I sometimes wonder, if our preferred verbal container for the phenomenon of writing about others was not “cultural appropriation” but rather “interpersonal voyeurism” or “profound-other-fascination” or even “cross-epidermal reanimation”? – New York Review of Books

It’s the insiders—the poets, the tenured—who like to “problematize” poetry and wield their whatabouts. The “prose poem” is one of the most abiding whatabouts. It remains an outlier, a problem. – The Walrus