Category: words

The 2019 shortlist features three authors previously nominated for the Giller Prize. Ohlin was shortlisted in 2012 for the novel Inside, Crummey was shortlisted in 2001 for the novel River Thieves and Bezmozgis was nominated in 2011 for The Free World and again in 2014 for The Betrayers. – CBC

The publishers’ attorney, said that Captions—a feature that scrolls a few words of an AI-generated transcription alongside a digital audiobook as it plays—represents a “quintessential” case of copyright infringement. – Publishers Weekly

After cutting the mass market paperback and graphic novel/manga lists in 2017, the Times‘ Best Sellers team will again track mass market paperback sales, as well as debut a combined list for graphic books, which will include fiction, nonfiction, children’s, adults, and manga. Two new monthly children’s lists, middle grade paperback and young adult paperback, will debut as well. (The Times retired its middle grade e-book and young adult e-book lists in 2017.) In addition, the Times will cut its science and sports lists, explaining that “the titles on those lists are frequently represented on current nonfiction lists.” – Publishers Weekly

The novel, which is a sequel to Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, sold more print copies in the first week than any other Canadian book since BookNet Canada began tracking sales data in 2005. – CBC

Dewey is a legend – you know, the Dewey decimal system for ordering library books? – and perhaps was responsible for the entry of women into the profession. Yay, but, he also was censured and removed from office in 1906 – 1906, people – for his handsy ways (we call that harassment or assault now) and the racism and anti-Semitism he exhibited at his private club. His defense? Some of my best friends are Jews. – Slate

Show-don’t-tell is a mantra for early writers, the training wheels on the bike, the interior wax holding up a bronze sculpture. But. “The real goal of ‘show, don’t tell’ is to force a discipline that encourages the writer to see subjectivity emerging through those details. But that sentence—that command—doesn’t say that. It’s saying specifically don’t tell. And we need to just stop saying it to another generation of writers.” – Literary Hub

In 2013, in the war-ravaged town of Daraya, people collected books after shelling and wrapped them in blankets to take them to a secret basement location. “The self-appointed chief librarian, a 14-year-old named Amjad, would write down in a large file the names of people who borrowed the books, and then return to his seat to continue reading. … The library hosted a weekly book club, as well as classes on English, math and world history, and debates over literature and religion.” – The New York Times

Seriously, excuse us? “A prison in Ohio blocked an inmate from receiving a biology textbook over concerns that it contained nudity. In Colorado, prison officials rejected Barack Obama’s memoirs because they were ‘potentially detrimental to national security.’ And a prison in New York tried to ban a book of maps of the moon, saying it could ‘present risks of escape.'” – The New York Times

We don’t know who he is, or at least many of us don’t, but one instructor says it’s time for writing students to take lessons from his clear prose. He has great topic sentences! He knows how to use active verbs! – The New York Times