Category: words

The mystery and TV writer says maybe we’ll be better at responding to dangerous events in the future – or at least some of us will be. – LitHub

Hands convey meaning, and they have for eons, but they’re not our primary means of communicating to each other. “People gesture, but their gesture is clearly a secondary supplement. People also sign but, outside of deaf communities, they favour speech. So, if language did get its start in the hands, then at some later stage it decamped to the mouth. The vexing question is: why?” – Aeon

This isn’t a new issue at the library, but protests and action finally got the staff some of what it’s been asking for for a very long time. “Workers have raised concerns about racial discrimination in the library system for years. But their efforts gained heightened visibility in late June after they formed a group called the Concerned Black Workers of the Free Library of Philadelphia and sent an open letter to management, saying they face discrimination on a regular basis, are paid less than white colleagues, and were being asked to return to work without a plan to keep them safe from the coronavirus.” – Philadelphia Inquirer

Since quarantine, a lot of us have been doing a lot more walking in our neighborhoods or wherever we can find to go outside without a bunch of people nearby. Austen would understand. “A special awareness flows through a body as it propels itself through the world—the motion, whatever form it takes, is habitual and characteristic for us as we move, but in a way that seems at the same time to make us more able to notice a bug on the sidewalk, the hat of someone approaching. Walking, we draw ourselves and our world together.” – LitHub

Sure, sure, Arthur Conan Doyle died long ago, and both the BBC and CBS versions of modern Holmes have hung up their deerstalkers, but there’s always new Holmes material out there. Except … where is the movie, or better yet, a multi-year series, for Mary Russell? – Los Angeles Times

“As the decades passed, [David W.] Forbes [has] painstakingly tracked down archival portraits of people alive in that era, in libraries and private collections throughout the islands. That set him on a half-century hunt for clues about the dynastic line of Hawaiian royals. … [One eminent colleague] believes that Forbes’s life work — the four-volume Hawaiian Bibliography and The Diaries of Queen Lili’uokalani — will be used by scholars for decades to come.” – Literary Hub

There was a time, not that long ago, when—like most of America—publishers thought that this Trump boom would end when the president left office. It increasingly seems like it could outlast Trump’s own political career. – The New Republic

No one has had time to truly refine their ideas about personal life in a state of widespread isolation and existential dread, and literature, even when political, is a fundamentally personal realm. It relies on the ability to channel inner experience outward, and because no inner experience of the coronavirus pandemic could plausibly be described as complete, prose that renders it static and comprehensible rings false. – The Atlantic

Saida Grundy: “While the crafters of anti-racist reading lists are mostly making an earnest effort to educate people, literature and dialogue cannot supplant restorative social policies and laws, organizational change, and structural redress. When offered in lieu of actionable policies regarding equity, consciousness raising can actually undermine Black progress by presenting increased knowledge as the balm for centuries of abuse.” – The Atlantic

The growth in nonfiction stands in contrast to fiction. Despite the publication of highly anticipated novels such as Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, sales fell to £582m in 2019, down 5.6% when compared with 2015. – The Guardian