No huge crush at the Javits Center and no real timeline for rescheduling a live event meant one of publishing’s biggest events had to move, at least partially, online – in this case, to Facebook Live. “The result was a shadow of the usual spectacle, but it reached a lot of people and offered lessons for the industry as future prospects for mass gatherings remain clouded.” – The New York Times
Category: words
Libraries Are Welcoming The Temporary Easing Of E-Book Prices
One Canadian library director said, “It was very, very good news in a very dark period.” (But the cheaper prices are set to end mid-June, when physical libraries may be partially opening back up.) – CBC
Where Did “Shit Hits The Fan” Come From?
The true origins of the expression “shit hits the fan” are largely undetermined, though some sources suggest that Canada is to blame—it might have come from particularly picturesque Canadian military language of the early twentieth century. Another suggestion is that the idiom is descended from “an old joke.” – JSTOR
Post-Plague Poetry In Medieval England Could Be Downright Reactionary
With the huge drop in population following the Black Death, peasants and laborers were able to take advantage of the labor shortage to demand higher pay and improve their lives. Those who had been at the top of 14th-century society weren’t happy about that — and since they were the ones who were literate, such works as Langland’s Piers Plowman, Gower’s Vox Clamantis, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales reflected and reinforced their readers’ wish that the social order stay the way it was. – The Conversation
Here’s One Area Of Publishing That’s Making Progress On Diversity: Audiobooks
“Audiobook publishers are increasingly offering opportunities to narrators of color, … a response to a broader range of stories and desire for the voice talent to reflect that diversity. … But the particular demands of the job, compared with film and stage acting, make this tricky. What does representation mean when actors can only be heard and not seen? What constitutes a black, Latino or Asian voice? And to complicate matters, in most audiobooks a single narrator voices multiple characters, who may have a variety of ethnicities and accents.” – The New York Times
How Did Shanghai Become China’s Literary Hotbed?
Believe it or not, writes Dr. Jin Lee, it was a by-product of the First Opium War, after which Shanghai turned from a little river town into a huge, prosperous international port city. – Literary Hub
Pacific Standard Magazine, Now Shuttered, Acquired By Grist
“Grist, a 20-year-old nonprofit online magazine that focuses on climate and environmental coverage, has taking full ownership of all the assets of what’s left of Pacific Standard, an award-winning magazine that closed in 2019.” – Axios
Spike In Sales Of Books About Racism
Amid mass demonstrations against structural racism spurred by George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis, Minn., activist-created book lists have been widely shared across social media for would-be allies to educate themselves on white privilege, systemic racism and the history of being black in America. Sales of such titles have spiked in recent days, and retailers are trying to meet the demand, with orders for some titles jumping fivefold from a week prior. – CBC
What Happens To Literary Life In Isolation
The absence of a tactile literary culture—one that happens in real time rather than on a screen—meant an uncomfortable cultural silence. And yet, during early morning walks through an empty city in April, paying attention in a wholly new way, I became acutely aware of being surrounded by literature, of how it manifests on many of Washington’s streets in the places where writers once wrote and lived, their words etched in stone. – VQR
Writers Are Having To Change Their In-Progress Books To Reflect COVID-19 Epidemic
“‘I can’t make my characters exist without interaction,” [one novelist] says. ‘While, for instance, I can edit out cheek kisses because this may no longer seem the norm, my characters need to meet, to row, to fight, to make love – and in a thriller, to murder. There will be insufficiently little exciting plot, in other words, if they can’t interact as they did pre-Covid.'” – The Guardian