Category: words

By the early 20th century, the Catholic University of Leuven/Louvain in Belgium had one of Europe’s great libraries, with 300,000 volumes in total, including rare manuscripts from medieval Europe and the Near East as well as early printed volumes. What’s more, it was open to the general public. Then, in 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm’s army marched through and burned the place down, an action which drew worldwide condemnation. An international effort after World War I rebuilt the collection — and then, in 1940, Hitler’s army blew the place up. Richard Ovenden, director of the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford, recounts the sad history. – Literary Hub

Among the criticisms of the old BookExpo was that it was too expensive and had lost its way in trying to be all things to all people. – Publishers Weekly

A couple of times each week, Mahinda Dasanayaka, a 32-year-old child protection officer in the tea-growing mountains northeast of Colombo, packs up his motorbike with children’s books and brings them to villages too small and remote ever to get a public library. And the kids line up to meet him. – AP

Horror is a mood, one of the most under-appreciated, under-discussed literary devices available to writers. And because horror is a mood, it’s subjective and transcends the limits of specific tropes or themes within a book—horror can be part and parcel of fantasy novels, mysteries or thrillers, literary fiction, and historical fiction. – Book Riot

“The pandemic arrived at a time in the life cycle of BookExpo and BookCon where we were already examining the restructure of our events to best meet our community’s needs.” – Publishers Weekly

Both sites base their choice on search statistics, and the clear leader was, of course, pandemic. (Coronavirus was close behind.) – Mic

In a statement on Wednesday, the Authors Guild laid out its opposition to the proposed deal. The sale “would mean that the combined publishing house would account for approximately 50% of all trade books published, creating a huge imbalance in the U.S. publishing industry,” the Guild said. – Publishers Weekly

“The first line identifies the writer as a “southern Black woman who stands in the long shadow of the Civil Rights Movement.” The essay itself appeared in Fireside on Nov. 24 and an audio version was published alongside it. Despite the topic and its author, the person who narrated the audio recording was a young, White male voice actor who spoke in an accent that listeners interpreted as something that would appear in a minstrel show.” – Washington Post

Symzonia; Voyage of Discovery, published in 1820, follows a ship-captain/seal hunter to the South Pole (still undiscovered at the time), where there’s a portal to the interior of Earth (which is hollow), where lives a different race of beings. It’s a satire of colonialism and American self-regard, though a few newspaper writers at the time thought the book was non-fiction. But Symzonia was published anonymously — and here Paul Collins, with the help of JGAAP software, works out who the likely author was. – The New Yorker

Why do the rich and powerful pay for this to happen? Do they not know that they are sponsoring people who are critical of the very structures and processes that enable their own wealth and power? Why help artists, writers, filmmakers gain new audiences? Why give them prizes? –Scroll (India)