Category: words

Sometime between 1985 and 1988, a thief took a five-century-old Latin copy of Christopher Columbus’s first letter to King Ferdinand from Venice’s Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana and replaced it with a forgery. Art detectives in Delaware tracked it down; authorities won’t reveal where it was found or how it was seized. – The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Newbery, for best children’s book, went to Jerry Kraft’s New Kid, the story of a 12-year-old who’s one of the few nonwhite students at a fancy private school. Taking the Caldecott, for best picture book for children, was The Undefeated, with illustrations by Kadir Nelson and text by Kwame Alexander. – The New York Times

The clumsy, ill-conceived rollout of “American Dirt” illustrates how broken the system is, how myopic it is to hype one book at the expense of others and how unethical it is to allow a gatekeeper like Oprah’s Book Club to wield such power. Imagine a publishing industry that dispensed with hit-making, that used the millions of dollars poured into “American Dirt” to invest more into promoting a greater number and panoply of authors. – The New York Times

“The ‘Brexit’ 50p coin is missing an Oxford comma, and should be boycotted by all literate people,” wrote the novelist Philip Pullman on Twitter, while Times Literary Supplement editor Stig Abell wrote that, while it was “not perhaps the only objection” to the Brexit-celebrating coin, “the lack of a comma after ‘prosperity’ is killing me”. – The Guardian

In the face of critiques, Jeanine Cummins is pushing back in public. Her publisher released a statement encouraging discussion around the title, while some authors and booksellers have come to Cummins’ defense. In a culture that is used to debating black and Asian representation and stereotypes, the entrenchment around “American Dirt” is fueling even more complaints over the ease with which popular culture still employs Latino-related stereotypes in contemporary movies, television and fiction. – Los Angeles Times

Australia’s Aboriginal poets had some ideas as Australia Day – or #InvasionDay, as it’s known by many on social media – fever hit the country over the weekend. Problem: “Australia is the only Commonwealth country without a treaty between its government and Indigenous people. Yet, in the resulting vacuum, long after the gong’s last clang, the work of First Nations artists maps some directions reconciliation, treaty and atonement might take.” – The Irish Times

This move has “raised a business question about what kind of platform Amazon wants to be.” In part, it’s problematic because Amazon bought the big review site Goodreads in 2013. One writer and publisher says, “If they want to keep the discussion about race and appropriation out of their website, that’s certainly their right. … But because they have invited this social function into their retail business, it feels a little like dirty pool to a lot of us in the industry.” – Marketplace

Perhaps writers are out of love with romantic love, not only marriage. “If the romance fantasy was long doled out to women as a compensation for powerlessness elsewhere, contemporary writers are increasingly turning the marriage plot on its head.” – The Guardian (UK)

Combining recent controversies – a statement King made about the Oscars and the reaction to American Dirt – author Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez explains what publishing is like for many Latinx writers. “MODERATOR: Hello, ladies and gentleman! Thank you for coming to the event today. As you can see, we have here with us today one of the nation’s leading white voices, the white male ‘writer,’ Stephen – hold on. I’m not sure how to pronounce your last name. Do you say it with a British accent? (Purses lips like the Queen’s arsehole, LAUGHS.) ‘King.'” – Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez