Category: words

Remember when this lawsuit started, and we discovered that Audible was transcribing every word that its readers – who were, presumably, usually, reading the book word for word – read aloud, in other words, recreating the entire book through “captions”? Settlement may come as early as January 13. (Meanwhile, Audible – that is, Amazon – defends its right to do just this recreation of the book with its own service.) – Publishers Weekly

There’s so much – so many Best lists, so many ideas about gifts, so many essays about types in books – and then … “What have tweets and emojis done to the novel? According to the writer Charles Finch, the digital age has ushered in new ways of reading — and revived old ones (the scroll and the ideogram). But could it also explain the rise of autofiction?” – The New York Times

Inside the last days of Le Pont Traversé – and the economics of a flashy Paris encroaching on the heart of the literary city. The shop is especially known for its poetry. “A few months ago, a gang of young women came in looking for female poets like Marceline Desbordes-Valmore and Yanette Delétang-Tardif—considerably lesser known than their male contemporaries, but now revived thanks to French bloggers writing on poetry ‘Their enthusiasm is extraordinary,’ marveled Josée. ‘I feel that when young people fall in love with writers today, they fall hard.'” – Literary Hub

As usual, it’s “an eclectic mix of fiction and nonfiction,” and the former president included the collected works of Toni Morrison, who died in August. – Los Angeles Times

Or is it self-immolating? In any case, when the RWA suspended writer Courtney Milan, who had spent years on its ethics committee and pushing for more inclusion and equity, for calling a book “a racist mess,” a boulder of anger, past racist treatment, secret committees, and a board exodus started rolling down the RWA’s hill of money and influence. Will the organization – 40 years old and at the forefront of a billion dollar industry – survive? (For more, here’s a complete timeline of what’s been happening.) – Houston Chronicle

In a country not exactly known for the free flow of ideas, delays and freezes in publishing have changed what’s available in China. “Publishing industry insiders describe a near freeze of regulatory approvals, one that could make the publishing industry reluctant to buy the rights to sell American books in China.” That freeze may be thawing, or may not be – but in the meantime, U.S. authors and publishers have lost a major group of readers. – The New York Times

While Cambridge cut out its medieval requirement, Oxford – under the influence of Lewis and Tolkien – doubled down. That weirdly influenced the fantasy all over the English-speaking world. “At the moment that the British Empire is waning, you see this rise of children’s fantasy literature, which is set in these kinds of precolonial worlds, but also imagining these new vistas for exploration and the pleasures of exploration and colonization, encounters with indigenous peoples—but cloaked in a different story, where the people you’re encountering are ‘magical creatures,’ so you’re free of political resonances.” (Narrator: You’re actually not.) – Slate

From Noam Chomsky on the responsibility of intellectuals after 9/11, to our forum on why empathy can be a bad thing, the following were all ambitious efforts and help chart a decade of thinking. – Boston Review

“[Rupi] Kaur’s achievement as an artist is the extent to which her work embodies, formally, the technology that defines contemporary life: smartphones and the internet. … I’d argue that many of the writers currently being discussed as the most significant of the last decade write in direct opposition to the pervasive influence of the internet. Karl Ove Knausgaard, Rachel Cusk, and Ben Lerner (to name but three of our best) are interested in the single analog consciousness as a filter through which to see the world. If you think their experiment is the most important of the last 10 years, you’re probably (sorry) old.” – The New Republic