Category: words

Eliot’s work on Spinoza’s Ethics, one scholar says, “was the last thing she did before she wrote her stories and became George Eliot. A large part of Spinoza’s Ethics gives this insightful analysis of human emotion, and I think that’s something she obviously learned from, because she has this really amazing understanding of human emotions and how they work.” – The Guardian (UK)

Well, no, no wardrobe or fur coats, but “9,000 square feet of nooks, alcoves, labyrinths, and warrens.” Its customers really love it, including the way thousands of books crammed together smell. And “the store is orderly if not antiseptic. Signs are hand-lettered; there are plenty of chairs for contemplation and ladders for climbing; and, whether by accident or puckish design, the crime section stops short at a fittingly dead end.” – The New York Times

“New Zealand is hoping that by 2040, one million Kiwis will be able to speak basic te reo Māori, the Maori language. This ambitious goal is part of an official language strategy that sees the revival of New Zealand’s Indigenous language as a key part in national identity and reconciliation.” (audio) – Public Radio International

With a history going back almost 150 years, College Street in Kolkata “has every imaginable type of text, available in Bengali, English, Mandarin, Sanskrit, Dutch, and every dialect in between. Precious first editions and literary classics sit cheek by jowl with medical encyclopedias, religious texts, and pulp fiction, often precariously stacked in uneven piles that resemble jagged cliff faces.” But many of the booksellers there are worried about an enormous new mall, planned by the West Bengal state government, set to open next year as a literary hub. – Atlas Obscura

Reading books aloud might seem like an easy way to make money – you just sit there and read – “but I can assure you it isn’t. I narrated my own audiobook in 2014, an experience that I described at the time as being akin to an exorcism: three long days in a dark room, tripping through the minefield of my own words. All I could think was: If I’d known I was going to have to say this whole book out loud, I would have written a better one. Or maybe I wouldn’t have written one at all.” – Irish Times

The Chicago Reader is hitching onto the train of news outlets pivoting to nonprofit life, under the umbrella of the newly-founded Reader Institute for Community Journalism, set to launch in early 2020. This follows a similar pathway of the nonprofit Lenfest Institute owning the for-profit Philadelphia Inquirer. The Reader will pursue nonprofit status. – NiemanLab

The academy, founded in 1634 by Cardinal Richelieu, is the official gatekeeper of the French language whose members are known as ‘the immortals’. Its mission is to keep the French language pure and it frequently coins new French words to cover newly invented technology, not all of which catch on. – The Local

“An 11-count federal indictment accuses Catherine Pugh of arranging fraudulent sales of her Healthy Holly books to schools, libraries and a medical system to enrich herself, promote her political career and fund her run for mayor.” – Yahoo! (AP)

“Defined as ‘a situation in which urgent action is required to reduce or halt climate change and avoid potentially irreversible environmental damage resulting from it’, Oxford said the words soared from ‘relative obscurity’ to ‘one of the most prominent – and prominently debated – terms of 2019.’ According to the dictionary’s data, usage of ‘climate emergency’ soared 10,796%.” (Similarly, Collins Dictionary chose “climate strike” as its Word of the Year.) – The Guardian

Choi took the fiction prize for her novel Trust Exercise, while the nonfiction award went to Sarah M. Broom’s memoir The Yellow House. Winning the young people’s literature category was Martin W. Sandler’s 1919: The Year That Changed America; Arthur Sze’s Sight Lines took poetry honors. The award for translated literature went to author Laszlo Krasznahorkai and translator Ottilie Mulzet for Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming. – The Guardian