In these sprawling but welcoming communities, readers have found one another, banding together in a global, aesthetically pleasing book club that’s open for discussion 24/7. More than 33 million Instagram posts are tagged “#bookstagram,” and BookTube videos can amass millions of views — luring publishers and authors who actively court the most popular accounts. – Washington Post
Category: words
No, Carpe Diem Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does
For Australian philosopher Roman Krznaric, author of Carpe Diem Regained, the “hijacking [of carpe diem] is an existential crime of the century–and one we have barely noticed.” Krznaric is concerned that the philosophy has come to mean something else, almost the antithesis of what Horace’s words actually meant. – JSTOR
In Turkey, Erdoğan’s Gov’t Has Destroyed 300,000 Books In Past Three Years
“Since the attempted coup of 2016, according to Turkey’s ministry of education, … 301,878 books [have] been destroyed as the government cracks down on anything linked to Fethullah Gülen, the US-based Muslim cleric who is accused by Turkey of instigating [that] coup.” – The Guardian
Debating Shakespeare With Justice John Paul Stevens
“He had recently read my book “Contested Will,” about the controversy over the authorship of William Shakespeare’s plays. Like most scholars today, I freely acknowledged that Shakespeare had co-authored plays, and Stevens wondered if I might be open-minded on the subject of his having collaborated with the Earl of Oxford.” – The New Yorker
Can The Man Who Saved Waterstones Turn Around Barnes And Noble?
Britain’s biggest bookstore chain was near bankruptcy when James Daunt became CEO in 2011, and “[he] steered Waterstones out of a death spiral by rethinking every cranny of the company, from small (those shelves) to large (the business model).” Now, as he takes over B&N, which has been contracting for two decades, “his guiding assumption is that the only point of a bookstore is to provide a rich experience in contrast to a quick online transaction. And for now, the experience at Barnes & Noble isn’t good enough.” – The New York Times
Library Of Congress Puts Out A Call For Help Transcribing Suffragist Stories
Nearly 16,000 pages of letters, speeches, newspaper articles and other suffragist documents are now available on By the People, a crowdsourcing platform launched by the library in 2018. The project seeks to make the library’s collections fully word searchable and easier to read, for both scholars and lay historians alike. – Smithsonian
‘Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark,’ Beloved By Two Generations Of Kids (And Hated By Their Parents)
Laura Miller: “For many kids, reading the Scary Stories books represented a first tentative step toward growing up and into independence. … Unlike, say, a Playboy magazine, they weren’t absolutely forbidden. But one glance at Gammell’s hollow-eyed ghouls, shrieking skeletal brides, and gibbering specters told any kid that here was something that danced right on the edge of taboo. … To claim your right to deliberately scare yourself (even if it gives you nightmares) is to make a bid for self-determination.” – Slate
Unlikely Success: How Small Publisher Faber & Faber Got To Be 90 Years Old
“The Faber story certainly speaks volumes about the mix of passion, shrewdness, and luck that it takes to keep such an operation afloat; it also raises the question of who, ultimately, a publishing house like Faber & Faber really belongs to. Is it the stockholders, whose involvement in the day-to-day life of the company is sometimes remote? Is it the staff—publishers, editors, and others—who set the tone and direction during their tenure? Or is it the writers, whose work is the company’s real raison d’être and lifeblood?” – The New Yorker
Nine Unpublished Stories By Proust Will Finally See Print (And Why Weren’t They Published Before?)
“The pieces were originally composed by Proust in his early 20s for inclusion in his first book, Les Plaisirs et les jours (Pleasures and Days), a collection of poems and short stories first published in 1896. But for some reason, Proust decided to cut these nine works from the book.” (He may have decided that their subject matter was too scandalous.) – Smithsonian Magazine
Is It Worth It To Pay $7,500 To Publish Your Book?
Is it ego, recognition from others, the catharsis of a journey of self-discovery or the conviction the information contained in the book is something the world desperately needs? That’s a complicated question. I can attest there’s something very gratifying about seeing your name in print. It just depends on what it’s worth to you. – San Francisco Chronicle