Category: words

“Why, they wonder, are their fellow employees still out of jobs while the owner gets a government payroll loan and has the money to invest elsewhere?” (Owner Nancy Bass Wyden spent more than $100K on stock in Amazon this year.) “Bass Wyden … says she needs to spend money to make more money while the Strand isn’t performing, a means to keep it afloat in the long term. The workers … see her putting her personal wealth before the institution. The truth, it seems, lies somewhere in the middle, with both sides wanting the store to live forever and, in true 2020 fashion, having their nerves frayed to the limits.” – InsideHook

Born in the Lao refugee camp in Nong Khai, Thailand, and raised in Toronto, Thammavongsa has earned acclaim for her four poetry books and her writing has been featured in publications including Harper’s Magazine, the Paris Review and The Atlantic. – CBC

The library has faced an average of 100 threats a month since it started digitising its collection of historical treasures in 2012, according to Manlio Miceli, its chief information officer. – The Guardian

While business is booming for online booksellers – Booktopia reported a 28% increase in sales in the 2020 financial year, driven substantially by Covid lockdowns – bricks and mortar stores have had an uneven year. – The Guardian

Collins Dictionary has declared lockdown the word of 2020. “The 4.5bn-word Collins Corpus, which contains written material from websites, books and newspapers, as well as spoken material from radio, television and conversations, registered a 6,000% increase in its usage [this year over 2019].” – The Guardian

Early Boomers would associate the phrase with The Howdy Doody Show, where it referred to the studio audience of kids. In fact, the first known printed use of “peanut gallery” comes from an 1867 review of a vaudeville show in New Orleans, and it refers to the food item unruly patrons would throw at performers they didn’t like. (Warning: the sentence in question is pretty racist.) – The Conversation

Danielle Evans says, “Stories work in compression and intensity, and their structure helps me get to the place where everything collapses or the threads come together. It can echo some of the intensity of how being alive feels.” – The New York Times

The library can’t be sold piecemeal; only everything together. “Access to this library and the language that mattered most to her could be a key to her brilliant mind. Now, that would knock even Sherlock’s socks off. And, appropriately, The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle sits boldly in her collection.” – Galerie Magazine

The UK’s second lockdown is terrifying for small bookshops in the run-up to Christmas. “Bestselling novelist Holly Bourne came up with the idea of providing stores with signed, personalised bookplates to incentivise customers to buy from their local shop rather than online.” – The Guardian (UK)