It took David J. Peterson about six weeks to create Dothraki and a summer in a subsequent year to create Valyrian — and, as with Elvish and Klingon before them, those languages have taken on a life beyond the work they were created for. Indeed, there are now more British people who understand Valyrian than do Scots Gaelic. – The Times (UK)
Category: words
Unhampered Access: Libraries Are Bringing Their Children’s Programs To Laundromats
“Laundry literacy programs have recently sprung up all over the country, … and thousands of children have benefited from the chance to hone their early-literacy skills in an everyday setting, often with their parents participating, often on a regular basis, and always for free. Can’t these children simply go to a branch library instead? Not necessarily.” – American Libraries
Michigan Lawmakers Say There’s A Crisis With The State’s School Libraries
“Michigan ranks 47th in the nation for its ratio of students to certified librarians — it’s also in the bottom five in literacy. The two statistics have legislators like State Rep. Darrin Camilleri questioning why more isn’t being done to increase the presence of librarians in schools.” So he and colleagues have introduced three different bills to address the problem. – WXYZ (Detroit)
Finale Of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell Trilogy Has Official Publishing Date
Yes, that billboard in London was a piece of viral marketing. One day after it set social media atwitter (ahem), HarperCollins revealed that it will release The Mirror and the Light in March of 2020. (Henry Holt will be the US publisher; in the UK, the book will appear under the Fourth Estate imprint.) – The Bookseller (UK)
The Next Great Indie Bookstore Chain? Shakespeare & Co. Makes A Move
In addition to the flagship store on Lexington Ave., the company opened its first store in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square last October. A second New York City store, which opened the following month, marked Shakespeare & Co.’s return to the Upper West Side after a 20-year hiatus. A fourth store, which originally was to have opened in Greenwich Village late last year, is expected to open soon. – Publishers Weekly
How To Reshuffle The Historical Great Books Canon
The “great anthology” collections of books drew readers’ attention to books of the past. But most of the works chosen were from the historical mainstream. How to change it? A couple of publishers are creating new anthologies and purposefully picking writing from outside the tradition. – Vox
Did We Just Get A Sign That Hilary Mantel Has Finished Her Cromwell Trilogy?
“On Tuesday (21st May), Waterstones Piccadilly sparked excitement online when it tweeted out a prominent sign, said to be spotted in London’s Leicester Square, which appeared to hint at news on the novel, titled The Mirror and the Light.” The sign has since disappeared from the billboard, and HarperCollins has no comment. – The Bookseller (UK)
Man Booker International Prize, For First Time, Goes To Arabic Novel
“Jokha Alharthi, the first female Omani novelist to be translated into English, has won the Man Booker International prize for her novel Celestial Bodies. Alharthi … shares the [£50,000] prize equally with her translator, American academic Marilyn Booth.” – The Guardian
NYTimes Executive Editor: Most Local Newspapers Will Die Within Five Years
Dean Baquet: “The greatest crisis in American journalism is the death of local news . . . I don’t know what the answer is. Their economic model is gone. I think most local newspapers in America are going to die in the next five years, except for the ones that have been bought by a local billionaire.” – Fast Company
Best-Selling Big-Idea Books Riddled With Errors – Should They Be Better Than Random Tweets?
“The time has come for those of us who work in book-length nonfiction to insist that professional fact-checking become as inalienable from publishing as publicity, marketing and jacket design — and at the publisher’s expense rather than as a cost passed on to the author, who, understandably, will often choose to spend her money on health care. In the age of tweets, it cannot be the fate of the book to become ever more tweetlike — maybe factual, maybe whatever. The book must stand apart, must stand above.” – The New York Times