Category: words

Was it pulled because of its use of the ‘n-word’? That seems to be the case, but the reason is not clear. “Kenny Holloway, vice president of the Biloxi School Board said, ‘There were complaints about it. There is some language in the book that makes people uncomfortable, and we can teach the same lesson with other books.'”

One indie bookstore representative wonders what the ever-loving heck: “Even as people seek out the expertise of indie booksellers, they treat Amazon as the default for book links. Bloggers write about shopping local while linking to Amazon. Authors appeal to bookstores for book tours and sales but announce their books on Facebook with Amazon links (yes, even for a book titled How to Find Love in a Bookshop).”

The fairs – and other cultural trading – taught about history beyond the Indian independence struggle. And they were cool: “The Soviet Book Exhibition would cram a vast ground in the center of town with stalls selling books and magazines, for all ages, in English and various Indian languages. Sovietland magazine was published in 13 Indian languages. It carried pictures of Soviet life, of collective farming, and Indo-Soviet collaborations on projects like the Bhilai steel plant. Soviet books were inexpensive and beautifully produced on glossy art paper.”

More than 70 authors, including Pulitzer prize winners Jennifer Egan and Louise Glück, have come to the defence of the editor and poet Jill Bialosky after she was accused of plagiarism, saying that Bialosky’s “inadvertent repetition of biographical boilerplate was not an egregious theft intentionally performed”.

“In a statement to staff issued on Thursday, Hachette Book Group said it had ‘terminated’ the imprint. A joint venture between the Weinstein Company and the Hachette-owned publisher Perseus, Weinstein Books released around 10 books a year, with titles ranging from books by media personalities to film tie-ins. It was run by two women: editorial director Amanda Murray and publishing director Georgina Levitt.”

“Tales of language extinction are invariably tragic. But why, exactly? Aka-Bo, like many other extinct languages, did not make a difference to the lives of the vast majority of people. Yet the sense that we lose something valuable when languages die is familiar. Just as familiar, though, is the view that preserving minority languages is a waste of time and resources. I want to attempt to make sense of these conflicting attitudes.”

Invented by a Hungarian in Argentina, re-engineered by an American high school dropout, it created such a sensation when it appeared in a New York department store that the police had to control the crowds. (This even though it sold for the present-day equivalent of $165 each.) Inventory sold out in a flash (and disappeared mysteriously from the factory). And that’s not even the first year.

“‘Books are the best weapons,’ President Emmanuel Macron of France said at the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair, addressing the unifying power of literature and language. ‘Without culture, there is no Europe.’ … Can Dundar, the former editor in chief of the Turkish opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet who faces imprisonment in Turkey, will add to the political theme in a talk about writing in exile; the German author Thomas Wagner and the activist Gerald Hensel will discuss the identity of the new right.”

Otessa Moshfegh: “Upon awakening, I often ask myself, ‘Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing here?’ and from time to time, I’ve felt that the answers were merely memorized responses, and that my reality might be an arbitrary dash of the imagination – believable, sure, but not entirely trustworthy. This specific vulnerability – of the conscious, willful mind – is precisely what Jackson titillates and exacerbates in her stories.”

Amy Grace Loyd, who was Playboy‘s literary editor from 2005 to 2011, writes about how, and why, she convinced some of the English language’s top female authors (along with the likes of Junot Díaz, Walter Mosley, and Sherman Alexie) to write for the magazine.