Category: words

“Ultimately, the most exciting part of reading a debut novelist isn’t wondering whether she deserved her seven-figure deal, or the rubbernecking pleasure of imagining how she probably won’t earn it back. It doesn’t have to do with hype or youth. It has to do with the possibility of imagining how a certain luminous talent will keep developing over the years, how this talent might expand beyond the horizon of our vision.”

“There is a fair bit of children’s literary traffic around the Anglosphere. … But we resist the rest of the world, as if the 90-something per cent of people who don’t principally speak English have no stories to tell us. Just think what we’re missing!”

“We’re in love with his bookish illustrations of charming scenes that incorporate actual books as playful visual metaphors and design elements. The fantastical drawings evoke that special, happy place that books inspire.”

“When customers visit the bookstore and tell her Amazon is cheaper: ‘I’m like, ‘You cannot come in, soak up what we have, talk to the staff, get recommendations, then go home and buy the book on Amazon. If you do, I will hunt you down and smack you around.'”

“Their verse combines to create a devastating but richly composed verbal landscape that it is at once epic and intensely human. Raw and lyrical, of the moment but seeped in the memories of their people, immediate and for ever.”

“She was assigned to edit a haunting news story by Emily Wax about women in India whose husbands, sons and brothers had been disappeared by state police.”

“All coincidences probably come to think of it. We’re definitely the good guys here. We’re doing the right thing for everyone.”

The kings of Pergamon in Asia Minor (now Begrama, Turkey) fought hard to build a collection as large and prestigious as Alexandria’s – and the Ptolemies were not pleased at the competition. The two cities struggled over manuscripts, scholars, and even materials. (Yes, there was a papyrus embargo.)

“In ancient times, tourists and travelers in Greece have gotten into some pretty intense situations. An adventure-seeking traveler would bathe in the river Herkyna, then consume sacrificial meat, wander through a dark cave of Livadeia to seek out the oracle, and emerge ‘paralyzed with terror and unconscious both of himself and of his surroundings.’ And that’s just a one-day itinerary.” So wrote [the] Greek geographer Pausanias.

“In their annual report for the year ending in June 2015, the trustees of YUPL reported that the Press had had its second best year ever. But they also sounded a warning note: while sales remained strong, the margin was disappointing and it singled out the results of the ‘Art list’ as being in particular decline compared to others.”