Category: words

A millennium after the Greeks created European civilization’s first written culture, the scholar Alcuin and his monks at Charlemagne’s court fused Roman and Celtic scripts to create the alphabet we use today – and established standards and rules such as leaving a space between words and beginning sentences with a capital letter.

That’s five out of 13 in total. (The Brits only got three.) One of those five is a literary agent, and another – possibly the least famous of the group – is the bookmakers’ early favorite to win.

“In some ways, reading all this Arabic literature in English has been like listening in on a foreign-language recording when one understands the words’ meanings, but not the allusions, nor the jokes, nor the underlying rhythms. Some of this woodenness can be blamed on inadequate translations. But some of it falls to our historical blind spots.”

“Even the most skeptical reader will surely admire What Pet Should I Get?, in its initial printing of one million copies, as a text on the front lines of the revolution – and as a satire of old forms, perhaps, and at the very least an attempt at parody.”

IBM is now licensing a tool of its supercomputer “cognitive system” called Tone Analyzer, which “us[es] linguistic analysis to detect emotional tones, social propensities, and writing styles” and then provides “suggestions to help the writer improve their intended language tones.”

“The government plans to begin offering rent and tax breaks to booksellers in exchange for an ‘opportunity’ to provide a selection of titles chosen by the government. Dmitry Livanov, Russia’s Minister of Science and Education said this this new program [will] ‘help promote sales of those books which have historical value’ and ‘can contribute to patriotic education of local population’.”

“If a writer lists two influences and they both happen to be male – well, fair enough. They never both happen to be female, though, and receiving list after list of five, seven, 10 or more male influences is disturbing. It points again to the larger issue in the industry: our habitual, unchecked dismissal of the experiences, viewpoints and brilliant work of women.”

“The poems were found by archivists last June, in boxes kept at the Pablo Neruda foundation in Santiago, Chile. They were published by Neruda’s Spanish publisher, Seix Barral, but have not yet been released in English. … The collection, titled, Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda, will be translated by the poet and novelist Forrest Gander, and will include full color reproductions of the handwritten poems.”

“Malorie Blackman left her own teen experiences behind a longish time ago but it doesn’t stop her understanding the overwhelming emotions of adolescence and their bravery in standing up for themselves and others when they see unfair things happening.”

Now to crowdsource the shortlist (that’s right – you can help books move on).