- I love knowing about the libraries of authors and thinkers; it’s fascinating to see what shaped their minds. Mark Brown reports on the recent publication of a list of books in Charles Darwin’s library. (The Guardian)
- Rebecca K Reilly discusses the outsized influence of American English on authors from the rest of the Anglosphere. I am not very annoyed at editors telling their authors to write like an American only for marketing reasons. (LitHub)
- Agence France-Presse reports that German librarians are seeing attacks on books from right-wingers. (Raw Story)
- Erin Somers turns a gimlet eye on how people tell the stories of women married to famous authors. (Bustle)
- Molly Templeton critiques the odd ways the media talks about books and readers. (Reactor)
- Rachel Ulatowski reminds us that a very small number of book banners are having a big impact. (The Mary Sue)
- Karen Outen argues that killing off characters should take an emotional toll. (LitHub)
- Josh Dzieza wonders if AI can write good fiction and what “good” fiction means. (Verge)
- Meanwhile, Todd A. Carpenter warns against outsourcing reading to AI tools. (Scholarly Kitchen)
- Livia Gershon briefly explores the history of punctuation. (Daily JSTOR)
- Neda Ulaby talks to Texas teens who have a secret bookshelf in their classroom of banned and challenged books. I am so proud of people who stand up against censorship and, at the same time, I am so sad that they’ve been put in the position of having to hide books in order to keep reading them. (NPR)
- …and a double helping of censorship news, courtesy of Book Riot: February 2 and February 9
