- Kelly Jensen reports an alarming (but sadly, probably inevitable) response from a South Carolina library in the face of new book-banning legislation: the York County Library will no longer purchase books written for minors. (Book Riot)
- Claire Kirch discusses efforts to help booksellers affected by hurricanes Helene and Milton. (Publishers Weekly)
- James Harbeck gallops through a bunch of bonkers words invented by Americans in the early 1800s. Not all of them are still used today, but some of my favorite words (discombobulate, shenanigans1, lollygagging) came out of this whimsical moment. (Sequiotica)
- Iris Jamahl Dunkle wrestles with the challenges of writing biographies of women whose intellectual and artistic accomplishments are often overshadowed by their romantic and sexual relationships. (LitHub)
- Dennis Wilson Wise profiles Judy-Lynn del Ray, founder of the hugely influential fantasy and science fiction imprint, Del Ray. (Gizmodo)
- The latest cat science shows that cats can learn what words mean faster than human babies. Christine Lesté-Lasserre reports. I always get a kick out of cat studies because they are so hard to study: are they smart? Are they dumb? Do they just not care? (Science)
- …and censorship news from the lovely people of Book Riot.
- False etymologies point to an Irish origin for shenanigans, because it sort of sounds like a Gaelic word. These are not verified and the Oxford English Dictionary says that the word is “of unknown origin.” ↩︎