Reading list
Shortform reading
This is an incomplete list of the shortform reading (and listening and watching) I’ve been doing lately.
Why "Book-Shaming" Won't Solve the Children's Literacy Crisis
Barnett’s concerns about literary merit and professional esteem may be timeless, but they are not terribly timely; they seem to float high above the current on-the-ground realities of what many educators and researchers agree to be a literacy crisis. In urging his audience to see children’s books as “real books,” Barnett skips over larger, more pressing questions about why so many children aren’t reading books at all, real or otherwise.
#books · #education · #reading
A Nationwide Book Ban Bill Has Been Introduced in the House of Representatives
Hours after the State of the Union address, House republicans introduced legislation banning LGBTQ+ books from public schools nationwide.
#books · #free-speech · #lgbt
No, AI Written Romance Novels Are Not Inevitable
Even according to the Times’ own reporting, readers do not seem to like AI romance novels. One of the two AI critical sources quoted in the article said that she would never knowingly pick up a book written by AI. Another, an author whose work had been scraped by Anthropic to train their AI model, pointed out that flooding the zone with slop makes it much harder for real human authors to be discovered by readers.
What I found most curious was Coral Hart’s reasoning for using a pseudonym in the article. Coral Hart is a retired pen name and the source would not give any of her current pen names “because she still uses her real name for some publishing and coaching projects. She fears that revealing her A.I. use would damage her business for that work.” Huh! That’s weird!
Library receives donations to replace books church leaders targeted for LGBTQ+ themes
We will use the donated money to replace the books and buy more like them.
#books · #extremism · #free-speech · #lgbt
On the Joy of Building a Sci-Fi World with a Korean Inflection
When Ocean’s Godori first came out, I was somewhat surprised by some of the reader reactions. Many people expressed frustration over words not being directly defined, the frequent usage of Korean, the spelling of some of that Korean that made it difficult to look up, and the glossary not being more prominently displayed.
This is, of course the sci-fi genre, one that usually by necessity involves unknown terms, foods, and slang that you assimilate as you keep reading. Sometimes that worldbuilding is like sinking into a warm bath and sometimes it operates like a jarring smash cut, as anyone who has picked up A Clockwork Orange with its opening of “we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry” can attest to.
Robot Ghost Kitchens and Memory Capitalism: August's Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books
Humidity be damned, this month’s crop of books is sparking with exciting new premises and relationship dynamics. You’ve got robots-turned-cooks, an economy built entirely on mandatory memory collection, a polyamorous throuple romantasy, Practical Magic but make it a mother/daughter tale. And if you were a fan of Sideways Stories from Wayside School and/or Holes, have I got the adult fantasy debut for you…
More broadly, fiction can act as an antidote to authoritarianism. If authoritarianism thrives when people are isolated, fiction brings people together, she says. “In the most basic way, writing is about opening yourself to another person’s mind. The most intimate thing I do on a daily basis is pick up a book and open myself to another person.” And, while the Trump administration may be forcing one way of life on the world, fiction’s job is, as always, to remind people that there are “other ways of being”.
School board member admits to banning books without reading them, faces lawsuit
"I don't like them. I wouldn't read them. I'll be honest I've read the reviews on some of them…" With these words at a public meeting, Tennessee's Rutherford County School Board member Stan Vaught admitted to banning books he hadn't read — a revelation that kicked off a federal lawsuit.
According to the complaint, board members relied primarily on BookLooks.org, a website connected to the Hitler-quoting group Moms for Liberty, instead of reading the books themselves or considering their literary merit. The board repeatedly overruled their own librarians' recommendations to keep books like Toni Morrison's Beloved and Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, and Ernest Cline' Ready Player One because it has "characters discussing beliefs that heaven and god are not
real."
#books · #censorship · #extremism · #free-speech · #libraries · #us-politics
Cover to Cover: An Analysis of Titles Banned in the 23–24 School Year
In the 2023-2024 school year, there were more than 10,000 instances of banned books in public schools, affecting more than 4,000 unique titles. These mass book bans were often the result of targeted campaigns to remove books with characters of color, LGBTQ+ identities, and sexual content from public school classrooms and libraries. As book bans reached an unprecedented high in the last school year, PEN America sought to further understand the impacts of this censorship – the identities, content areas, genres, and types of books that are being erased from America’s public schools.
In November 2024, PEN America previously reported on the content of titles that had experienced two or more bans (1,091 titles); here, we include a more comprehensive analysis of all 4,218 titles banned during the 2023-2024 school year.
What have we found?
Book bans are not a hoax.
Allegra Goodman on the (Almost) Life-Saving Power of Audiobooks
I was jittery. Elijah was half-asleep. I was desperate for a new start. He hated change. But when I started the car and began our first audio book, someone new entered the conversation. Alexandre Dumas. Within minutes, we were transported to the world of The Three Musketeers. Duels and secrets and spies and stolen diamonds. Adventure and absurdity. Dumas carried us away. The humor in this book! We played one scene again and again, because it was so funny. I got distracted, missed my exit, and had to circle back, but we made it to school.
When I look back on those years, I remember I was always tired. High school had its challenges. Elijah did not magically transform into a happy-go-lucky teenager—but his school was a good fit. He went willingly and completed his assignments. And every day, twice a day, we listened to our books. In sun and wind, we listened to Pride and Prejudice and The Autobiography of Ben Franklin and Invisible Man. In heavy fog, we heard Beowulf. “Almost white out conditions” I wrote in my log. In snow we listened to The Iliad. I remember hearing David McCullough’s history of the Brooklyn Bridge in pounding rain. Stormy mornings when I listened hard to Moby Dick on icy roads. Bright afternoons when we laughed out loud at Don Quixote.