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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
Is Design Behind the Death of Reading?
Strap in for a fascinating deep dive because Carlo Iacono wrote a piece for aeon on the design problem behind our inability to focus that you won’t want to miss reading. Iacono joins many in writing about how the hand-wringing over the degradation of quality reading has persisted across history but offers fresh perspective, focusing on specific aspects of design that are the true problem. He writes:
What’s different is the existence of delivery mechanisms actively engineered to prevent the kind of attention that serious thought requires. The penny dreadfuls didn’t follow you into your bedroom at midnight, vibrating with notifications.
Read all about Iacono’s theory about literacy as a design problem, and his observations of library habits.
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The Star of Normal People Takes On Another Buzzy Adaptation
I’d almost forgotten about the adaptation of Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow until Variety reported that Daisy Edgar-Jones will be its star. Edgar-Jones also starred in the adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People, so this isn’t her first buzzy book adaptation rodeo. The story, following friends who become partners in the video game industry and have a messy relationship, also has a big-name director attached to its adaptation with Siân Heder, the Oscar-winning director of CODA, onboard to direct and pen a screenplay based on drafts by Zevin herself and screenwriter Mark Bomback. I really enjoyed the book and look forward to watching it come to life onscreen.
The State of the Black Bookstore
Phil Lewis of What I’m Reading reported on recent unveilings from The National Association of Black Bookstores (NAB2). These include “The State of the Black Bookstore” report, with data on currently operating Black-owned bookstores and the challenges they face, and the launch of a National Black-Owned Bookstore Directory. Read more about these resources, the data worth celebrating, and what Black bookstore owners need to achieve success.
Last month, the Reverend Jesse Jackson died. His legacy and his work as a social justice activist are long, and he championed the inclusivity of all marginalized people from an early age. Among the work of his young life was playing a key role in the desegregation movement in public libraries. It’s not often enough that we talk about the role public libraries played in upholding segregation, but they did; it’s also not often enough that we tie that segregation into the contemporary movements of book censorship and how the erasure of queer voices and voices of color are but the continued legacy of upholding the public library as a space of and for white supremacy.
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