books

Penguin Random House employees want it to be a partisan publisher 1

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged books censorship on by

There are 520 employees of Penguin Random House who think it should take a partisan position in what books it publishes. Hopefully the publisher will tell them it doesn’t take their orders. They want the publisher to drop Amy Coney Barrett’s upcoming book, which as far as I can tell doesn’t have an announced title yet.

Update: Good news! The publisher has effectively told that bunch to go to Hell.

It reminds me of some Amazon employees lying on the ground a few months ago and demanding that it not carry some books. Do some people get jobs in publishing and distribution because they dream of controlling what people can read?
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Book discussion: Classified by David E. Bernstein

This entry was posted in Book discussion and tagged books history law on by

Cover, Classified by David BernsteinRace, we’re often told, is a social construct. Sometimes it’s even more arbitrary; it’s a government construct. Since the days of slavery, governmental units in the US have assigned people racial designations based on bizarre criteria. The civil rights era and the introduction of affirmative action only made it crazier. Iranians, Afghanis, and Arabs aren’t Asian, even though they’re mostly from Asia. Instead, they’re “white.” You can be from Spain, yet not be Hispanic. Native Hawaiians aren’t Native American. Members of recognized minority groups lobby to keep other people from being recognized as minority groups.

Official designations of racial and minority status in the United States are insane, but David E. Bernstein keeps a straight face as he documents them in Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.
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Banned Books Week 2022

This entry was posted in Censorship Commentary and tagged books censorship on by

CC license from pngall.comNormally I don’t pay much attention to Banned Books Week. In past years it seems the scariest scenarios anyone reported were things like someone claiming a book shouldn’t be on library shelves for fourth-graders. I’ve called it “Bland Books Week.” This year is different, though. A movement has arisen from the sewers of the religious right to intimidate and harass librarians. “Woke” leftists and Muslim fanatics also pose threats. People at my local library have been worried, even though little has happened around here.

Here are some incidents that have made the news.
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Another reason to buy from independent bookstores

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged Amazon books bookstores on by

Depending on which reports you read, Amazon handles a quarter to a half of all book sales in the US. It’s convenient and allows one-stop shopping. But when we become heavily dependent on one source, it’s bad for an open market. There’s less of a market share for independent dealers, which makes sellers more dependent on one business’s whims.

Amazon has exercised various whims over the years. In 2009, it removed a significant number of LGBT books from its sales ranking on the grounds that they were “adult” books. (Strange terminology; I didn’t think of Amazon as primarily a kids’ book dealer.) It blamed The Algorithm and reversed its decision under public pressure.

The same year, Amazon pulled its most ham-handed book removal, deleting 1984 from customers’ devices after they had bought it and refunding their money. It served as a reminder that what you “buy” on the Kindle remains under Big Brother’s, I mean Amazon’s, control.
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