Labyrinth Books Princeton

08/05/2026

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/books/best-thriller-books-21st-century.html

Hundreds of novelists, librarians, editors and other book lovers voted. See how their ballots stack up.

08/01/2026

https://fortune.com/2026/07/31/dutch-bookseller-ai-spam-phishing-3000-book-copies-scan-destroy/
AI companies are purchasing, dismembering, scanning, then pulping millions of books, rare and special editions included, to feed their language models -- on the basis of "fair use."
"You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy"

"I was shocked!" Pieter de Vries of Haarlem told Fortune. He said several other Dutch antiquarian booksellers received the same request.

07/28/2026

bbc.com/news/articles/czekl599087o

Elizabeth Strout, Douglas Stuart and Marlon James are among the 13 authors recognised this year.

07/25/2026

https://www.inquirer.com/entertainment/movies/emily-wilson-upenn-odyssey-christopher-nolan-20260725.html

West Philly's Emily Wilson, who penned a highly acclaimed translation of the epic poem in 2017, is having a big summer.

07/13/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DUkvDn2KV/ We are fighting for print culture and sustained, critical reading every day. If it's a losing battle we are no less proud to fight it, but the sheer number of readers who have joined us in this project gives us such great hope.

Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history, Rose Horowitch reports. https://theatln.tc/gnIIAtdC

Fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022, according to the National Endowment for the Arts. Americans get much less of their news through reading than they once did. Fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores have slid for the past decade.

Ironically, we’re likely consuming more words than ever—in the form of emails, text messages, X posts, Reddit threads, and Instagram captions. But “this explosion of textual fragments has come at the expense of devoting sustained attention to longer written works that convey rich and complicated information,” Horowitch continues. The postliterate era has arrived.

Some Americans are proudly post­literate, Horowitch argues: “The president has spoken about his taste for bullet-pointed briefings, and aides have said he likes pictures and charts. The world’s richest men brag about getting their information from X posts, podcasts, and conversations with chatbots. Young people who seek wealth and influence are encouraged to mimic them.”

Dedicated reading is now clustered among a small minority of the population, Horowitch reports: Just 20 percent of adults accounted for more than 80 percent of all books read last year. These “readers spend more time reading each day than they did two decades ago. They appear to be even more passionate about print than their predecessors. But the people devoted to text, who derive cultural understanding and intellectual connection from the written word, are now part of a subculture,” Horowitch continues. “The remaining readers are marginalized, mocked, and in many ways irrelevant.”

At the link, Horowitch reports on how the postliterate era could transform civilization.

🎨: The Atlantic

07/11/2026

https://www.labyrinthbooks.com/reader-come-home/

07/11/2026

https://www.princeton.edu/news/2026/07/01/summer-reads-2026-princeton-professors-share-whats-their-lists

This summer’s mix includes botany, sculpture, music, some deep cuts in sci-fi and fantasy, novels set in France, Ireland, Sweden, the Swiss Alps and across Asia, a memoir from Cameroon, a book of letters from ancient Egypt, a cat behavior book and more.

07/11/2026

07/02/2026

Your Summer Favorites Return to Morven Museum & Garden next month:
☀️our free Fourth of July Festival
☀️twilight garden tours
☀️yoga in the garden with Gratitude Yoga on Wednesdays
☀️the Summer Reading Soiree (with New York Times bestselling authors Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie)

PLUS!
☀️a free community concert
☀️free storytelling in the garden
☀️the leading expert on the Declaration of Independence Dr. Emily Sneff

Don’t miss it!
For details/to sign up, click here: bit.ly/4oNq55B

06/20/2026

Gita Varadarajan