Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 8h

#booksky recommended for #bookawards #booklovers
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National Book Award finalists announced for 2025 for fiction, nonfiction, young people’s literature, translated literature & poetry. Titles by Patricia Smith, Bryan Washington, & Solvej Balle are among this year's shortlisted.

wapo.st/4n0wTdx

A selection of National Book Award finalists announced for 2025. Collage by bobbygw

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 8h

* Katherine Bouton, a former editor at the New York Times, is the author of Shouting Won’t Help: Why I and 50 Million Other Americans Can’t Hear You, and an educator and advocate for the deaf and hard of hearing.

bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 8h

#booksky recommended for #memoirs #womenwriters 📚💙

This deaf writer offers a compelling new way to think about language.

In her memoir Articulate, Rachel Kolb explores her experience growing up deaf, focusing on communication rather than loss. Review by Katherine Bouton*.

wapo.st/4mYFmhc

Articulate: A Deaf Memoir of Voice by Rachel Kolb. Ecco. 304 pp. $29.99

Author Rachel Renee Kolb. Photo credit: Josephine Sittenfeld

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 9h

#booksky for #literaryfiction #biographies #picturebooks #bookawards 📚💙

Winners of the 2025 Kirkus Prize are Lucas Schaefer, Scott Anderson, & Thao Lam. It's given annually to works of exceptional merit in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, & young readers’ literature.

bit.ly/4o9pXvx

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 1d

Wonderful. Begin Again is excellent.

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 3d

#booksky for #bannedbooks #booklovers 📚💙

The 15 most banned books in U.S. schools.

In the 2024-25 school year, book bans affected more than 3,700 unique titles in 87 school districts across 23 states, according to PEN America.

www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-...

PEN America's "Banned in the USA" report found 3,752 unique titles were affected by bans in the school year that ended in June. NBC News.

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 5d

He sounds like one of a kind - and remarkable.

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 5d

Frustrating when that happens. Here's to finding it again (or ordering it and finding you have multiple copies - I've done that too many times). I'm enjoying reading through his website of collated wit.

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 5d

#booksky for #humor 📚💙

Obituary: Mr. Brilliant, “history’s only full-time, professional, published epigrammist”, has died, aged 91.

He wrote 10,000 epigrams - www.ashleighbrilliant.com/catalog.html - none longer than 17 words, & printed them on postcards, T-shirts, mugs & more.

bit.ly/3WlqQFn

Photo of Ashleigh Brilliant, Prolific ‘Pot-Shots’ Phrasemaker. Photo credit: Richard Lautens/Toronto Star, via Getty Images; Ashleigh Brilliant Enterprises

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 5d

#booksky for #booklovers
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The Thriller Writer Who Took on a Tech Giant:

Andrea Bartz was disturbed to learn that AI giant Anthropic had used her novels to train chatbots. So she sued, and helped win the largest copyright settlement ($1.5 billion) in history.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/b...

"It's not the end of the battle," Andrea Bartz said of the recent settlement. Photo credit: Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 5d

#booksky for #literaryfiction #booklovers 🖋️📚💙

“He’s gone to the well so many times for the same themes, and the same types of antiheroes, that he scrapes a bit of bottom.” Shadow Ticket follows a dancing private eye on the madcap hunt for a missing cheese.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/b...

SHADOW TICKET | By Thomas Pynchon | Penguin Press | 293 pp. | $30

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 5d

#booksky for #literaryfiction #essays #activism #booklovers 📚💙

A thoughtful, reflective essay-review: On Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs, and James Baldwin's fierce attachments. Essay by Harmony Holiday.

www.bookforum.com/print/3202/m...

Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 720 pages. $36.

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 5d

#booksky for #feminism #science #womenwriters #primatology 📚💙

Jane Goodall, Who Chronicled the Social Lives of Chimps, Dies at 91. Her discoveries as a primatologist in the 1960s were hailed as “one of the Western world’s great scientific achievements.”

bit.ly/46PqQSL

Jane Goodall, the renowned British primatologist continues the “engrossing account” of her time among the chimpanzees of Gombe, Tanzania (Publishers Weekly).

Dr. Goodall watched young Gaia groom her mother, Gremlin, in 1998. Photo credit: Kristin J. Mosher/Jane Goodall Institute

Jane dreamed of a life spent working with animals, and when she was twenty-six years old, she ventured into the forests of Africa to observe chimpanzees in the wild. During her expeditions she braved many dangers and she got to know an amazing group of wild chimpanzees—intelligent animals whose lives, in work and play and family relationships, bear a surprising resemblance to our own. Through her work at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania and her own Roots and Shoots program she has become a tireless advocate for animals and the planet.

World-renowned primatologist, conservationist, and humanitarian Dr. Jane Goodall's account of her life among the wild chimpanzees of Gombe is one of the most enthralling stories of animal behavior ever written.

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 5d

#booksky highly recommended for #history #nonfiction #booklovers 📚💙

“Bold in conception, magisterial in its command of vast swathes of evidence and brimming with clever ideas, it is a formidable accomplishment.”

literaryreview.co.uk/hold-the-fro...

Or archive link
archive.is/f7DHa

The Great Exchange: Making the News in Early Modern Europe by Joad Raymond Wren. Allen Lane hardback, 596pp.

Here is an account of how news was recorded, transmitted, consumed and made sense of – one which ranges in time from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the advent of the mass-market newspaper in the early 19th century, and traverses the entire European continent, from London to Moscow. Comparative excurses take in places as far-flung as 16th-century Brazil and late Ming China (Beijing enjoyed a printed government gazette, we learn, as early as 1638).

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 6d

#booksky for #sciencefiction #feministfiction #womenwriters #booklovers
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New Scientist Book Club discusses: Why is Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed so popular 50 years on?
www.newscientist.com/video/249796...

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 6d

#booksky highly recommended for #history #nonfiction #biographies #bookprizes #booklovers 📚💙

Awards: Freedom, Independence and Choice: Finalists for the Prestigious 2025 Cundill History Prize Announced.

www.cundillprize.com/news/freedom...

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 6d

#booksky for #booklovers 📚💙 #TonyHarrison #poetry

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...

Classics with added Yorkshire class: tributes to Tony Harrison

Harrison’s poetry and plays made an electrifying connection with readers and audiences through his use of Leeds dialect, and his ear for rhyme. Writers remember his greatness

www.theguardian.com

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 6d

#booksky for #booklovers 📚💙 #TonyHarrison #poetry

www.theguardian.com/books/audio/...

Tony Harrison at 80 - books podcast

Vanessa Redgrave, Blake Morrison and Melvyn Bragg are among the stars of page and stage who celebrate one of the UK’s most versatile – and angry – poets

www.theguardian.com

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 6d

#booksky for #booklovers 📚💙 #TonyHarrison #poetry

www.theguardian.com/books/2013/f...

Tony Harrison's poem V is a timeless portrayal of working-class aspiration

Anthony Clavane: V reflects the social divisions that seem to have hardened 25 years after the poem's Channel 4 appearance caused outrage

www.theguardian.com

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 6d

#booksky for #booklovers 📚💙 #TonyHarrison #poetry

www.theguardian.com/books/2015/f...

Tony Harrison: still open for business

‘I hate being called a poet/dramatist/translator/director. Poet covers it all for me.’ Stephen Moss celebrates the work of Tony Harrison, winner of the 2015 David Cohen prize

www.theguardian.com

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 6d

#booksky for #booklovers 📚💙 #TonyHarrison #poetry

www.theguardian.com/books/booksb...

Tears in a tent: rediscovering Tony Harrison's poetry

Alison Flood: He's one of our best-loved political poets, and now that I've had a taste of his personal writing I'm desperate for more

www.theguardian.com

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 6d

#booksky highly recommended for #poetry 📚💙

Obituary: Tony Harrison, acclaimed, radical & award-winning poet & dramatist, dies aged 88. Known for his outspoken politics, the author was acclaimed for work not only in poetry but also theatre, opera, film, TV.

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...

“I want to do justice to my inwardness, my tenderness, my political rage” … Poet Tony Harrison in 2015. Photograph: James Drew Turner/The Guardian

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 6d

#booksky highly recommended for #popmusic #autobiographies #booklovers 📚💙

Cat on the Road to Findout by Yusuf/Cat Stevens – fame, faith and charity:
The enigmatic singer-songwriter on pop stardom, becoming a Muslim and returning to the stage decades later.

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 6d

#booksky highly recommended for #nonfiction #history #biographies 📚💙

Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2025 Shortlist Announced. Subjects inc. “Formidable female novelists, ghastly literary men, a faith-shaken poet, eunuchs, pirates, horny wolves, & international terrorists.”

bit.ly/4nIGB5a

A stack of the six books nominated for the 2025 Baillie Gifford prize shortlist. Photograph: Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction

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bobbygw @bobbygw.bsky.social · 6d

It does. I've already downloaded my copy.