- I agree with Jennifer Croft, who argues that translators should be named on book covers. (The Guardian)
- Pesha Magid profiles Daud Salim, the first bookseller to reopen in Mosul. (Atlas Obscura)
- Nikko DeMarco takes a look at some fascinating science about romance novels. (Book Riot)
- Molly Templeton recommends that readers who feel like they’re in a reading slump should be kind to themselves. (Tor Blog)
- Dara Horn reflects on Shylock and the time she watched The Merchant of Venice with her son. (LitHub)
- Susanne Fowler takes us to the European Fine Art Fair to show us the pretty books. (New York Times)
- Daniel A. Gross explains the business of library ebooks…and why the wait lines for new books are so long. (New Yorker)
- Germain Lussier writes in praise of The House of Leaves, the weirdest book I ever tried to read. (Gizmodo)
- Laura Sackton has bookish rituals that I utterly adore. (Book Riot)
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A Bookish Type 
You always find such interesting and opportune articles on books! I never really noticed before that translators are often left off book covers- I know I have seen quite a few noted there. I always include the translator’s name when I write a post about a book that has one. I found the piece on romance books interesting, especially because the last book I read featured a young woman who quoted bits from romance books in letters to a man who was interested in her, and then didn’t quite understand the response she got! (It amused me). Yeah, I had a reading slump at the start of the pandemic too. Felt like it lasted months. Switching genres- my usual cure- didn’t work. I ended up reading a stack of magazines, I could keep focus for the brief articles. The one on libraries and e-books was interesting. I read stuff on OverDrive through my library for the first time this year.
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There are only a few translators I know about, but I wish I knew more. The only ones I can think of off-hand—Constance Garrett and the team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky—I only know about because there is some debate about who is the best translator of the Russian classics. (Garrett is accused of taking liberties while Pevear and Volokhonsky have been criticized for being so “faithful” to the original Russian that they dry out the prose.) Putting translator names front and center not only helps acknowledge the hard work of translators, but it also helps us readers pick and choose among translations.
And I totally get what you said about reading slumps! I’ve read so many online essays and Reddit posts since the pandemic began instead of spending those hours reading novels like I used to. I just lost my ability to concentrate on long prose for a while. I can feel my sort-of-slump lightning now that I’m starting to get on top of my NetGalley and Edelweiss read & review lists. The idea of mixing in books I don’t have to review (but probably will) has helped me get more jazzed about reading again.
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