Allison Hill on the difficulty and triumph of being a bookseller now. Love books? Read this: www.shelf-awareness.com/theshelf/202...

Well that was a mildly scary, very delayed takeoff from DC in heavy snow. 17 hours of frustrating travel to end up in the same place I started.

I have spent literally the entire day at IAD after my connecting flight to Winter Institute was cancelled. Now watching the snow as I wait for a flight home that's overbooked and already late. Any bets on where I sleep tonight?

Trump is giving tax cuts to Bezos but none to you.

Just a reminder as we look forward to this weekend... We're going to win. There's a ton of hard work ahead of us & a lot more really bad days, but we've won before, with less resources & more capable foes. So we will win again. Every reader of every age will have access to the books they need.

Wow.

Fuck these fucking thieves

Civil rights groups issue warning alert about #Florida dangers to would-be tourists. palmbeachpost.com/story/news/2...

between all the bookstores he put out of business and now the books section of the WaPo, you could make a case that Jeff Bezos is the greatest enemy of literacy there has ever been.

Someone please splain Netflix algorithm to me. Because I watched THE WITCHER, I should like this?

For now, support now ex-editor Ron Charles! open.substack.com/pub/roncharl...

If I hadn't cancelled WaPo months ago, I sure would now. So sorry for all the excellent reporters and editors suffering Bezos's greed. #books

WaPo also closing Books section and downsizing International and Metro sections

assholes. FLHSMV Announces Driver License Exams to Be Administered in English Only

It's hardly the most egregious failure of fact checking from the New York Times recently, but this outrageous assertion tells me that nobody who edited this story has actually read this book to a child. The entire book is narrated (beautifully) in the third person. 1/ www.nytimes.com/2025/12/14/s...

Anthropic's plan to "destructively scan every book in the world" [free WaPo link] wapo.st/4rjXAMQ

Fun fact: Your local bookstore is doing more to protect you and your neighbors than Amazon is.

NEW: DHS appropriations bill funding ICE passes 220-207 7 Democrats voted YES on the bill: - Jared Golden - Marie Gluesenkamp Perez - Henry Cuellar - Tom Suozzi - Laura Gillen - Don Davis - Vicente Gonzalez One Republican voted NO: Thomas Massie

Breaking news: New baby alpaca born a few hours ago. So we moved the moms & young ones to another prairie so the big boys—male llamas and horses—don’t play too rough with the baby. Please accept our timeline cleanse as you battle to preserve the 250-year old experiment of American Democracy.

Fenway, June 2023. RIP, Bobby.

The woman killed by ICE today was a poet. She won the 2020 Academy of American Poets, University & College Poetry Prize at Old Dominion University. (And this is Renee from confirmed socials- a photo of a different woman with red lipstick is going around, but that was a classmate.) /

The actor Michael Sheen used all his money to start a fake debt collecting business, buy 900 people in Wales's debt, and excused it. If Musk bought ALL $194 billion in medical debt in the U.S. and excused it in the same way, he'd still be the world's riches man by hundreds of billions of dollars.

“The last-minute christmas rush at the bookshop.” - my latest cartoon for @theguardian.com books

Authors, remember that you CAN insist on human translation for your foreign-language editions and have it written into your contracts. You can no longer just assume you're going to get a human to work on the book whose every word you wrote with intent.

I really hope the French translators get together and agree that the going rate for fixing AI translation is 1.5x the cost to do the translation in the first place.

A few years back, I couldn't figure out where the comma in "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" was supposed to go, so I hit myself in the face (and also did some singing). #Christmas #Writing #English #Grammar #Facepalm

The weed store was hoppin' this morning. Guess a lot of people need assistance dealing with holidays. Family Time would be a great name for a weed strain.

Marriage A-la-Mode, Plate V: The Death of the Earl, by Simon François Ravenet, after William Hogarth, 1745, 📸 by @evanvucci

I wish we lived in a land where if journalists heard the president call one of their colleges "piggy" or suggest another of their colleagues, who was butchered for what he wrote, in some way had it coming, they would close their laptops, leave as soon as possible, and ask to be reassigned.

When DHS dared to call its anti-immigrant racial profiling weekend in Charlotte, North Carolina, “Operation Charlotte’s Web,” I knew I was going to have to write about it. Tonight, at Law Dork, here it is: www.lawdork.com/p/gregory-bo...

There’s another wave of author impersonators offering consultations/mentoring for a price. (I got one from “Claire Keegan” telling me I’m very promising!) I’m sure you are great, but I didn’t email to tell you how swell you are. Here’s info on book scams: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/prh-fraud/

clearly I am an outlier on this issue but i LOVE standard time. Bright sun to bathe my eyeballs early in the morning and more time to hunker by the glowing TV screen in the dark dark evening.

Amazon is helping fund a $300 million build of a ballroom for the White House. Independent bookstores are donating to food banks and organizations that help with food insecurity. They are not the same.

❤️ @citylightsbooks.bsky.social

BREAKING: Letitia James has announced a Government portal for Videos and images of ICE Agents who may have committed crimes. Please Use it and SHARE! ag.ny.gov/federal-acti...

Column: A dispatch from Pete Hegseth to the commander in chief on the battle for a #Florida beach community. "The battle goes poorly. I fear we will not reach Mar-a-Lago and its precious cache of bathroom file cabinets by sunrise." www.sun-sentinel.com/2025/10/03/a...

Been offline for a bit, did that rapture thing happen?

We’re told by each MAGA factotum To mourn Charlie Kirk, but not quote him. Once a patriot’s dead, If you note what he said You’re as bad as the bastard who smote him.

"In spite of ourselves We'll end up a'sittin' on a rainbow Against all odds Honey, we're the big door prize" John Prine's good for what ails you. So are bookstores. John Prine playing in a bookstore? Couldn't be better.

Alligator Alcatraz says open, but Ron has a little problem... "The state can either pass up federal reimbursement for hundreds of millions of dollars spent to build and operate the facility, or take the money and face an environmental review, which would risk halting the center’s operations."

Looking for a covid vax in South Florida? 😷 Selected CVS Minute Clinics have them; no prescrip needed for seniors. Not a senior but have certain health conditions they will give it but will charge your insurance. (per the PA who gave mine today) Publix, Walmart, Walgreens are not giving them yet,

A friend writes (from a bus on the way to a Free DC protest):

A festive window display for the weekend 🎉

Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars. OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.

The subtlety

Dearest Martha, The National Guard stand solemn watch at the Krispy Kreme tonight. I cannot tell if they defend the people from the donuts, or the donuts from the people. Powdered sugar hangs in the air like cannon smoke. Jensen took a hot coffee to the face, he may never recover. Yours in glaze,

Here’s the link to file claims in the Anthropic case: www.lieffcabraser.com/anthropic-au...