#lithub — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #lithub, aggregated by home.social.
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America’s First War on Drugs Was Also a War on Jazz #LitHub #books #jazz https://lithub.com/americas-first-war-on-drugs-was-also-a-war-on-jazz/
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America’s First War on Drugs Was Also a War on Jazz #LitHub #books #jazz https://lithub.com/americas-first-war-on-drugs-was-also-a-war-on-jazz/
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AI paranoia is a symptom of a larger problem: a corporate culture that values quantity over quality.
https://lithub.com/its-getting-harder-to-spot-ai-in-contemporary-publishing-and-thats-very-very-bad/
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AI paranoia is a symptom of a larger problem: a corporate culture that values quantity over quality.
https://lithub.com/its-getting-harder-to-spot-ai-in-contemporary-publishing-and-thats-very-very-bad/
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I have never understood why so many apps exist for websites but Cory Doctorow explains that the reason is to avoid regulation:
https://lithub.com/how-american-tech-cartels-use-apps-to-break-the-law/
#lithub #literaryhub #corydoctorow #tech #technology #regulation #monopoly #trust #antitrust #smartphones #cartels #oligarchy #scams
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I have never understood why so many apps exist for websites but Cory Doctorow explains that the reason is to avoid regulation:
https://lithub.com/how-american-tech-cartels-use-apps-to-break-the-law/
#lithub #literaryhub #corydoctorow #tech #technology #regulation #monopoly #trust #antitrust #smartphones #cartels #oligarchy #scams
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📚 Ah, another #groundbreaking revelation: #trauma and #drugs are linked! Who would've thought? 🤯 Lit Hub has achieved the impossible—turning a basic #psychology fact into a #pretentious novella full of words that say a lot but mean nothing. 🚀
https://lithub.com/the-link-between-trauma-drug-use-and-our-search-to-feel-better/ #LitHub #revelation #HackerNews #ngated -
📚 Ah, another #groundbreaking revelation: #trauma and #drugs are linked! Who would've thought? 🤯 Lit Hub has achieved the impossible—turning a basic #psychology fact into a #pretentious novella full of words that say a lot but mean nothing. 🚀
https://lithub.com/the-link-between-trauma-drug-use-and-our-search-to-feel-better/ #LitHub #revelation #HackerNews #ngated -
How To Raise a Reader in an Age of Digital Distraction
How To Raise a Reader in an Age of Digital Distraction
Jessica Ewing on the Ways Parents Can Promote Thoughtful Technology Use and Sustainable Reading Habits
By Jessica Ewing, September 15, 2025
From article…People make certain assumptions about you when you’re the CEO of a children’s book company. Some assume I must have spent my childhood summers in a hammock reading Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, or winters taking turns reading Little Women by the fire with my sisters. The reality is far more complicated, quite a bit less wholesome, and probably more familiar to most parents reading this.
The truth is I spent a good chunk of my childhood rotating between three game consoles—a Sega Genesis, a Gameboy, and a multitude of PC games, some featuring nudity and/or violence. During the school year, I had the entire TGIF television lineup memorized (and still do). My idea of a middle grade novel was Carrie, which I conveniently “borrowed” from my brother’s vast Stephen King collection.
That isn’t to say I didn’t grow up with books and even age-appropriate ones—just that I don’t recall my parents being particularly concerned about screen time. There was no cultural panic about technology rotting my brain. We weren’t unusual in this regard. Screens were alive and well in my childhood, just as they are today.
The real challenge isn’t technology itself, but how technology has evolved to actively compete with the very cognitive processes that reading requires.
The difference wasn’t the presence of technology in our lives; it was the nature of our relationship with it.
When I fired up Kings Quest VI, I committed. I guided Alexander through the Land of Green Isles, memorized the magic map, and worked my ass off to solve the puzzles at the Cliffs of Logic. The game didn’t ping me with notifications every few minutes. It didn’t track my behavior to sell me anything. It didn’t fragment my attention into bite-sized dopamine hits designed by teams of psychologists to maximize engagement. It was, in its own way, long-form content that demanded sustained focus—not so different from the mental muscles required for reading.
This distinction matters more than we might think, especially for those of us trying to raise readers in 2025. It’s easy to blame screens wholesale for declining literacy rates, but I find that both reductive and unhelpful. The real challenge isn’t technology itself, but how technology has evolved to actively compete with the very cognitive processes that reading requires.
The Unnatural Act of Reading
Here’s something that might surprise you: reading isn’t natural. Unlike speaking, which humans develop organically, reading is an acquired skill that literally rewires the brain. Neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, whose research has fundamentally shaped my understanding of how children develop as readers, describes reading as “an unnatural act” that requires us to connect disparate neural pathways in ways evolution never intended.Wolf’s work reveals something remarkable about the reading brain. When we read, we’re essentially performing a complex neural symphony. Our brains must coordinate visual processing, language comprehension, memory systems, and abstract thinking—all in milliseconds. This isn’t something that happens automatically. It’s built through practice, repetition, and what Wolf calls “deep reading circuits.”
Children who become strong readers develop these circuits through thousands of hours of focused attention on text. Their brains learn to process written language with increasing fluency until the act becomes as natural as breathing. But here’s the crucial part: these circuits are fragile, especially in the early years. They require sustained, focused attention to develop properly.
This is where our modern digital landscape becomes genuinely problematic. Not because screens are inherently evil, but because many of today’s digital experiences are specifically designed to prevent such sustained attention.
When Screens Turned Predatory
The screens of my childhood were fundamentally different than what our children encounter today. When I played Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego, the game wanted me to stay engaged, certainly, but it didn’t have access to sophisticated behavioral data about what kept me playing. It couldn’t A/B test different reward schedules or generate feedback loops from my friends with every action I took. Carmen didn’t appear suddenly with a sponsored post that preyed on my insecurities and tried to sell me teeth whitening gel.Today’s digital experiences are built on what tech insiders call “persuasive design”—interfaces deliberately crafted to maximize time on screen through intermittent variable rewards, social validation loops, and carefully calibrated frustration. These aren’t accidents. They’re the result of millions of dollars in research into human psychology and memory, designed specifically to capture (and fragment) attention.
The average child now receives their first smartphone around age 10 and spends over seven hours a day on screens. But far more troubling than the raw hours is how this time is spent: in short bursts, rapidly switching between apps, constantly responding to notifications and alerts.
This creates what researchers call “continuous partial attention”—a state where we’re always monitoring multiple streams of information but never fully focused on any single task. It’s the cognitive equivalent of trying to build muscles by switching between machines every few seconds before we can get in a single quality set.
And yet, here’s what gives me hope in the data: not all children are struggling. While average reading scores have indeed declined, the top-performing readers are actually doing better than ever before. This suggests that the challenge isn’t insurmountable—some families and schools are successfully navigating this landscape. The question is: what are they doing differently?
Continue/Read Original Article: https://lithub.com/how-to-raise-a-reader-in-an-age-of-digital-distraction/
#2025 #America #Books #Children #DigitalAge #Education #Games #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #LitHub #Opinion #Parents #Reader #Reading #Science #Technology #UnitedStates
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"Ours is a dark and chaotic world. We are all in need of lights to follow. On that island I felt I had met someone who had made a life on her own terms."
No small thing to achieve in life. No small thing. A beautiful read about one of my favourite places in the world.
https://lithub.com/last-outposts-rediscovering-hope-for-humanity-on-norways-remote-northern-coast/
#LongReads #Norway #LitHub -
"Ours is a dark and chaotic world. We are all in need of lights to follow. On that island I felt I had met someone who had made a life on her own terms."
No small thing to achieve in life. No small thing. A beautiful read about one of my favourite places in the world.
https://lithub.com/last-outposts-rediscovering-hope-for-humanity-on-norways-remote-northern-coast/
#LongReads #Norway #LitHub -
"The idea that the need for language and translation will be eradicated with immediate machine equivalencies is as ridiculous as the idea that our differences as a species will be similarly eradicated. Language is just the symptom, not the cause, it is our differences made manifest. In the end, these differences cannot be eradicated, they cannot be killed, or flattened, or simplified, or ignored, or hacked, only translated. And lucky for you, we are still here to do that."
https://lithub.com/the-future-will-be-translated-a-manifesto-in-three-lies/
#LitHub #Translation #LiteratureInTranslation #TranslatorLife
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"...woe betide the man or woman who runs to Amazon for a copy of The Great Gatsby. The listings are a great dumpster fire of indiscrimination, where wretched independently published copies are given prime billing next to, and sometimes above, the classic Scribner version." #books #literature #publishing #LitHub #fiction
https://airmail.news/issues/2025-4-5/one-hundred-years-of-gatsby -
From yesterday's #LitHub article about the banning of EricCarle's Draw Me A Star.
“Hitler dictated not only politics and everything, he also dictated art,” he told NPR in 2011.
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From yesterday's #LitHub article about the banning of EricCarle's Draw Me A Star.
“Hitler dictated not only politics and everything, he also dictated art,” he told NPR in 2011.
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From yesterday's #LitHub article about the banning of EricCarle's Draw Me A Star.
“Hitler dictated not only politics and everything, he also dictated art,” he told NPR in 2011.
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just hearing to this weeks #LithubPodcast i.e. why it is bad for authors to link back to their books in #amazon „now is the time when our decisions matter … the best time to leave amazon“ #book #lithub #podcast
https://lithub.com/this-week-on-the-lit-hub-podcast-amazon-bookstores-and-villains/
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Some #Design #Inspiration in this collection of bygone 📖 #Magazine covers from #LitHub. ⤵️
https://lithub.com/feast-your-eyes-on-these-beautiful-bygone-magazine-covers/
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Wow! What a great literary find this is. Thanks, #LitHub
#bookstodon #LiteraryRoadTrip #LiteraryTravel #readingA Literary Road Trip Across America
https://lithub.com/a-literary-road-trip-across-america/ -
What #book are you especially glad to see on #LitHub's list? For me, it's #Remainder by #TomMcCarthy.
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What #book are you especially glad to see on #LitHub's list? For me, it's #Remainder by #TomMcCarthy.
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What #book are you especially glad to see on #LitHub's list? For me, it's #Remainder by #TomMcCarthy.
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"I Stand With Penguins!"
yasaman posted "How to Comment on Social Media" by Rebecca Solnit and mefites are offering their cheeky addendums.
https://www.metafilter.com/202363/How-to-Comment-on-Social-Media-by-Rebecca-Solnit
#commenting #lithub #RebeccaSolnit #satire #SocialMedia #funny
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"I Stand With Penguins!"
yasaman posted "How to Comment on Social Media" by Rebecca Solnit and mefites are offering their cheeky addendums.
https://www.metafilter.com/202363/How-to-Comment-on-Social-Media-by-Rebecca-Solnit
#commenting #lithub #RebeccaSolnit #satire #SocialMedia #funny
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The World Poetry Conference that Jim Harrison coordinated was $50k over budget in 1968–good thing he’d already decided he was leaving!
Nick Ripatrazone on the case for #LitHub:
https://lithub.com/literary-fight-club-on-the-great-poets-brawl-of-68/ -
@hannu_ikonen I don’t have specific suggestions, but a great resource for finding books and authors is CrimeReads. It’s free to subscribe and highlights lots of different mystery, suspense, true crime, etc. books and authors in daily and weekly newsletter-type emails.
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@hannu_ikonen I don’t have specific suggestions, but a great resource for finding books and authors is CrimeReads. It’s free to subscribe and highlights lots of different mystery, suspense, true crime, etc. books and authors in daily and weekly newsletter-type emails.
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Sun Ra and Henry Dumas, Recorded in Conversation
https://lithub.com/disappearing-archives-sun-ra-and-henry-dumas-recorded-in-conversation/
> There are moments that must not go missing in orbit, interactions that must vibrate beyond our capacity to comprehend them intellectually, rhythms that we need in the universe to help us cohere as a culture, moments that we must immortalize without knowing why.
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Sun Ra and Henry Dumas, Recorded in Conversation
https://lithub.com/disappearing-archives-sun-ra-and-henry-dumas-recorded-in-conversation/
> There are moments that must not go missing in orbit, interactions that must vibrate beyond our capacity to comprehend them intellectually, rhythms that we need in the universe to help us cohere as a culture, moments that we must immortalize without knowing why.
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The “trauma” of publishing a novel by Megan Nolan
I once found it risible to hear authors describe the publication process as “traumatising”. Then my first novel came out, and I went crazy.
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The “trauma” of publishing a novel by Megan Nolan
I once found it risible to hear authors describe the publication process as “traumatising”. Then my first novel came out, and I went crazy.
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One of our previous #BowieBookClub picks, #InColdBlood by #TrumanCapote popped up today on #LitHub
@bookstodon"Truman Capote became the “it” author of his generation after publishing In Cold Blood. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing."
https://lithub.com/how-truman-capote-was-destroyed-by-his-own-masterpiece
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Email heading from LitHub---"Lit Hub Weekly: Going Gray, Grieving Pets, and Tracing the Origins of 'Kafkaesque'"
Subscribe and stay up on the haps.
https://link.lithub.com/view/602ea758180f243d6532cb0ej28uq.jpk/ed2499d8
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Email heading from LitHub---"Lit Hub Weekly: Going Gray, Grieving Pets, and Tracing the Origins of 'Kafkaesque'"
Subscribe and stay up on the haps.
https://link.lithub.com/view/602ea758180f243d6532cb0ej28uq.jpk/ed2499d8
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My back log on the #Lithub Most Anticipated List is probably down to 2019, but anyways: What to read in the second half of 2023. Some really interesting sounding titles, some absolute nonstarters with me. AND: There will be #BarbraStreisand #Memoirs
#books #reading
https://lithub.com/lit-hubs-most-anticipated-books-of-2023-part-two/5/?single=true -
My back log on the #Lithub Most Anticipated List is probably down to 2019, but anyways: What to read in the second half of 2023. Some really interesting sounding titles, some absolute nonstarters with me. AND: There will be #BarbraStreisand #Memoirs
#books #reading
https://lithub.com/lit-hubs-most-anticipated-books-of-2023-part-two/5/?single=true -
YES! Local #library has #TheCharioteer by #MaryRenault. It's an early #LGBTQ book about “A WWII soldier embarks on affairs with two very different men in a landmark novel that "transcends categorizations" (The Telegraph)." #CatSebastian wrote an article about it for #LitHub (https://lithub.com/the-lesser-known-novel-of-the-1950s-that-presaged-queer-liberation/). The book was written in 1953 which was radical at the time. As Sebastian points out, funny how a book in 1953 seems more accepted than in 2023. Can't wait to read it! #AmReading
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YES! Local #library has #TheCharioteer by #MaryRenault. It's an early #LGBTQ book about “A WWII soldier embarks on affairs with two very different men in a landmark novel that "transcends categorizations" (The Telegraph)." #CatSebastian wrote an article about it for #LitHub (https://lithub.com/the-lesser-known-novel-of-the-1950s-that-presaged-queer-liberation/). The book was written in 1953 which was radical at the time. As Sebastian points out, funny how a book in 1953 seems more accepted than in 2023. Can't wait to read it! #AmReading
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@jhupress is having a sale through June 6. The 30% off discount code is HMOR23, and if you spend $50 or more you get free shipping. The #memoir I wrote with #neurologist #Dr.BruceMiller -- #FindingTheRightWords: A Story of Literature, Grief, and the Brain -- is included in the sale. If you decide to read it, I hope you find our words helpful. Here's a link to the #book website. https://weinsteinandmiller.com #bookstodon, #narrativemedicine, #lithub, #EndAlz
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@jhupress is having a sale through June 6. The 30% off discount code is HMOR23, and if you spend $50 or more you get free shipping. The #memoir I wrote with #neurologist #Dr.BruceMiller -- #FindingTheRightWords: A Story of Literature, Grief, and the Brain -- is included in the sale. If you decide to read it, I hope you find our words helpful. Here's a link to the #book website. https://weinsteinandmiller.com #bookstodon, #narrativemedicine, #lithub, #EndAlz
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@jhupress is having a sale through June 6. The 30% off discount code is HMOR23, and if you spend $50 or more you get free shipping. The #memoir I wrote with #neurologist #Dr.BruceMiller -- #FindingTheRightWords: A Story of Literature, Grief, and the Brain -- is included in the sale. If you decide to read it, I hope you find our words helpful. Here's a link to the #book website. https://weinsteinandmiller.com #bookstodon, #narrativemedicine, #lithub, #EndAlz
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"Language evolution...loves a mouth that isn’t afraid to let it all hang out. And snooty talkers tend to be a bit too linguistically uptight."
How Lower-Class Innovation, Like, Changes the Langwage
https://lithub.com/how-lower-class-innovation-like-changes-the-langwage/
#Language #WritingTips by Valerie M. Fridland, Ph.D. via #LitHub -
"Language evolution...loves a mouth that isn’t afraid to let it all hang out. And snooty talkers tend to be a bit too linguistically uptight."
How Lower-Class Innovation, Like, Changes the Langwage
https://lithub.com/how-lower-class-innovation-like-changes-the-langwage/
#Language #WritingTips by Valerie M. Fridland, Ph.D. via #LitHub -
Extremely moving and insightful piece from Italian novelist #AndreaBajani: How Mussolini's Legacy Lives on in Both the Public and Private Spheres via #lithub https://lithub.com/how-mussolinis-legacy-lives-on-in-both-the-public-and-private-spheres/
#italy #fascism #family #patriotism -
Here's something I wrote about THE EXPANSE and human bodies.
It's also a little bit about SPLENDID ANATOMIES.
#TheExpanse #SpaceTV #Battlestar #CarrieFisher #LitHub #WritingCommunity #Books #FilmandTV #BodilyAutonomy #PublicHealth
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I've been reading Joan #Didion's first book, the novel Run River. It reminded me how much I enjoyed this #essay by Michelle Chihara in #Lithub. Good on #myth, #California, and #writing.
https://lithub.com/in-renouncing-the-myths-of-old-california-did-joan-didion-deflect-responsibility/
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CW: Bob Dylan book
Do you need this book?
No, not really.
But if you love Bob Dylan, you will get it anyway.
Lovely, critical review
#BobDylan #LitHub(Just bought the book)
https://lithub.com/someone-has-to-say-it-bob-dylans-new-book-would-have-been-better-as-a-podcast/
