@codexmachina.bsky.social
Join Natalia, Bethany, and Laura as they delve into the world of #publishing, #bookhistory, and #books. Available wherever you listen. Latest blog: https://strangelandbooks.com/2025/09/27/banned-and-challenged-books-discussions/
Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg in 1959 – Photo by John Cohen
On This Day in History: October 7, 1955
Allen Ginsberg gave the first public reading of “Howl” at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. Kenneth Rexroth emceed while Jack Kerouac worked the crowd with a wine jug and shouts of encouragement. The reading helped ignite the Beat scene.
🎙️Coming soon, just in time for Banned Books Week (October 5-11) we have a series of episodes about book bans/challenges and censorship. Our next episode will be a Strange Land Book Club episode about Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret by Judy Blume. 💪
22.09.2025 17:30 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 1
In our fourth Strange Land Books episode, we discuss the Ted Chiang short story "Tower of Babylon". Link is for Apple podcasts, but available wherever you listen to podcasts.
19.09.2025 14:37 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 1Great thread about the mistakes that academic orgs + institutions make on AI. They centre AI because they think it is inevitable. This is a betrayal of their mission to provide critical skills. We should think what we want to achieve & then look for tools, not assume everything is a nail. #resistAI
05.08.2025 19:03 — 👍 33 🔁 10 💬 1 📌 0
A picture of the cover of the “International Professional Program” of the Thessaloniki Book Fair in a sepia tone. The program shows a globe hanger with a stack of books instead of the earth. There are doodles of flowers all over the program. Transcribed over the program is the text in white “Thessaloniki Book Fair 2025”
We’ve been remiss in posting about our latest episodes as they come out, so it’s time to catch up. In our 7th episode, join us as Bethany and Laura discuss their experiences at the Thessaloniki Book Fair.
05.08.2025 15:59 — 👍 2 🔁 2 💬 2 📌 0Do you dog-ear or think that’s too…. ruff on your #books?
view.nl.npr.org/?qs=...
On the psychology & cultural history of our attitudes toward the physical book. NB features fellow @sharpweb.org member & friend Ian Gadd @iangadd.bsky.social
The Booker Prize 2025 longlist is almost here. Pull up a seat.
See you on Tuesday 29 July, 2pm BST.
For #CoffeeWithACodex on July 31, @leoba.bsky.social will bring out LJS 188 and LJS 191, astronomical texts in Middle English, in two portions of an original manuscript that is now in four parts. The original manuscript was written in England circa 1496.
Register here: https://bit.ly/40kD6sd
One does not simply walk past a bookshop.
Good morning. We are open. 📖☕️
27.07.2025 09:33 — 👍 257 🔁 28 💬 6 📌 4A little counterpoint here, hope you don’t mind :) Chinese movable type printing started to take off in the 19th century, and it was due to a mix of factors.
1. There was the growing need for bilingual dictionaries, especially ones mixing Chinese with Latin letters.
Slide with title Digital Humanities for a World Unmade, blue background with stylized images of a Dutch windmill, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Hagia Sofia, Big Ben, and the Singaporean lion.
Here's a write-up of my keynote from #DH2025, since academic publishing is slow and this was written for right now. roopikarisam.com/talks-cat/dh...
19.07.2025 13:42 — 👍 225 🔁 97 💬 12 📌 12
My slides on The Paradoxes of Open Data in Libraries, Archives and Museums doi.org/10.5281/zeno... from our #DH2025 panel on Openness in GLAM: Analysing, Reflecting, and Discussing Global Case Studies
Thanks again to all the speakers for your fantastic contributions! And the audience for questions
A white mug with the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction logo holds a spray of lavender next to a stack of the eight books shortlisted for this year's prize: North Continent Ribbon by Ursula Whitcher Remember You Will Die by Eden Robins The City in Glass by Nghi Vo Archangels of Funk by Andrea Hairston The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera The West Passage by Jared Pechaček Blackheart Man by Nalo Hopkinson
We're thrilled to present the shortlist for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction:
18.06.2025 15:01 — 👍 3878 🔁 689 💬 61 📌 124
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC NEW SERIES Book History for the Future SERIES EDITORS: Lisa Gitelman, New York University, USA Tom Mole, Durham University, UK Sarah Werner, Independent Researcher, USA Book History for the Future aims to define the cutting edge for a new generation of book historians, as book history enters a new chapter of its evolution. Books sit at a densely trafficked intersection of social relations, status negotiations, emotional investments, material possibilities, desires, aspirations, and dreams. They require an intellectual approach grounded in attention to physical artefacts and material conditions while also engaged in theoretical reflection, attentive to historical contexts while attuned to contemporary resonances. This series publishes books that eschew academic parochialism in favour of adventurous engagements with new theoretical developments, innovative methodologies, digital tools, and global contexts.
Exciting news, Bluesky! I’m editing a new book series for Bloomsbury with Tom Mole and Lisa Gitelman: Book History for the Future! Do you focus on material textual artifacts and innovative methodologies? We’re actively soliciting proposals, so give us a shout! www.bloomsbury.com/media/cecjzl...
08.07.2025 21:46 — 👍 229 🔁 105 💬 12 📌 9Back to the live-posting! @owenmonroe.bsky.social is training an AI model to find scientific articles in Victorian political periodicals based on the half-page chunks of the *Penny Magazines* he has labelled as being about science
#SHARP2025 #BookHistory
Printers’ devices on the doors of Rush Rhees Library ✨ #SHARP2025
09.07.2025 19:56 — 👍 30 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
It's a special week at @strangehorizons.bsky.social Reviews: we're putting the focus on small US presses publishing speculative fiction in translation.
We have five reviews this week *and* the return of our podcast, Critical Friends. The goal: to note the amazing work done by these houses.
glowing sign that says thank you booksellers for making lucky day an indie next pick. las vegas sunset is in the background
such an honor to announce that lucky day has been named an august INDIE NEXT pick. this is decided by independent booksellers who pluck beautiful chords across timelines with their recommendations in such an important way. thank you buckaroos
04.07.2025 14:01 — 👍 122 🔁 14 💬 1 📌 0It is really disheartening seeing the same things happening in the US happening in the UK.
04.07.2025 13:17 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
On Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podcast Addict, YouTube and pretty much wherever you listen to podcasts.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...
From Merlin to mansions…the CEXM crew discusses Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier on the latest installment of Strange Land Book Club. In Making Book History, we discuss the discovery of a fragment of the Suite Vulgate du Merlin in the binding of a 16th century archival registry. #booksky #bookhistory
04.07.2025 13:10 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
ICYMI: What Unbound’s demise has shown, to a quite alarming degree, is how little tangible, active advocacy is available to authors in this situation, say the authors affected by the collapse of Unbound in our recent Comment piece 👇 #BookSky
24.06.2025 18:22 — 👍 7 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0
Screenshot of a story on the CILIP Scotland Instagram account, resharing a post which has a quote from Chuck Tingle on it, saying "libraries are so cool what the heck"
When your professional body quotes the incomparable @chucktingle.bsky.social *beams with pride*
24.06.2025 19:54 — 👍 256 🔁 30 💬 2 📌 0
We're THRILLED to announce we're partnering with @possumcreekgames.com and @stevejacksongames.bsky.social for a mini-season of Last Train to Bremen!
Our quartet of doomed musicians is:
@brianflaherty.bsky.social
@moreblueberries.bsky.social
@shenuque.bsky.social
@strautmaskreplica.bsky.social
Emotional rive Strive l Always In All Ways At All Times — Always For Intensity Cold or Hot Hard or Soft Gut - Wrenching or Deeply Stilling Utter_ Intensity AUGUST I-UNDAY * Lut wick場日 :10 229 Ten tages 123 The Time //1 DNESDAY 13 Keep Your Word Tell stories Filled with Facts. Make People Touch and Taste and KNOW. Make People FEEL! Fee L
Happy birthday to the prophetess Octavia Butler. We live in the times she foretold. From her notebooks.
22.06.2025 22:48 — 👍 2424 🔁 672 💬 20 📌 27Hello, a little reminder that @jenniegouck.bsky.social and I wrote a long CFP for a conference we're organising, online, next February. Do you have thoughts about book banning and censorship in children's and YA literature? Send 'em in!
23.06.2025 09:43 — 👍 21 🔁 21 💬 2 📌 2Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.
19.06.2025 11:21 — 👍 29259 🔁 8575 💬 563 📌 694🤮🤬
21.06.2025 10:40 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
