News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, and other cool stuff
Book News
- Lost portrait of Charles Dickens to be displayed at writer’s former home (The Guardian)
- Missing six lines from Jane Austen letter discovered after 200 years, and are revealed to be about laundry (The Telegraph)
- Revealed: AmazonSmile helps fund anti-vaccine groups (The Guardian) AmazonSmile is the company’s automatic charity donation program. A customer signs up for AmazonSmile and chooses one charity (which has already registered with the company, or is listed with GuideStar) to receive “0.5% of the purchase price of eligible products.” Amazon has not barred charitable organizations from the program as long as they met the eligibility requirements and do not “engage in, support, encourage, or promote intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence, money laundering, or other illegal activities.” To be fair, a number of organizations with much more laudable missions also receive AmazonSmile donations. Some are large and well-known, others are small. For the latter in particular, every penny helps, and AmazonSmile let supporters to help financially (in a small way) without any additional impact on their own pocket. I can’t fault the program as a whole, but I do feel concerned that Amazon isn’t vetting eligible organizations better, particularly in light of growing anti-vax sentiment and the resulting outbreaks of preventable and potentially dangerous diseases.
- On a related note, Amazon pulls books offering dangerous ‘cures’ for autism (The Guardian)
Worth Reading/Viewing
- What no one tells you about #KonMari and book regret (Guiltless Reading blog)
- J.K. Rowling found out her books helped save this baby’s life. Her response was magic. (Upworthy) This is a lot more about the parents and the child; even if Rowling hadn’t been involved, it’s a moving story.
Awesome Lists
- What will you be reading next year? London book fair’s star attractions (The Guardian)
- The 50 Best One-Star Amazon Reviews of Wuthering Heights (LitHub)
Really Cool / Just for Fun
That’s it for this week!
Nicole @ BookWyrmKnits
Yeah, it can be difficult getting rid of too many books, or the wrong books, all because you’re in a purging mindset. I tend to cull my books in two steps: off the bookshelf and into a purge pile first. Then later I go through the pile, and if I still don’t want to keep the book, I can let it go without (too much) worry. However, it’s taken me several purges-with-regret to get to this stage.
I use AmazonSmile to support NaNoWriMo. I didn’t ever think that Amazon might not have a good system for vetting their charities, though.
Nicole @ BookWyrmKnits recently posted…Goodreads TBR Declutter #14
Lark_Bookwyrm
That’s a great way to purge your books. I often do it that way myself, but mostly because I put them in the box, and then it sits there in the basement until one of us remembers to take it to the library to donate, or to the used bookstore to sell (depending on the box.) Perhaps I’ll be a little more intentional about it in the future.
I didn’t think of using AmazonSmile for NaNoWriMo! Good idea. I wonder if AO3 is on there, too.