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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
Say Goodbye to This Kindle Feature
The next time someone laughs at me for holding onto my Columbo: The Complete Series DVD set, I’ll loan them my copy of Just One More Thing and point them to this article about Amazon retiring a feature that allows Kindle users to download purchased books to their computers. While the feature is mainly useful for users who can’t transfer straight to their device via WiFi, it’s also another way to hold onto your purchased copy in case Amazon slides in and removes or modifies the title, which has happened. Not to get too Nineteen Eighty-Four, copies of which Amazon removed in 2009, but the point The Verge‘s Andrew Liszewski made here isn’t random: “It’s a reminder that you don’t actually own much of the digital content you consume, and without the ability to back up copies of ebooks, you could lose them entirely if they’re banned and removed.” The download option will be gone starting February 26th, but you can find instructions for how to access the feature between now and then in the article.
The Cast of The Odyssey Adaptation is Woah
I know Matt Damon gets first billing as Odysseus, but I’ll be watching Christopher Nolan’s adaptation because of the pure star power encapsulated by Zendaya and Lupita Nyong’o. Other big names in The Odyssey cast announcement (that I recognize) are Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, and John Leguizamo. Like…who isn’t going to be in this movie? Nolan would attract the kind of talent fit for Homer’s epic poem, and this is bound to be a big summer box office hit with a July 17th release–2026, that is, so you have plenty of time to read up on Odysseus’s journey and show up ready to “in this essay I will” at the post-movie Cheesecake Factory gathering. Coming off the tails of Barbenheimer, I want to know if Nolan is hoping or dare I say planning the release of The Odyssey around some other summer release poised to be the action epic’s strange bedfellow and portmanteau. I’m sure more money than I can wrap my head around will be spent on this movie, but you can’t buy that kind of publicity.
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Get to Know StoryGraph’s Creator and Founder
OK. Nadia Odunayo is just too cool for school. Odunayo is the software engineer and book lover behind StoryGraph, which I know has many fans among Book Riot’s writers and readers, in addition to anyone looking for a robust Goodreads alternative. Back when FaceBook was more than a platform you begrudgingly stuck with because your Buy Nothing group always came up clutch, some of our most commented-on posts were Goodreads-focused and most of the comments were complaints about said platform. Many were wary and ready to jump ship after it got bought by Amazon, and in walked StoryGraph, created almost on a whim by Odunayo. You can read more about its creation, success, and creator (who is still so hands-on with the platform!), and if you’re worried it too will be gobbled up by Amazon, take comfort:
“That’s not something we’re interested in,” says Odunayo. “We had zero investment in The StoryGraph. It’s a completely bootstrapped company. Anything can happen in life, obviously, but right now we’re happy and we’re enjoying it. We see The StoryGraph as our life’s work.
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