Reading about the reading life: June 9, 2019 edition

Welcome to another edition of "Reading about the reading life" here at The Itinerant Librarian. This is where I collect stories about reading and the reading life. Basically, these are items related to reading, maybe writing and literacy, that I find interesting and think my four readers might find interesting as well with a little commentary. As with other features I do on this blog, I do it when I have time or feel like it. Comments are always welcome (within reason).

I have a few items of interest this week. Let's have a look:

•  Over in London, another independent bookstore is closing. Reason given? Amazon in large part. Via The Guardian. I often have mixed feelings about stories like this. If you live in an area with good independent stores, I think you should try at least to support them as much as possible (as well as shop local as much as you can). However, when you live in some deity forsaken place, and you want certain things, Amazon is about your only option to get said things. As much as I hate Amazon for their ethics and practices, guess what? Where I live, it often is either that or nothing. I am not settling for nothing. 
• A nice piece out of Al Jazeera looks at readers embracing books about marginalized characters written by people of color. Thing is publishers are not quite publishing enough.
• Via LitHub, how iconic cookbooks can reflect the politics around them, sometimes even shape them. Article looks at the example of a Cuban cookbook among other things. 
• They did a study up in Canada and found out that library users (in Canada at least) do buy more books as well. Via BookNet Canada. 
• Literary Saloon briefly highlights and comments on that article from The Atlantic about lower reading of books in academic libraries every other librarian probably told you about already. However, any snark aside, facts are facts, and book circulation is declining in academic libraries, even in the one where I work. That decline does include faculty as well as students using and reading less library books. On a note of hope, there are some areas of growth, at least for us. Our graphic novels collection does circulate quite well, so at least recreational reading is holding up. 
• Via Fine Books & Collections, see how Nick Basbanes' book On Paper gets turned into an art piece. 
• To give you more time to read books, John Scalzi reveals a trick to keep your GMail inbox (and probably most inboxes) free of clutter. It is a trick marketers hate, but you will appreciate. Consider it this week's Public Service Announcement.
• In a bit of trivia  (and this can be mildly NSFW by the way), Bending the Bookshelf explains what futanari is and gives an overview of the genre. This is a bit of reader's advisory. 
• Finally, for this week, a Spanish language item. Via Lecturalia, a look at the origin of book fairs.