The BBC is temporarily suspending the work of its journalists in Russia following Putin’s new censorship law. This morning, the Duma unanimously passed legislation that outlines fines and jail terms of up to fifteen years for the offence of spreading “fake” information about the Russian military’s invasion of Ukraine. Reuters reports: “Russian officials have repeatedly said that false information has been spread by Russia’s enemies such as the United States and its Western European allies in an attempt to sow discord among the Russian people.”
“How you steal a book-size magazine or any book is much more difficult than most things you might shoplift. Books are a hard-to-hide size, heavy, prominent.” Online at Literary Hub, you can read a story by Clancy Martin from the 2022 edition of the literary journal NOON.
Tim Judah reports from Kyiv for the New York Review of Books. On visits to a makeshift bomb shelter in a metro station and the base of a local Territorial Defense Force unit, Judah spoke with Ukrainians who are preparing to remain in the city to defend it from Russian forces. Over the last week, Judah writes, “it seems to me that Ukrainians have collectively gone through a version of the five stages of grief: denial, fear, defiance, anger, and now fear again.”
In “Good Riddance to Amazon’s Terrible Bookstores,” Alex Shephard offers an obituary of sorts for the megasite’s in-person shops, which Amazon recently announced would close. The sixty-eight stores are shuttering so that Amazon can focus on clothing and retail.
New York magazine is starting a newsletter miniseries, “Reread: New York Hustlers,” which will focus on stories from the archives about “scammers, grifters, and strivers” like the 2018 article that was the basis for the Netflix series Inventing Anna.