• Oh for the love of God let's start with some good news. Last week, Third Place Books announced that they'd donate 20 percent of all sales to reuinite families at the border. That went really, really well:

A huge thanks to all the readers who came out on Saturday to support our fundraiser.

On behalf of our customers, we are sending $7,488.00 to @RAICESTEXAS !

If you want to contribute directly, you can do so here : https://t.co/DddGnETNvM pic.twitter.com/wf8Az8ivZg

— Third Place Books (@ThirdPlaceBooks) June 27, 2018

• Last weekend, Seattle's newest comic book convention, the Ace Comic Con, happened in SoDo. The Beat's Joe Grunenwald reports on how it went. Sounds like the show was more pop-culture focused than Emerald City Comicon, but it was still fun, though there were some scheduling SNAFUs with big panels featuring actors from the Marvel movies.

• Why is Tao Lin's new book Trip on bestseller lists? Does the literary world have a collective amnesia problem? Jakob Maier at BuzzFeed points out that Lin has a problematic past.

Readers new to Tao Lin’s work (he has previously published three novels, two collections of poetry, one book of short stories, one novella, and a volume of selected tweets) might not be aware that the success of Trip could be considered an example of the kind of comeback story we might get accustomed to if we don’t hold to account the men accused of abuse or harassment during the #MeToo movement... I’m thinking especially about Tao Lin’s seemingly easy and uncontested return, after he was accused in 2014 of statutory rape, emotional abuse, and plagiarism.

• This is nice:

Before @google, people would ask librarians very interesting questions.

—New York Public Library @nypl pic.twitter.com/4fVKG0qJI6

— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) June 24, 2018

• The Association for Library Service to Children changed the name of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award to the Children’s Literature Legacy Award. The ALSC argued that Ingalls Wilder's work contains "expressions of stereotypical attitudes inconsistent with ALSC’s core values of inclusiveness, integrity and respect, and responsiveness." Of course people in comments have lots of opinions about this. WE ARE ERASING HISTORY, they bellow. (Not true. History is still there. I checked.) They cry, WHO WILL WE SILENCE NEXT? (Tao Lin, hopefully.) They shout SO MUCH FOR THE TOLERANT LEFT! (Tolerance hasn't done us much good so far.) You can whine about freedom of speech all you want, but the fact is that the ALSC is a private organization, and if they don't want to give an award in the name of an author who does not meet their modern standards, that's perfectly fine. If your organization wants to give out the Adolf Hitler Award for Excellent Customer Service, that's your right. It would be my right to organize protests against your idiotically named customer service award. See? That's how America works!