Amazon has released the first full-length trailer for its upcoming series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. It’s set in Middle-earth thousands of years before the events of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. 

The new trailer promises to live up to the epic fantasy descriptor, with end-of-the-world stakes, a huge and beautiful world to explore, and an ensemble cast, including a young Galadriel and Elrond. Galadriel has seen an apocalyptic vision of death and destruction set to shatter the peace currently reigning over Middle-earth, and she is unconvinced by Elrond’s attempts to reassure her. As usual, though, there is also a group of hobbits, the Harfoots, that seem poised to take center stage.

The trailer shows glimpses of Elven and Dwarven realms, the home of the Harfoots, and more. We also see what appears to be Two Trees of Valinor.

The eight-part series will premiere September 2nd on Amazon Prime.

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.

Heavy-body acrylics are vital for artists who love playing with texture. These paints feature a higher viscosity than liquid paint, which makes them act almost like buttery oils, with improved ability to retain brushwork and knife work once they dry. The very best heavy-body paints should contain no added extenders, opacifiers, fillers, or dyes. They should have outstanding lightfastness and show no cracking even when heavily built up. Achieve bold color and dramatic surface effects with our picks of the best, below.

“This report was birthed in trauma.” It’s a striking and heartbreaking opening statement for the groundbreaking 2022 Urban Library Trauma Study Report, released in late June at the 2022 American Library Association Annual Conference. While the beginnings of the study were rooted in library trauma before the COVID-19 pandemic, the initial grant application was written as the virus hit New York and days before many city libraries were closed. The two year long study was delayed and redesigned due to the pandemic, allowing researchers to capture some sense of the difficult working conditions urban library workers experienced pre-pandemic but possibly more importantly the increasing demands and disruptions because of the pandemic, resulting in extensive trauma, stress, and burnout for urban library workers.

The study and report were executed in a partnership between the New York Library Association, Urban Librarians Unite, and St John’s University. On the Urban Librarians Unite website, they introduce the report writing, “Almost every library worker has a story about one event at work that left them shaken. Sometimes it’s an abusive patron, sometimes it’s workplace bullying, and sometimes it’s that haunting feeling left behind when a patron needed more help than you could provide. The Urban Library Trauma Study looked to take these anecdotal stories, quantify them and build a pathway to practical solutions for the issue and move the library industry towards a culture of community care.”

The study included four stages including a comprehensive review of current literature on the topic, a survey of urban library workers, a series of virtual focus groups, and lastly a two-day forum of urban library workers to go over the research and create plans for the future.

Key Takeaways from the Urban Library Trauma Study

The survey was distributed between August 7, 2021 and September 29, 2021. The survey received 568 responses, of which 435 were from urban public staff. Responses from rural, suburban, academic, school and special library responses were filtered out to focus the scope of the study but the report does mention that library workers at all kind of libraries are dealing with many of the same issues raised in this report.

The heartland of Turkey is home to an eclectic, if remote, variety of emerging arts initiatives and institutions. Known by its appellation, “Anatolia,” meaning “the east” in Greek, it is host to a growing group of curators, artists and cultural workers who have kept busy.

The video-centric art space Monitor in Izmir is staging conceptually rigorous shows, the Mardin Biennial is readying its latest edition, contemporary artists are flocking to the Dou PrintStudio in Ankara to create lithographs, Bursa’s İmalat-Hane is hosting some of Turkey’s most cutting-edge shows, and the FIRIN art space in Eskişehir is thinking through urgent issues related to the country’s water crisis.

Spanning from the Asian shorefront of the Bosphorus to the coastlines of three interconnected seas—Black, Aegean, Mediterranean—and sharing territorial borders with Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, the Anatolian region is an embattled ground. Its artists and their colleagues are on the frontlines of a struggle to preserve its pluralist heritage.

Once hailed as the subcontinent of Asia Minor, it is believed to be the birthplace of Homer and Herodotus, and its towns and cities are home to a dissonant harmony of peoples, histories, and ecologies. Here, Central Asian, Middle Eastern, Levantine, Grecian, Romany, and Afro-Turkish cultures blend, and multicultural identities intermingle.

With grant support from the Goethe Institute and others, independent arts organizations across the diverse regions of Anatolia are flourishing, often without the support of government agencies, which generally do not fund contemporary art that is out of step with powerful officials’ neo-Ottoman, Islamist politics. Young Anatolians are linking up, aligning themselves with local and international movements beyond the Istanbul-centric art scene in Turkey.

Q&A with Daniel Tobin, cofounder and creative director of UAP (Urban Art Projects).

What is UAP and how did it start?
When my brother and I started Urban Artists [now UAP] in the early 1990s, we were interested in connecting with artists and making work for public space. Originally, we encouraged developers to start investing in public works, which helped our business get a foothold in the public art sector in Australia. We set up a small workshop in our hometown of Brisbane on the east coast of Australia, with a team of four. There, we built our own furnaces, bought an old metal workshop, and built our foundry. We started casting in bronze only and we’ve grown from there. Currently, we do wax printing and metal casting of various sorts in ten locations worldwide. But ultimately, we’re makers at heart and we’re very proud of the part that we play in the art ecosystem. We see ourselves as custodians of the making process. Bronze has been cast for five millennia, since the Bronze Age, and we continue doing so today.

The foundry that we purchased about three years ago in New York has been making work for over fifty years. It’s humbling to work with such amazing craftspeople and makers from North America who have created pieces for such great American artists as Frank Stella, Claus Oldenburg, and Roy Lichtenstein. Our most senior maker, who is 85 and the oldest in the country, is still on the floor today, training our younger team and helping to make work. Whether the furnace, the grinders, or welders are running, there’s always this energy of making in the workshops.

What is it like to work with contemporary artists?
Some artists are extremely involved in the process and visit the workshop all the time. Others are more hands off and use more contemporary techniques of digital sculpting. We let artists work in any way they like, but we always love hosting them in the workshop.

Confused by transfer tall tales? Well, we're here to help! Join Dotun, Andy and David Cartlidge as we pick through the gems from the genuine nonsense on another OTC Transfer Special.

First up, Barcelona are here to remind everyone that Frenkie, my dear, they don't give a damn about impending financial doom. We also look over the latest Premier League movers and shakers, as Chelsea secure the immense of services Kalidou Koulibaly and Lucas Paquetá looks destined for Arsenal.

We'll be back with another OTC Transfer Special next week. Got a question for us? Ask away! @FootballRamble

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Whether you’re in public schools or libraries or aren’t but support your local public institutions, one thing you can do right now to prepare for the fall and its inevitable wave of “parental rights” discourse and book challenges is get ahead of the misinformation. By openly addressing what has been happening over the last year and setting the record straight, you become the transparent organization that these groups are desperately demanding (even when they then are mad when it happens exactly as they demanded).

Build a guide to the current climate on your website, your social media, and affiliated groups to challenge the narrative being pushed by Moms For Liberty, No Left Turn, and others. Be upfront about the claims being made against libraries and schools in a broad way, then focus it on your local institutions.

Here’s a stellar example.

The Forest Hills Public Schools (Michigan) has been subject to a local group’s demands to things like “removing CRT” from the curriculum and “focusing on fundamentals.” They’ve been especially intent on highlighting the so-called Critical Race Theory being taught in the schools, beginning their quest for information via FOIAs last spring. The school board meetings have also become a space for right-wing political rallies.

A Political Action Committee in Forest Hills — developed and run by parents in the district — has stepped forward to right these claims through their group SupportFHPS. Included on their website is a thorough guide to all of the claims being made about education right now, both nationally and locally, with links to credible sources about why such claims are wrong and why they’re being made. It is a handy, easy to use guide that is accessible and understandable to people who are not staying on top of all of this news — which is impossible! — and it is a vital tool for passing along and ensuring that everyone has the same correct information at hand. What makes this guide especially good is that it’s usable to people inside the community specifically, as well as broadly applicable to those outside it.

If you’re a millennial on Twitter, or at least if you follow millennials on Twitter, you’ve likely come across the “We need an American Girl doll who…” meme. It’s a hilarious trend that combines one of the most sought-after toys of the ’90s with hyper-specific situations, and book lovers are not immune from getting called out by it. Because we can’t resist catching the latest social media wave, we’ve collected the best bookish American Girl doll tweets for your reading pleasure.

Since their introduction in 1986, American Girl dolls have highlighted a variety of different points in history and unique experiences. Fans could even create a doll to look like themselves and buy matching outfits! But leave it to Twitter and Instagram to find the gaps in American Girl doll representation.

Wow, meme one and I’m already feeling attacked!

For those of us who grew up obsessed with books, taking trips to the library every chance we got and memorizing the check-out limit, books have always been our safe spaces. They’re where we go when we have too much to do, or we’re going through something, or just need to escape for a while. I’ve spent many an hour with my head tilted sideways, reading every title on the shelves of the library or hunched on the floor, flipping through a book before buying it at my favorite bookstore. Libraries, bookstores, they’re my favorite places in the world!

With all of that time spent in the quiet of a library or lost in the shelves on a darkening afternoon, I realize just how quickly that setting can turn sinister. A scream in the silence, eyes peering from the other side of the spines. The quiet is only comforting until you want — no, need — someone around to help you.

And some authors have tapped into that fear, turning the places we love so dearly into an accomplice to a crime. Have used the darkness and the silence and the wandering as a way to heighten tension rather than relieve it. If you want to read about the ways a bookstore or library — and not the books inside — can scare you, here are eight novels to get you started.