The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Five great episodes of Michael Silverblatt’s Bookworm, in honor of the late host.

Michael Silverblatt, the dedicated host of KCRW’s Bookworm, died last Friday at 73. Bookworm ran from 1989-2022, and was nationally syndicated. Over his thirty years on the airwaves, Silverblatt interviewed almost all your favorite authors. Everyone from William Vollmann to Read more >

By Brittany Allen

New York Mayor Mamdani is breaking his promise on library funding.

Fitting that a few days after Valentine’s Day, New Yorkers may be reaching the end of their Mamdani honeymoon. Earlier this week, the Mayor released his preliminary budget for the 2027 fiscal year, and New Yorkers and library advocates were Read more >

By James Folta

Find your next read in this dataset of international bestsellers.

In most situations when I say “I need the data,” I’m referring to gossip, and it’s less of a “need” than what some would call a “messy curiosity.” But recently, I came across a Substack post analyzing a set of Read more >

By James Folta

Not-so-happy 100th birthday to Ireland’s Committee of Evil Literature.

One hundred Februarys back, the Irish justice minister Kevin O’Higgins took it upon himself to “stem the tide of filth” coming into his newly free state. O’Higgins assembled the Committee of Evil Literature, which is unfortunately just what it sounds Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Gisèle Pelicot, Namwali Serpell, Jon Meacham, and more: 21 new books out today!

I hope everyone enjoyed a hard-earned three day weekend amidst the relentless winter. At the very least temperatures were not dancing around the -15 range, and for this we must celebrate. This Tuesday we welcome a long-awaited biography of Toni Read more >

By Julia Hass

This week’s news in Venn diagrams.

Happy Friday the 13th (Ahh!) and Valentine’s Day Eve (Ohh!), dear readers. I wrote a little poem for you all, the Venn fans. Roses are cherry, And violets are blue, If these jokes make you merry, I love you, it’s Read more >

By James Folta

The Trump administration is illegally gutting NASA’s largest research library.

Founded in 1959, the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland is home to NASA’s largest research library. For decades, scientists, engineers, students, and a curious public have leaned on the archive to understand the physics and mechanics of space Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Arundhati Roy quits this year’s Berlinale over “jaw-dropping” jury remarks against political art and Gaza.

In a statement to The Wire, author Arundhati Roy announced she will no longer participate in the 2026 Berlinale film festival. The author of Mother Mary Comes to Me and The God of Small Things was invited to a screening Read more >

By James Folta

Here’s what’s making us happy this week.

We’re having a family-oriented week, here at Lit Hub. We’ve been catching our joy from real and fictional siblings, kids, and that ur-family, the union.  To begin with the latter, James Folta is looking forward to a new show out Read more >

By Brittany Allen

American Woman doll? Samantha is getting a grown-up novel.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of its beloved American Girl Doll empire, Mattel is launching a bevy of new products. Some of them ultra-fresh, like the ladies of the K-Pop Demon Hunter collection. But some of them, very old-school. The Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Explore Black literary NYC with this map of 100 important spots.

This year is the 100th anniversary of Black History Month, and the bookstore McNally Jackson put together a list of 100 places in New York’s five boroughs that were significant for Black literary culture. It’s a pretty comprehensive list of Read more >

By James Folta

Allegra Goodman, Ej Dickson, Chris Jennings, and more: 22 new books out today!

Five more weeks of winter, says Punxsutawney Phil, but who’s counting? As the week eases into Valentine’s Day, I can’t say there’s a huge selection of romance in this week’s batch, but romance is in the eyes of the beholder. Read more >

By Julia Hass

A brief literary history of The Muppet Show.

Last week on a Disney+ account near you, Seth Rogen—the hardest working man in show biz—announced the return of the Kerm. A one-off Muppet Show special starring Sabrina Carpenter, Maya Rudolph, and other human and furry celebrities brought Jim Henson’s Read more >

By Brittany Allen

It’s hypocritical to denounce book bans while publishing their defenders.

Over on Balls & Strikes, law writer Jay Willis published an excellent piece about the Hachette imprint Basic Liberty publishing conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s So Ordered, a book about Alito’s “judicial philosophy and reflects on the roles of Read more >

By James Folta

Anthropic didn’t want us to know that they were destroying millions of books to feed their software.

Companies making machine learning and generative software aren’t just metaphorically ripping off books. In at least one case, they’re rather literally shredding millions of physical books to feed to their chatbots. As uncovered last month by The Washington Post, AI Read more >

By James Folta

This week’s news in Venn diagrams.

It’s almost too on the nose for me, but I completely forgot that this weekend was the Super Bowl. If you’re watching, hope it’s a fun one! And if you’re not, it’s a great excuse to break out all your Read more >

By James Folta

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