The Booker Prize longlist is here—and it shows more of a range than ever, featuring its youngest and oldest-ever authors along with debut novels and the shortest book to be nominated for the prize. Five judges read 169 books to Read more >
President Obama has released his annual summer reading list, and as ever, he’s picked some winners. (I’m particularly delighted so see Jessamine Chan’s excellent and harrowing The School for Good Mothers on there. Given that he’s the former President of Read more >
Coming to an indie bookstore/library near you today! * Dwyer Murphy, An Honest Living (Viking) “Like the best noir practitioners, Murphy uses the mystery as scaffolding to assemble a world of fallen dreams and doom-bitten characters.” –The New York Times Read more >
Literary Twitter was not thrilled with Pamela Paul’s most recent New York Times op-ed, which was just another iteration of her usual formula, i.e. “the inchoate woke mob of my fever-dreams is just as bad for the world as the Read more >
Sorry to Kindle loyalists: people who read paper books tend to be more advanced readers, according to a recent study of the reading habits of thousands of teens around the world. The study, conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation Read more >
I am very pleased to report that one of the many ways in which the Internet is mocking now-disgraced Senator Josh Hawley—for fleeing the very mob he incited himself—is through verse. Here is what @limericking on Twitter posted last night: Read more >
This week, composer, violinist, and vocalist Caroline Shaw—who in 2013 became the youngest ever recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music—announced her second album with Attacca Quartet: Evergreen will be out from Nonesuch on September 23. Shaw and Attacca Quartet Read more >
There’s a new book coming from Michelle Obama next season: titled The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times, it will offer her thoughts on handling difficult periods of change. “I’ve learned it’s okay to recognize that self-worth comes wrapped Read more >
The federal government’s civil suit to block the acquisition of Simon & Schuster by Penguin Random House is chugging along, with the trial set to begin on August 1. Exhibits to the joint pretrial motion, filed July 15, included lists Read more >
Today in extremely niche literary world factoids: in case you didn’t know (I did not) Zadie Smith has a younger brother named Ben Bailey Smith, an actor and standup who goes by Doc Brown, admires Taylor Swift’s writing ability, and Read more >
More than 200 unionized HarperCollins employees are on strike today following months of contract negotiations, which began in December 2021 and which, they say, have not yielded a fair agreement for workers. HarperCollins, based in New York City—where the median Read more >
Alice Dunbar Nelson was a poet, journalist, and activist. She also wrote plays, short stories, and edited a few anthologies. She was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance, and quite frankly, we don’t talk about her enough. In the Read more >
At a ceremony in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London last night, Kenyan writer Idza Luhumyo was awarded the 2022 Caine Prize for her short story, “Five Years Next Sunday.” Chosen out of 267 entries, “Five Years Next Sunday”—which Read more >
One of the best things about having an extensive personal library is the ability to lend books to my loved ones. Of course, “lend” is a stretch—they very rarely come back, probably because I have neglected to invest in a Read more >
I was 13 years old in a suburban mall Barnes & Noble, holding a copy of Please Don’t Kill the Freshman by Zoe Trope. The cover—featuring the silhouette of a young cheerleader whose stance seems sarcastic, her pom-poms flopping against Read more >
In the midst of a deluge of book bans across the country, Penguin Random House has erected billboards featuring quotes from books by LGBTQ authors in six cities—New York City, Chicago, Dallas, Orlando, Miami and Austin. Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” Read more >
It must suck to be most days of the week. On most days of the week, new books do not come out. But TGIT: Thank goodness it’s Tuesday. * Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (Del Rey) “…she deftly Read more >
Over the weekend—via a tweet from artist Amber Blade Jones, because the garbage bird website has its bright spots—I discovered Not/But, a comic strip that speaks directly to my self-defeating writer soul. Not/But is a series created by illustrator and Read more >
A handwritten letter from J.R.R. Tolkien is currently up for auction, with bidding beginning at $5,000, if you’ve got that kind of cash lying around. The letter, which is dated April 12, 1956, is a response to a fan, and Read more >
Well, we still have some nice things—or rather, dogs do. While walking through my neighborhood in Missoula recently (a neighborhood that features seven Little Free Libraries for humans, it should be said), I stumbled across a very cute sight: some good Read more >
