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News, Notes, Talk

Oscar Isaac will play a sexy Kurt Vonnegut in a new crime series.

If you thought last month’s casting of Helen Mirren as Patricia Highsmith was a sexy choice, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Everyone’s favorite smoldering short king, Oscar Isaac (recently seen playing the Handsomest Divorced Professor in the World in the Ingmar Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Library minds own business as anti-gay pedophile self-destructs—some thoughts.

A man so upset by the Pride programming at his local libraries that he felt moved to graffiti “GROOMERS” onto the windows has been charged with possession of child pornography, the Washington Post reports. The man, Charles M. Sutherland, vandalized Read more >

By Janet Manley

Watch the very weird trailer for Haruki Murakami adaptation Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.

Strange dreams, a glowing blue cat, a giant talking frog, a tsunami, a lost bank employee, a schizophrenic accountant, people who are there but not there—I’d say it’s a Haruki Murakami adaptation, all right. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, based on Read more >

By Emily Temple

Here is the 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize shortlist for the U.S. and Canada.

Thirty-five thousand dollars is on offer for winners of the 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize, which aims to support small-press works and is open to U.S. and Canadian works. The Prize notes that “most often it is the small publishers Read more >

By Janet Manley

In a surprise to no one, Gen Z prefers printed books over e-books.

Not surprisingly, people still prefer printed books to e-books. And by people I mean Generation Z, that unfortunate cohort coming of age in the midst of mass shootings, ascendant authoritarianism, and mass environmental calamity. Citing reasons like eye-strain, digital detoxification, Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Authors have been making things up again.

There are two types of authors: The first writes a fictional book about, say, killing their husband that turns out to be true. The second writes a book in a strange hybrid of English and Cuban-Spanish that is heralded as Read more >

By Janet Manley

Greenlight's PLG location is crossing the rainbow bridge.

Park Slope of the east, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, has had its own Greenlight Bookstore since 2016, an addition to the neighborhood that made people feel, We have our own bookstore! All we need, now, is a good place to buy Read more >

By Janet Manley

16 new books to check out this week.

A bunch of exciting new books are out today from authors new and old alike! There’s definitely something here for everyone’s TBR pile. * The Best of Everything, Rona Jaffe (Penguin Classics 65th Anniversary Edition) “Sixty years later, Jaffe’s classic Read more >

By Gabrielle Bellot

Reading lists for Fed chairs past, current, and future.

Your monetary policy daddy, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, just bailed out Silicon Valley Bank after investors found that their money had slipped through a sidewalk grate while the titans of Silicon Valley weren’t watching. Whoops! Sometimes people find themselves up a Read more >

By Janet Manley

Turn the Italian manuscript thief loose.

As you may recall, back in January of 2022, after much speculation and an industrywide manhunt, a Tom Ripley-esque rights coordinator by the name of Filippo Bernardini was arrested at JFK airport for the extremely strange crime of impersonating literary Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Moms are superheroes? Yes, here's 11 books to prove it.

Big night for moms at the Oscars—moms who won, and mothers to whom winners (The Daniels, Ke Huy Kuan, Jamie Lee Curtis, and on!) dedicated their wins. Best Actress winner Michelle Yeoh does not have children, but her character Evelyn Read more >

By Janet Manley

How good is your 'Stellaaaaa'? Do your best at the Tennessee Williams fest this weekend.

If you’ve ever fancied yourself a basic kind of man driven by simple (violent) desires, you might like to enter the 2023 Stella Shouting contest, which takes place this weekend, ahead of next week’s Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Read more >

By Janet Manley

Why authors might want to pay to go on a podcast.

Gone are the days when you could write a book a chapter at a time and hook people in a slow, serial burn. Now, if the internet is to believed, one must amass 100,000 followers on social media before they Read more >

By Janet Manley

The Outsiders is now a musical.

Listen… can you hear the denim moving across a stage in California, the swish of gelled hair? S.E. Hinton’s beloved novel The Outsiders has been adapted into a musical at La Jolla Playhouse, with solid reviews following the open. If Read more >

By Janet Manley

Quiz: Should you read that divorce novel?

There is a literary phenomenon that afflicts married people, in which a writer they have embraced as speaking their very thoughts puts out a new book, and it is a divorce book. This triggers a certain paranoid crisis: do you Read more >

By Janet Manley

Woman born in library celebrates 94th by returning to the stacks whence she came.

“I like to think I sprang from a head,” Patricia Lockwood once wrote, “I like to think the head was mine.” We cannot all come into the world with divine knowledge of the written word immaculately stacked into the halls Read more >

By Janet Manley