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News, Notes, Talk

The sad-sack, fascist Proud Boys have sunk to a new low: storming a library story time.

America’s sad little homegrown fascist brigade, the Proud Boys (like the Brownshirts, but with less no sex!), have taken their victimhood/insecurity-driven agenda to new depths of idiocy (Proud? See image above.) This past Saturday a group of around ten men Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

A 10-year-old in Louisiana is starting a Little Queer Library—and she needs donations.

America has its newest and coolest young librarian: 10-year-old Cora Newton of Lafayette, Louisiana, who decided she wanted to create a Little Queer Library after witnessing recent conversations in her area about banning LGBTQ books. Claire Taylor reported for the Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Unsurprisingly, LeVar Burton thinks book bans are embarrassing bullshit.

If there was any justice in the world, we would give LeVar Burton, lifelong champion of reading, the last word on book bans. (There isn’t, of course, so we will have to continue writing about them any time some new Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Congratulations to the winners of the 2022 Lambda Literary Awards!

On Saturday, Lambda Literary announced the 24 winners of its 34th annual Lambda Literary Awards, chosen from more than 1,300 submissions and selected by more than 60 judges in the literary field. In addition to prizes in the categories below, Read more >

By Corinne Segal

How did alphabet books tackle the letter 'x' before x-rays and xylophones?

The most common entries for ‘x’ in alphabet books nowadays are probably ‘x-ray’ and ‘xylophone’—based on anecdotal evidence only, someone do this research please—but of course, it wasn’t always so. The x-ray was invented in 1895, and, as the editors Read more >

By Emily Temple

Can we please make Banned Book Fairs the hot new nationwide trend?

As we’ve noted over and over again, the hottest new book trend sweeping the country is to ban them and/or burn them if they don’t align with your weird, paleoconservative, theocratic prejudices. Not great! But as ever is the case Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

After 50 years, the Costa Book Awards are over.

The Costa Book Awards, which was founded in 1971 and known as the Whitbread Book Awards until 2005, is no more. Today, Costa Coffee announced that the 2021 Costa Book Awards, held in February 2022, would be the last iteration Read more >

By Emily Temple

The staff of PEN America has unionized!

Congratulations to PEN America‘s staff, who announced yesterday that they won voluntary recognition of their union! This milestone has been a long time coming. After months of organizing, they wrote to management to formally demand recognition last December and will Read more >

By Katie Yee

A24 is pivoting to children's books.

The beloved indie entertainment company A24—creators of Moonlight, Minari, Midsommar, and very cool merch—publishes their first children’s book today. Film buffs may recognize Claire A. Nivola’s Star Child as the book Joaquin Phoenix reads aloud to his nephew in C’mon C’mon (2021). The Read more >

By Katie Yee

A new theater production calls out Nobel laureate Peter Handke for his fascist apologia.

A new play being staged in Kosovo’s capital of Pristina is taking on Peter Handke’s deeply troubling role in denying Serbian atrocities during the breakup of Yugoslavia. The Handke Project is a multinational, English-language production that puts the Austrian writer’s Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

The Kurt Vonnegut Library is donating 1,000 copies of Slaughterhouse-Five to Florida.

This week, the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library promised to donate over 1,000 free copies of the author’s classic Slaughterhouse-Five to teachers and students in Brevard County, Florida, where the book is currently being challenged by the group Moms for Read more >

By Emily Temple

The New York Public Library is giving 500,000 free books (for keeps!) to kids and families.

We’ve said it many, many times before and we’ll say it many, many times again: libraries represent the best of America. Today’s entry: the New York Public Library will give away 500,000 books this summer to help kids, teens, and Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Here's what colleges are asking new students to read this year.

Today over at Forbes, Michael T. Nietzel gives a rundown of the books that colleges are assigning to their incoming students as a sort of conversation starter for the year ahead (and a first piece of homework that everyone can Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Did Dr. Seuss know what horses looked like? (An investigation.)

One of my toddler’s favorite books is Dr. Seuss’s ABC. I like the narcotic effect of the sing-song rhymes, she likes getting praised whenever she correctly screams a letter, and we both like the goofy little drawings. Every time I Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Maryland's public libraries just launched a digital guide to Indigenous Maryland.

This is cool: Maryland’s public library system announced today it was beta-launching an app that gives a tour of different sites in Maryland that are significant to the area’s Indigenous history and present. Curated by Dr. Elizabeth Rule, an assistant Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Jared Kushner "secretly batted out" 40,000 words of his memoir in two weeks.

In Peter Baker’s New York Times article today about the role of Jared Kushner (‘memba him??) in the final months of the Trump White House, one detail stood out to those of us whose fun little hobby is laboring over our Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor