We’ve known since March that FX has given a pilot order to Kindred, a series adaptation of Octavia Butler’s 1979 novel of the same name. Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins—Pulitzer Prize finalist, MacArthur fellow, and consulting producer on HBO’s Watchmen—wrote the pilot, Read more >
Colin Kaepernick—the activist quarterback blackballed by the NFL for kneeling during the national anthem at the start of games in protest of police brutality and racial inequality—is releasing a children’s book inspired by a pivotal moment in his childhood. I Read more >
The English language is an ever-changing, sometimes confounding entity. The good folks at Dictionary.com are all too aware of this fact and have recently added over 300 new words and updated definitions to the website. The latest update follows this Read more >
Back in April, A24 and Rhombus Media optioned the rights to Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, Nguyen’s Pulitzer-winning debut novel about a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who serves as a communist double agent after the fall of Saigon. The novel Read more >
Late to the party yet again, I recently saw Shawshank Redemption for the very first time. For those of you who have been living under an adjacent rock, it’s a movie based on Stephen King’s novella, starring Morgan Freeman and Read more >
In honor of the 70th publication anniversary of The Catcher in the Rye, I was planning to write the definitive essay on the novel’s place in the canon, but then I remembered that no discourse in the world bores me Read more >
Donald Trump, in response to the numerous exposés on his presidency hitting shelves this year, has taken to doing angry rebuttal interviews and praising books by his political allies. But I guess it runs in the family: as Internet sleuths Read more >
I believe Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’ Diary, first published in the UK 25 years ago this year, is one of the funniest books ever written. This isn’t exactly an unpopular opinion. As of 2016, the book—together with its (less-satisfying) sequel Bridget Read more >
Big publication news: over twenty-five years after they were discovered among her bed linens and towels, Patricia Highsmith’s diaries will be released to the public this fall in a global release by Liveright Publishing (North America) and Weidenfeld & Nicholson Read more >
Talk about following virtue and knowledge: The Visual Agency has created DivineComedy.digital, a digital humanities tool that maps the influence of Dante Alighieri’s narrative world on art around the globe. DivineComedy.digital displays artworks that depict scenes in the Divine Comedy—illuminated Read more >
On your marks, get set… BOOK! The Booker Prize revealed its 2022 judges today, among them a familiar face for fans of Great British Bake Off—no, not Paul Hollywood. It’s OG host Mel Giedroyc! Mel is joined by chair and Read more >
Tomorrow marks the 117th anniversary of the death of the legendary Anton Chekhov. He’s considered one of the greatest short story writers of all time, and his now-classic plays laid the groundwork for realism as the spine of mainstream contemporary Read more >
The Associated Press reported today that booksellers at Hong Kong’s national book fair are heavily curating their books to avoid violating a national security law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing in June 2020. The wide-ranging law criminalizes, among other Read more >
Since March, we’ve known Dr. Cornel West is leaving Harvard Divinity School for the Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he will hold the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair. But this week, West gave us a fuller picture of his Read more >
It’s never good news when Republicans take an interest in libraries (or anything?). According to a report from Truthout, right-wing groups across the country are organizing both to cut library funds and to remove books that acknowledge the existence of, Read more >
Think you know everything there is to know about Leonard Cohen? A new graphic novel may challenge your assumptions. This fall, renowned publisher Drawn & Quarterly will publish a graphic biography of the late Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist. Leonard Read more >
In 2006, Roberto Bolaño, who died 18 years ago this week, published a list of “advice on the art of writing short stories” in World Literature Today. The mini essay was translated by David Draper Clark; the original Spanish version Read more >
July is National Culinary Arts Month. (It’s also apparently National Hot Dog Month, National Horseradish Month, and National Lasagna Awareness Month. Hey, I don’t make the rules. I just report them.) To observe National Culinary Arts Month, I recommend taking Read more >
The Alaska Library Catalog allows Alaska’s libraries to borrow and lend materials to each other. Library patrons in Alaska have the Alaska Library Catalog to thank for their access to 3.2 million books, rather than just the contents of their Read more >
Publishers Weekly has released the list of best-selling print books from the last six months, and there are a few interesting trends. Firstly, people still like fiction, despite the near-constant thinkpieces about whether the novel is dead. Nearly half the Read more >
