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News, Notes, Talk

Watch Jack Antonoff perform a song he wrote with Zadie Smith.

Talk about an ambitious crossover event: the first track off of Jack Antonoff’s upcoming Bleachers album, Take the Sadness out of Saturday Night, is a collaboration with Zadie Smith. Yes, White Teeth/Swing Time/On Beauty Zadie Smith. In an interview with Read more >

By Walker Caplan

21 new books to accompany you on your summer adventures.

You, dear reader of this site, most likely carry a book with you wherever you go. A lot of the time, it’s wishful thinking. How will you read five books on your three-day weekend upstate? Are you really going to Read more >

By Katie Yee

Queenie Jenkins is not your “black Bridget Jones.”

Since its publication, Queenie, the 2019 debut novel from Vintage senior marketing executive Candice Carty-Williams, has been repeatedly compared to Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary. Kirkus’s starred review called it “A black Bridget Jones, perfectly of the moment.” Entertainment Weekly Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

Take a virtual tour of Walden Pond.

Today marks the 207th birthday of Henry David Thoreau—and we’re taking five minutes out of our day to celebrate by watching a virtual tour of Walden Pond, where Thoreau wrote his famous text of the same name. Though it doesn’t Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Powell’s Books is celebrating its 50-year anniversary with a curated collection of 50 books.

This year marks the 50th year of Powell’s Books, beloved Portland landmark and the world’s largest independent bookstore—and to commemorate the occasion, Powell’s is launching a curated collection of 50 books from the past 50 years. The collection, which can Read more >

By Walker Caplan

C Pam Zhang’s How Much of These Hills Is Gold is being adapted for television.

Exciting adaptation news: Variety has reported that indie studio The Ink Factory (The Night Manager, Fighting With My Family, The Little Drummer Boy) and Endeavor Content are teaming up to develop C Pam Zhang’s debut novel How Much of These Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Exclusive cover reveal: Karen Joy Fowler's new novel, Booth.

Karen Joy Fowler has a knack for writing large dysfunctional families (you might remember her novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize). Her new novel, Booth, is Read more >

By Literary Hub

Area woman reads over 150 books… a month!?

It is a painful thing to do the math on how many books you’ll be able to read before you die (no matter how old you are). I’m sorry, it’s just not as many as you think, and you’re never Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Take this soothing room-by-room virtual tour of Jane Austen's house.

Always wanted to explore Jane Austen’s house but can’t get to England? This video, made by MemorySeekers, is almost as good and definitely more cost-effective, presenting a guided room-by-room tour of Austen’s last home in Chawton, Hampshire—now a museum, of Read more >

By Emily Temple

These are the books Barack Obama thinks you should read this summer.

As you likely already know, President Obama has pretty good taste in books. After all, he’s been a reader (and a writer) since long before he got into politics. “Whether you’re camped out on the beach or curled up on Read more >

By Emily Temple

Here are the best reviewed books of the week.

S. A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears, Dana Spiotta’s Wayward, Helen Scales’ The Brilliant Abyss, and Michael Pollan’s This is Your Mind on Plants all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s Read more >

By Book Marks

Now you can buy the glorious mansion where Mark Twain died.

Good news for Twainiacs (?) with money to spend: now, for $4.2 million, you can purchase Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemens)’s bright yellow Redding, Connecticut mansion where he lived until his death in 1910. Stormfield Mansion, named by Twain himself Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Javier Bardem is your new Lyle, Lyle Crocodile.

If you like your children’s cartoon characters vaguely sinister and uncomfortably sexualized (and I do, perverted Parisian Judge Claude Frollo and suave 1970s fox Robin Hood. God help me, I do), you’ll find this news very welcome indeed. Large, handsome, Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

13 books perfectly summed up with one-liners from Gilmore Girls.

If you watched Gilmore Girls for the first time when it was still on air and never stopped watching it, then this list is for you. Personally, I probably think about the Gilmore girls an unhealthy number of times per day, Read more >

By Katie Yee

Sleeping or Dead? and other hilarious "practical books for librarians" in pulp classic form.

This week, I stumbled across a hidden internet gem: a seemingly endless collection of fake pulp novel covers for, about, and presumably by, librarians. The series, “Professional Library Literature: Practical Books for Librarians” is a hilarious mix of helpful how-to Read more >

By Emily Temple

"She died sniffing life, and enjoying it." Read E.B. White's witty obituary for his dog Daisy.

This weekend will mark the birthday of celebrated author Elwyn Brooks White, otherwise known as E.B. White to the public and “Andy” to his close friends. White was born on July 11, 1899, in Mount Vernon, NY. In 1921, he Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist will finally be made into a movie, courtesy Will Smith.

At long last, Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist—international bestseller, Guinness World Record holder (for most translated work by a living author), inspirational parable, and um, favorite novel of everyone you know who doesn’t really read novels—is coming to the big screen. Read more >

By Emily Temple

A nun just unearthed a previously unknown Dante manuscript.

Serendipitously, just two months away from the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death, Julia Bolton Holloway—a Florence-based researcher and nun—seems to have discovered a sheaf of handwritten Dante manuscripts. The manuscripts date back to Dante’s time spent as a student Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Read the story that just won the biggest short story prize in the world.

Today, the Sunday Times named Susan Choi the winner of the 2021 Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, which honors the best short story of the year. With a prize of £30,000, the award is the world’s richest prize for Read more >

By Walker Caplan

What parents and teachers are getting wrong about childhood reading preferences.

A new study reveals that boys (contrary to popular opinion) like fiction just about as much as girls. It turns out that long-held biases about reading tastes, that hold to negative stereotypes along both gender and class lines, don’t quite Read more >

By Jonny Diamond