This week saw the announcement of this year’s Costa Book Awards, a set of annual literary awards which recognize and honor British and Irish writers of the English language. Each award comes with £5,000; the author of the Costa Book Read more >
The jury (figuratively) remains out on how much empathy we garner from reading books, but a certain English judge is quite pleased with the progress of Ben John, the 21-year-old white supremacist who, after being charged with possessing a bomb-making Read more >
Today, the Robert B. Silvers Foundation announced the winners of the inaugural Silvers-Dudley Prizes, recognizing outstanding achievement in criticism and journalism. Named for Robert B. Silvers, a founding editor of the New York Review of Books, and his longtime partner, Read more >
This week marks the 130th birthday of J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings writer, academic, and pranking enthusiast—and today we’re revisiting a time Tolkien stood up for his beliefs against his best business interests. In 1938, Tolkien Read more >
Deadline has reported that Jessica Chastain, through her cutely named production company Freckle Films, has beaten out several others to the TV rights to Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers. The School for Good Mothers, published this week by Read more >
If you—still busy catching up after the holiday week, or perhaps newly sick with a certain rapidly spreading variant, or just exhausted from dealing with the realities of same—recently saw something about Norman Mailer being canceled by a mysterious “junior Read more >
Interesting adaptation news: Deadline reported yesterday that Keanu Reeves is in talks with Hulu to star in their Paramount TV Studios-produced limited series adaptation of Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City. Leonardo DiCaprio will executive produce. Larson’s 2003 Read more >
A happy update: Washington, DC bookstore Politics and Prose’s union, supported by UFCW Local 400, has now been formally recognized by the bookstore, making it the first unionized bookstore in DC. This comes after a banner year for labor activism Read more >
After all, the writer is almost as famous for his love of Gauloises as he is for his novels—this despite, of course, his frequent bouts of tuberculosis, with which he was first diagnosed at 17, and which forced him to Read more >
You’ve probably seen a lot of people on the Internet going on about their reading accomplishments of the past year and their goals for the next one. Maybe you want to explore new genres. Maybe you want to read more Read more >
Today marks the 130th birthday of J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings writer, academic, and, as it turns out, prank enthusiast. It makes sense that the mind behind the extensive lore and joyful traditions of Middle-earth would Read more >
The Libby app came into my life early in the pandemic, when in-person trips to the library weren’t possible and indie bookstores were up against massive USPS delays. The app—which allows users to instantly borrow ebooks from their local libraries—was Read more >
An interesting dispatch from prize world: as The Bookseller reported, a new international survey conducted by Nielsen Book shows publishers, writers, booksellers and media consider the Booker Prize the “most important” literary prize. The Booker’s status isn’t completely out of Read more >
There’s sometimes skepticism about year-end book lists: some say, aren’t they chosen by the whims of just a few writers or editors? Are they really representative of the best books? Well, if you’re a believer in the will of the Read more >
Joan Didion died today at her home in Manhattan, The New York Times reports. The legendary novelist and essayist was 87. According to Paul Bogaards, an executive at Knopf, Didion’s publisher, the cause was Parkinson’s disease. Didion was one of the Read more >
Graciously accepting a gift you don’t like is, I imagine, a lot like being asked to blurb a book you don’t like. In both cases, the trick is avoiding hurt feelings, but also trying to minimize the possibility of being Read more >
