Today, and every year on April the first, we curse Geoffrey Chaucer. Why? Because he is (supposedly) personally responsible for the two worst holidays (“holidays”) known to humankind/the internet. I am referring, as you no doubt know, to Valentine’s Day Read more >
Today, Haruki Murakami cheered on incoming arts students in a speech at the entrance ceremony for his alma mater Waseda University in Tokyo, expressing his joy at being able to celebrate with them in person. And he also gave some Read more >
Depending on who you ask, Substack is either a haven for writers who have flounced away from their journalism jobs claiming that Cancel Culture forced them out, or a platform that allows writers to actually (maybe) pay their bills without Read more >
The year from hell has turned out to be a hell of a year for Eisner Award-winning cartoonist and New Yorker illustrator Adrian Tomine. First, his graphic memoir, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist, got a pretty rapturous critical reception Read more >
Publishers are feeling the heat: a Maryland state bill that would give public libraries the right to license and lend e-books and other digital works that are available in the consumer market has just, as Publishers Weekly puts it, “sailed” Read more >
Okay, here’s a concept that makes you wish you’d invented it: a group of artists has turned the simple game of telephone—where a message is whispered from person to person, changing as it travels—into an global art project. Over the Read more >
On this day in 1855, Charlotte Brontë died in Haworth, West Yorkshire, England. Her official cause of death was cited as tuberculosis, but some scholars and historians have questioned this diagnosis. The Jane Eyre author is regarded as an essential Read more >
Can someone please share the Publishers Weekly deal code* with the New York state Joint Commission on Public Ethics? Because they’re having a hard time finding out any details around Governor Andrew Cuomo’s book deal for the prematurely triumphal American Read more >
On this day in 1969, Delacorte published Kurt Vonnegut’s sixth book and first bestseller: Slaughterhouse-Five. Three years later, despite being a very strange candidate for it (in my view), the book was adapted into a film, directed by George Roy Hill Read more >
Yesterday in 1986 we lost John Ciardi, a literary Renaissance man—poet, educator, Dante translator, Saturday Review editor, television host, and, as a late-career pivot, radio personality. During the last decade of his life, Ciardi delivered monologues on the etymologies of Read more >
This past Thursday, Seattle law firm Hagens Berman filed a proposed class-action lawsuit on behalf of Illinois bookseller Bookends & Beginnings, alleging Amazon colluded to fix prices on print books. The suit claims that Amazon’s restrictive contracts with the “Big Read more >
Here’s a lesson: if you dare to pan Dante Alighieri, of Inferno fame, in a public newspaper, your reputation will go up in smoke. In Frankfurter Rundschau on March 25th, German journalist Arno Widmann wrote a piece downplaying the importance Read more >
We need joy, and thankfully every Tuesday, that joy comes to us in the form of brand-new books! Here are 19 titles hitting shelves today. Do yourself a favor and head on over to your local indie. (Maybe grab your Read more >
On this day in 1964, Passing and Quicksand author Nella Larsen (b. 1891) died in Brooklyn, New York. At the time of her death, Larsen was divorced, did not have any children and had retreated from the writing world. In 1930, Larsen’s Read more >
Richard Garriott has had the kind of career that kids aim for before the world tells them it’s unrealistic. In addition to his work as a video game creator, Garriott is a lifelong explorer (the new president-elect of the Explorer’s Read more >
I am sorry to report that there is a new controversial TikTok making its way around the literary internet. There’s a lot to unpack here—the song, the dreamcatcher, the fact this post came from a “Seamus Heaney stan account,” the Read more >
Mark Twain is smiling in Woodlawn Cemetery right now: for the first time ever, the Louvre has gone digital. All of the Louvre’s art—over 482,000 pieces—can now be viewed online through the site collections.louvre.fr, even the work not currently on Read more >
Only three months after the high-profile merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, The New York Times reported earlier this morning that HarperCollins, one of publishing’s “Big Five,” will acquire Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books and Media—Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Read more >
Legend of children’s literature Beverly Cleary died on March 25th in Carmel, California, HarperCollins announced on Friday. She was 104. Since publishing Henry Huggins in 1950, when she was a librarian, Cleary has sold 85 million copies of her books, which have Read more >
Dear reader, I know what you are thinking! Isn’t Women’s History Month basically over? Isn’t it a little too late for this listicle? No! To put this reading list before you at the very beginning of the month would be Read more >
