John le Carré, whose given name was David Cornwell, died on Saturday, December 12, at the age of 89. The cause was pneumonia, his publisher, Penguin Random House, announced in a statement on Sunday. The best-selling author and onetime actual Read more >
For Chanukah this year, we’re looking back—not back to the Maccabees, but still pretty far back. Today we’re “shining a light” (ha ha ha) on some medieval manuscripts that deal with Chanukah. Enjoy! The David Bar Pesah Mahzor, 14th-century Germany. Read more >
Some good holiday news: Costa Coffee and literacy charity The Reading Agency have teamed up to donate 100,000 books to groups hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic. In total, 50,000 book-and-coffee care packages will be donated to food banks, community Read more >
Colorado bookstore chain Tattered Cover has been acquired by an investment group that includes Kwame Spearman, who is Black, an arrangement that has led to more than a few stories referring to Tattered Cover as “the largest Black-owned bookstore in Read more >
Disaffected thinkers smoking cigarettes listening to jazz records and gazing from your unadorned apartments onto sprawling urban landscapes, rejoice! Haruki Murakami is hosting a New Year’s Eve radio special live from a studio in Kyoto. The special will be aired Read more >
For a while, Melania Trump has teased that she might write a book after the Trump family exits the White House. I, like many, had mixed feelings. On one hand, it’d be interesting to see the Trump administration from the Read more >
It’s December 10th, which is holiday time. And I’ve recently been made aware of a new-ish Sense and Sensibility adaptation: Hallmark’s Sense, Sensibility and Snowmen. Sense, Sensibility and Snowmen follows Ella Dashwood, a party planner, who is hired by the Read more >
Earlier this year, Lisa Lucas announced that she would be stepping down as executive director of the National Book Foundation to become Senior Vice President & Publisher of Pantheon and Schocken Books. This morning, the National Book Foundation announced that Read more >
The Albertine Prize, an annual reader’s-choice award, recognizes and honors US-based readers’ favorite work of contemporary French fiction that was translated and published in the US during the previous year. The Award comes with a $10,000 cash prize, split between the has won the 2020 Albertine Prize.">Read more >
Ryan Chapman (erstwhile host of Nerd Jeopardy, back episodes of which you can enjoy here) is launching the paperback edition of his novel, Riots I Have Known, tonight, and as a veteran showman of the literary world, Chapman has decided Read more >
It’s John Milton’s 412th birthday—and we’re celebrating by taking a look at maybe the biggest Milton fanboy ever, William Blake. In a letter to his friend John Flaxman, explicating his influences, Blake lists Milton first: “Now my lot in the Read more >
SOME GOOD NEWS! Kid Cudi has just announced that he and his production company Mad Solar are set to produce an adaptation of Brandon Taylor’s Booker-shortlisted Real Life. Kid Cudi will star as Wallace, a gay Black scientist in a Read more >
On December 11, Bonham’s is hosting a Fine Books and Manuscripts auction featuring an extremely rare first edition of the Nuremberg Chronicle, hand-colored and still in its original binding. The survival of this copy is particularly surprising. When this illustrated Read more >
On Late Night with Seth Meyers this week, Slave Play and Daddy playwright Jeremy O. Harris announced he is donating a collection of 15 plays by Black playwrights to 53 libraries and community centers across the United States—and is donating Read more >
When William Evans and Omar Holmon founded the website Black Nerd Problems, their goal was simple: to offer a platform for people who love pop culture but are not well-represented within it. And in due time, they fostered a content community, which Read more >
Maybe it was Oscar Wilde that said, “Everything in the world is about tech except tech. Tech is about power.” Even books, which some readers fetishize for the analog experience, are digitized now; and in the next logical step after Read more >
Today, Creative Capital announced the recipients of its annual awards, which provide $50,000 and career development to emerging artists. The awards are designed to function as a long-term partnership, one that helps artists develop stable and sustainable practices that will Read more >
In maybe the most fun COVID-related news this year, the second person to get the new coronavirus vaccine in the U.K. was . . . William Shakespeare. Second patient to get the COVID jab at University Hospital Coventry – would Read more >
Another win for technology! Library users in Okayama City are able to check out library books without fear of illness, thanks to a high-tech ultraviolet light sterilizer that cleans books thoroughly. The sterilizer also blows air on the books to Read more >
Lit Hub is pleased to reveal the cover of PEN/Faulkner Award winner and author of Call Me Zebra Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi’s next novel, Savage Tongues, which will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on August 3rd, 2021. Described Read more >
