The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

1984, as summarized by Madison Cawthorn.

The year is 1984, and the Ocean-America is ruled by the “Party” and the mysterious leader Big Brother, who everyone thinks is really great because she wears red lipstick and makes good Instagram videos even though it’s not like she’s Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

These are the best short stories to read around a campfire.

Little-known fact: today, August 10, is National S’mores Day! Oh, how I miss sitting around the campfire. There is no better place for sharing a well-told story. If you’re out in the woods (and still somehow reading this?), please enjoy Read more >

By Katie Yee

After a month of major controversies, the American Booksellers Association has responded.

This July, the American Booksellers Association was enmeshed in two sizable controversies. Firstly, the ABA mixed up two books by Black authors with the title Blackout, displaying information about the romance anthology Blackout next to the cover of Blackout by Read more >

By Walker Caplan

A new poll shows that most readers organize their bookshelves . . . completely randomly.

Much has been made of the trend of organizing one’s books by color: some find it cute, some find it a disturbing, theatrical perversion of the insular process of reading. But despite the controversy of color-coordinated shelves, they’re not that Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Take a look at Tove Jansson’s illustrations for a Swedish edition of The Hobbit.

The public knows Tove Jansson, Finnish writer and illustrator, primarily as the creator of Moomins—but in her later life, she purposefully distanced herself herself from the Moomin universe. When she ended her daily Moomin comic strip, Jansson wrote to a Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Every book Audrey Hope reads in the Gossip Girl reboot (so far).

If you’re a Millennial like me who can’t resist trashy teen dramas as a coping mechanism, you’re gleefully hate-watching the Gossip Girl reboot on HBO Max. I’m sorry to say that thus far, the new show hasn’t captured the same Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

20 new books to look out for this week.

So you’re making your way downtown, walking fast, faces pass, and you’re homebound. But what’s this? A bookstore in your path?! Yes, you dear reader, are powerless to resist. You follow its siren call. Here are 20 big new books Read more >

By Katie Yee

Jack Kerouac is getting into podcasts.

If you think the sweet release of death will deliver you from your obligation to start a podcast, think again. Jack Kerouac—who, if he were alive, would absolutely have gone on Joe Rogan by now—will soon return to us in Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Behold this creepy and adorable 1911 book of captioned cat photos.

Over the weekend, the Public Domain Review pointed me towards a book that I think we can all agree was ahead of its time: the 1911 children’s book Kittens and Cats: A First Reader by Eulalie Osgood Grover, with photographs Read more >

By Emily Temple

Read Tove Jansson’s short story composed of bizarre fan letters.

Tove Jansson, Finnish novelist best known for creating the Moomin universe (and born today in 1914), believed in responding to letters. When Dorothy Parker never responded to her brother Lars’s poetry which he mailed her, Jansson wrote: “If I was Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Adrian Tomine’s The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist is becoming a TV series.

Exciting adaptation news: as Variety reported on Thursday, Adrian Tomine’s graphic memoir The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist is being adapted by A24 and Square Peg for television as an animated series. Tomine himself will adapt the book for the Read more >

By Literary Hub

The best book lovers on TV, ranked.

So it’s National Book Lovers Day. What? You forgot? You didn’t prepare?! You mean you didn’t get your favorite book lover a gift?!? Well, at least we know what it should be. (A book. In case that wasn’t clear.) To Read more >

By Katie Yee

Everything you need to know about the RWA's ongoing racism controversy.

After intense and sustained criticism, Romance Writers of America, the largest organization of writers in the country, has chosen to rescind their highest award—the Vivian—which was recently given to a book accused of glamorizing genocide. Some useful context: the RWA Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Denne Michele Norris has been named Electric Literature’s new editor-in-chief.

Electric Literature has announced their new editor-in-chief: Denne Michele Norris, formerly a Senior Fiction Editor at The Rumpus and Fiction Editor at Apogee Journal, and cohost of the popular, NYT-lauded podcast Food 4 Thot. According to a press release, in Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Take a look at a young Flannery O’Connor’s satirical cartoons.

Multihyphenates can get a bad rap, accused of not committing to one thing: operating in the gig economy, creators can feel pressure to specialize. But just because many artists are canonized in one discipline doesn’t mean they didn’t work in Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Here are the best reviewed books of the week.

Stephen King’s Billy Summers, Anthony Veasna So’s Afterparties, Alexandra Kleeman’s Something New Under the Sun, and Megan Abbott’s The Turnout all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes Read more >

By Book Marks