The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

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

Exclusive: NoViolet Bulawayo's next novel, Glory, is coming your way this spring.

Literary Hub is pleased to announce that NoViolet Bulawayo’s second novel, Glory, will be published by Viking on March 8, 2022. Viking describes the new book from the author of We Need New Names (which was shortlisted for the Booker Read more >

By Emily Temple

We're getting a (deeply confusing) Pride & Prejudice dating show.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single streaming service in possession of a moderate budget, must be in want of a dating show. As you may be able to discern from my amazing opener, I have actually read Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor