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News, Notes, Talk

Remember the days when a literary radio broadcast could cause mass panic?

On this very day, in 1938, Orson Wells broadcasted an adaptation of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. It aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System network as a special Halloween episode. It begins like this: “We know now that Read more >

By Katie Yee

The 2020 Albertine Prize shortlist features stories of visceral excess and identity-seeking.

The voting period is open for the fourth edition of the Albertine Prize, an award administered by the French embassy that invites readers to choose their favorite work of translated Francophone fiction from the previous year. The honorary co-chairs of Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Adam Sandler in space, Mindy Kaling in bed: the week in literary film and TV news.

Priyanka Chopra, Booker Prize, Armie Hammer, Cold War spies Adam Sandler lost in space, Clooney has a bearded face   Here is the week in literary film and TV news.   Mindy Kaling is set to star in a HBO Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Here are the best reviewed books of the week.

Jess Walter’s The Cold Millions, Bryan Washington’s Memorial, Martin Amis’ Inside Story, and Evan Osnos’ Joe Biden all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”   Read more >

By Book Marks

Read Percy Shelley's review of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

As the story goes, eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley came up with the idea for Frankenstein one dreary summer night in 1816 while she and the poet Percy Shelley (her then lover, later husband), were vacationing in the Swiss Alps with Lord Byron, Read more >

By Book Marks

When Boris Pasternak, under fire from Soviet authorities, turned down a Nobel Prize.

Sixty-two years ago, Boris Pasternak was having a bad day. The Russian author had received the Nobel Prize for Literature several days before, having recently garnered international acclaim for his landmark work Doctor Zhivago, which had been published in Italy Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Screen legend Sophia Loren is back in an adaptation of a Goncourt Prize-winning novel.

The late French author Romain Gary is the only writer to have won France’s most prestigious literary award under two names: he received the Prix Goncourt for The Roots of Heaven (Les Racines du ciel; 1956) under his birth name and, more Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Are bookstores essential businesses? In France, they’re making the case.

As Europe goes back into pandemic lockdown French bookstores are making the case to remain open, despite the fact bars and restaurants will be closing. Citing fears of increasing “cultural isolation” bookstore associations are joining with publishers to demand classification Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Mindy Kaling is set to star in an adaptation of Jennifer Weiner's Good in Bed.

Two rom-com titans are getting into bed together over at HBO with the announcement that Mindy Kaling will produce and star in a movie adaptation of Jennifer Weiner’s debut novel, Good in Bed. According to EW, the semi-autobiographical novel, which Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Rachel Cusk's Outline trilogy is getting the perfect audiobook narrator.

Yes, it’s Kristin Scott Thomas, our most recent Mrs. Danvers and our forever Fiona. Can’t you just imagine her as the narrator of Cusk’s cool-toned autofictions? The best part is, she got the gig because she’s a fan. “Faber heard Read more >

By Emily Temple

A new mentorship collective for BIPOCs is taking applications now.

With the end of the year (unbelievably) approaching, there’s a new opportunity for writers of color to kick off 2021: a new mentorship program, created by some of the most accomplished writers in journalism and literary media today, is taking Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Arthur Miller's impressive personal library is going to the New York Public Library.

The New York Public Library is getting its Christmas gifts early this year—all 692 of them. Thanks largely to Arthur Miller’s family, a massive collection of the dramatist’s plays, books, translations, anthologies, and more spanning the years 1928 to 2012 Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Independent bookstores need a second wave of your support NOW.

Book sales might be doing ok, but not enough people are buying those books at their local independent bookstores. That’s bad. Stores are hurting, even Paris’s iconic Shakespeare and Co. On the day this site launched I wrote about my Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Someone is finally shooting Adam Sandler into space.

Adam Sandler—the man who helped Kevin James and Rob Schneider become multi-millionaires and who, in a three-decade career, has made four decent movies and fifty…other movies—is set to star in a Netflix adaptation of Jaroslav Kalfar’s 2017 debut novel, Spaceman of Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

The Addams Family is actually about the importance of books.

They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and . . . book-y? Yes, the Addams Family may have a monstrous manservant and a severed hand for a pet and a high-pitched mop of a cousin, but today I’d like to turn Read more >

By Katie Yee

Wole Soyinka is publishing his first novel in five decades.

This one goes out to all the writers in the Year of our Lord 2020, as we all worry that our total inability to put a sentence together could turn into a lifetime of non-production: It’s never too late. Wole Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Edward Gorey designed the sets for the 1970s Broadway production of Dracula.

In 1977, Dracula came back to Broadway. Frank Langella played the lead in this production of the play by Hamilton Deane and John Balderston. The last time this show had been brought to Broadway, the lead had been Bela Lugosi. Read more >

By Olivia Rutigliano

The new cover of Bazaar Art is based on a Margaret Atwood poem.

Here’s an unusual bit of adaptation news: the painter Michaela Yearwood-Dan has created a limited edition cover for the November issue of Harper’s Bazaar‘s Bazaar Art based on Margaret Atwood’s poem “Feather,” from her latest book Dearly, her first collection of poetry Read more >

By Emily Temple

Noted billboard copywriters The Lincoln Project may be getting into publishing?

These days, if you’re any good at Twitter or Tik Tok and have a little money, you start to think maybe you can pull off a hydra-headed IP clearing house that takes teeny, tiny, little ideas and turns them into Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

16 new books to buy from your local indie bookstore this week.

With Halloween fast-approaching, I feel the need (along with every other person on the book internet) to remind you that one of the scariest things imaginable might happen: your local indie bookstore might close. Their fate is in your hands. Read more >

By Katie Yee