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News, Notes, Talk

Here are six movie adaptations that drastically changed their novels’ endings.

With very few exceptions, if I’ve even partially enjoyed a book, and someone has bothered to adapt that book into a movie, I will seek out and watch said movie. Often this proves a mistake, and my pleasant memories of Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Poetry magazine will skip its September issue to address its "deep-seated white supremacy."

For the first time in more than a century, Poetry magazine will cease printing for a month, the editors announced this week. The decision comes nearly two months after the poetry community rose up in protest against the magazine and Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Powell's Books will stop selling books through Amazon due to its "detrimental impact" on stores.

With this year’s Independent Bookstore Day occurring at a particularly rough time for booksellers, the iconic Powell’s Books in Portland has decided to make a statement and stop selling through Amazon. In a statement, owner Emily Powell notes that the Read more >

By Corinne Segal

A writer's retreat in Tokyo will treat you like a Real Author, deadlines, nosy editors, and all.

We may not all be able to churn out a book during this pandemic, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a bare-knuckle, nose-to-the-grindstone writing experience. One Tokyo inn has fully embraced the “writer” part of a writer’s retreat with Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

I just want to listen to the sound of this 16th century book on loop.

If you’re in need of a moment of aural respite, here’s one courtesy of Marsh’s Library, a “perfectly preserved library of the early Enlightenment in central Dublin.” (Also known as “the library that put readers in cages.”) Marsh’s Library, which Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

After a vote, Carlin Romano will remain on the NBCC board.

The latest in the ongoing controversy at the National Book Critics Circle: after a “special meeting” on Monday, over 130 members of the NBCC met to vote on whether or not to remove Carlin Romano from its board. Romano, you’ll Read more >

By Emily Temple

The Discomfort of Evening has won the International Booker Prize.

The International Booker Prize is awarded annually to the best book written in any language, translated into English, and published in the UK or Ireland. It comes with a whopping £50,000—shared equally between the author and translator. This year, the Read more >

By Katie Yee

Heads up: The American Masters documentary of Ursula K. Le Guin is streaming for free.

If you’re looking for new ways to fill these waning days of our pandemic summer, here’s a good one: watch Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, a documentary of the author produced with Le Guin’s participation over the course of a Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

The way you pull your favorite books off the shelf is probably ruining them.

Many of us have been spending a lot more time with our book collections than usual—just another side effect of staying at home all the time. But if you’ve been idly wondering whether your books have been getting the TLC Read more >

By Emily Temple

Helen Macdonald wishes she'd never read On the Road.

Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them. This week, we spoke to H Is for Hawk and Vesper Flights author Helen Macdonald. * Book Marks: First book you remember Read more >

By Book Marks

Writers Against Trump wants to mobilize the literary community in advance of the election.

With voter registration deadlines approaching and misinformation around voter fraud spreading, a newly-formed coalition of writers is volunteering their time to defeat Donald Trump in the presidential election this fall. The group, Writers Against Trump—whose initial members include Paul Auster, Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Happy pub day to the first mainstream children's book featuring a Sikh character.

A groundbreaking children’s book based on an equally groundbreaking sports hero comes out today: Fauja Singh Keeps Going by Simran Jeet Singh, featuring the story of the first centenarian marathon runner, is also the first children’s book from a major Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Do we really need another book about Henry David Thoreau?

Long a part of the BIG CANON OF IMPORTANT AMERICANS, Thoreau is also a part of that less vaunted group of writers judged severely by the quality of diehard fan they inspire (think Kerouac, Bukowski, Hemingway)—wild-eyed young men hurling themselves Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

I have more than 600 postcards from a guy who made them into a literary genre.

If we’re lucky, we can recall that teacher in our lives who helped change the way we saw something about the world by unsettling a previously entrenched perspective on art, politics, or something of the kind. It sometimes happens that Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Make room in your TBR pile for these 20 books coming out today.

The Bangles gave the world Manic Monday, and now, dear reader, it is New Book Tuesday. (Can we make that a thing? #newboosday) Here we’ve got the latest from Helen Macdonald, Ali Smith, Daisy Johnson, Joy Harjo, Erin Brockovich, and more. Read more >

By Katie Yee

Everything is terrible except the "Books" subreddit.

I tend to try to avoid the dark crevices of the internet, because I have a terrible sense of direction and could easily get lost for hours. Or days. I had never even stumbled onto Reddit until a few years Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Virginia Woolf's writing room (of her own) was actually . . . quite filthy.

Virginia Woolf is famous, among other things, for declaring that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” But did you know that Woolf’s own room for writing fiction was a Read more >

By Emily Temple

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton on Jacqueline Woodson, Octavia Butler, and Beloved's sex scene.

Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them. This week, we spoke to The Revisioners author Margaret Wilkerson Sexton. * Book Marks: First book you remember loving? Margaret Wilkerson Sexton: Read more >

By Book Marks

Vanity Fair's new masthead includes Jesmyn Ward, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Kiese Laymon.

A fiction prompt: Imagine you are Vanity Fair editor Radhika Jones. You wake up about a month or so after the hard, devastating flex that was the Viola Davis cover. Okay, cool. Earlier in August, you got people excited again with the Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Here are the best reviewed books of the week.

  Helen Macdonald’s Vesper Flights, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s The Discomfort of Evening, Jay Parini’s Borges and Me, and Rick Perlstein’s Reaganland all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week.   Fiction 1. The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Read more >

By Book Marks