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News, Notes, Talk

I am obsessed with these strangely specific, yet utterly general Hallmark cards.

I first encountered them at a Walgreens in Iowa. The card was long and thin, with a backdrop of blurry purple flowers and a sentiment printed in a cousin of Lucinda Handwriting: There’s no taking back / what I did Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

A British comedian is writing a "sexy-but-sensible" diary of her (imagined) life with Jürgen Klopp.

Everyone loves Jürgen Klopp. Even I, a longtime Man United fan who finds Liverpool FC’s COVID-interrupted title run almost as hilarious as Steven Gerrard’s slip, love Jürgen Klopp. For those of you unfamiliar with the Champions League-winning Liverpool manager, Klopp Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

This new database shows the reading habits of major 20th-century authors.

When Sylvia Beach, the New Jersey native who published Ulysses and opened Paris’ Shakespeare and Co. (“the most famous bookstore in the world”), died in 1962, Princeton University purchased and catalogued her papers. This trove of materials reveals, among other things, the Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

10 reflections on Orson Welles' drunken champagne commercial outtakes.

Distracted as we are by November’s Clash of the Predators, by the grim slog of the ongoing COVID crisis, by our tiger kings and our last dances and our normal people, we almost forgot about what is, unquestionably, the most Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

An open letter from writers, artists and scientists argues that there's no "back to normal."

Even as local leaders start to talk about re-opening businesses, an open letter signed by artists, writers, and scientists around the world asserts that there is no “going back to normal” beyond the coronavirus pandemic. Anne Carson, Naomi Klein, and Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Elisabeth Moss is playing Shirley Jackson in a new movie, and it looks insanely good.

Um, did everyone else know that there was a movie in the works with Elisabeth Moss playing Shirley Jackson and Michael Stuhlbarg playing her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman? I for one did not, but after seeing the trailer, which dropped Read more >

By Emily Temple

Anything can be a Penguin Classic with this handy cover generator.

There’s a certain gravitas about a Penguin Classic. I mean, any idiot can publish a book, but not all of them are approved by the cutest flightless bird in the southern hemisphere. Well now, thanks to Nicholas Love’s neat cover Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Watership Down author Richard Adams once called his dog as a witness in a hearing.

Today is the centenary of the birth of Richard Adams, author of Watership Down, surely your favorite novel about adventuring rabbits. So when better to revisit the time that Adams, who died in 2016, called his own dog, a Welsh Read more >

By Emily Temple

Whoa, oh, oh, James Patterson is writing a book with Guns N' Roses.

James Patterson certainly isn’t a stranger to surprising collaborations. His The President is Missing, a political thriller that credits Patterson and Bill Clinton as co-authors (Co-parents? Idea generators?), was one of 2018’s bestselling books and Showtime will be adapting it for TV. If Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

How to feel better about doing nothing right now.

It’s official: We have now reached the “dyeing our clothes with beets” stage of quarantine. But there is another way. Take a deep breath. Leave your beets alone. Read these stories about doing nothing, and then, maybe, if it’s an Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Ed Roberson has won the $70,000 Jackson Poetry Prize.

Poets & Writers has just named Ed Roberson the winner of this year’s Jackson Poetry Prize, which celebrates an American poet of exceptional talent and comes with a purse of $70,000. For the past 14 years, this prize has provided Read more >

By Katie Yee

On the time Wallace Stevens broke his hand on Ernest Hemingway's face.

No one will be surprised by this but yes, two of the most combative and competitive literary men of the 20th century once hit each other. Our story opens in February of 1936 in Key West—really the perfect place for Read more >

By Olivia Rutigliano

Watch some very nerdy writers debating important fantasy topics.

If you are currently living out your quarantine with an argumentative reader of fantasy and science fiction (possibly this person is your child, who knows), or if you aren’t but would like to be, you may get a kick out Read more >

By Emily Temple

Here's a guide to creating your own "darkness residency."

Living in a state of quarantine right now involves developing a strange, contradictory relationship to stimulus; the quiet pace of life indoors belies the frantic, endless flow of news from outside, if you choose to follow it. A Delicate Sight, Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Anthony Fauci was the inspiration for the "erotic hero" in a 1991 romance novel.

Well, well, well. It looks like 2020 isn’t the only year with a concerning case of the hots for Dr. Anthony Fauci. But while today’s lust stems from the NIAID director’s pandemic-related competence, in 1991 he played a slightly more Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Read the opening of Sayaka Murata's newest novel, coming in October.

If you, like me, loved Sayaka Murata’s 2019 novel Convenience Store Woman, I have some good news for you: Murata’s next novel, Earthlings, also translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, is slated to hit shelves in October, and it is about Read more >

By Emily Temple

Kill some time with this 19th century character trope generator.

Recently on Twitter (because where else does anyone go these days), I was alerted to this 19th Century Character Trope Generator, which is . . . well, exactly what it says and no more. It is surprisingly diverting for such Read more >

By Emily Temple

These are the best university press book designs of 2019.

The Association of University Presses has announced its selections for the 2019 AUPresses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show, now in its 55th year. The selected books will be displayed at the Association of University Presses Annual Meeting (digital this year), and Read more >

By Emily Temple

20 new books publishing today, day 723 at home.

The future may be uncertain, but one thing we can always count on is the bunch of new books that come into the world every Tuesday. Welcome, friends. * Emma Straub, All Adults Here  (Riverhead) “Straub cements her status as a Read more >

By Katie Yee

Colson Whitehead, Jericho Brown, and Anne Boyer just won Pulitzer Prizes.

The winners of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes were just announced via video stream. Originally scheduled for April 20th, the announcement was postponed this year because of the pandemic. The award ceremony, typically held in May at Columbia University, will be Read more >

By Katie Yee