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News, Notes, Talk

Lady Gaga's organization is publishing an anthology about kindness.

Boy do we need it. Lady Gaga and her organization, the Born This Way Foundation, have announced that they’ll be publishing an anthology later this year called Channel Kindness: Stories of Kindness and Community.  All of the anthology’s authors are contributors Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

In honor of Jack Kerouac's 98th birthday, let's look back at his time as a Gap model.

Chaos reigns throughout the world, but we should still take a moment to remember Jack Kerouac, Beat-turned-khaki icon, on his birthday. Gap was able to license the photos of Kerouac it used in the 1993 campaign when the feuding relatives Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Women racked up the prizes from the American Academy of Arts and Letters this year.

Yesterday, the American Academy of Arts and Letters announced that the winner of the $100,000 Christopher Lightfoot Walker Award is poet and essayist Leslie Marmon Silko, best known for her writings on her Laguna Pueblo heritage and for the vital Read more >

By Katie Yee

Digital readers are more likely to be writers than print-only readers, says a new report.

Sorry, typeset loyalists: A new report from the National Endowment for the Arts is making digital and audio readers look great. The report, based on responses to the 2017 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, shows that digital and Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Update: NYC public libraries are suspending all programs and closing to the public through March.

UPDATE: On Friday, March 13, the New York Public Library announced that all branches would be closing to the public, beginning on Saturday, March 14, through at least Tuesday, March 31. Have books out? Outdoor book drops will also be closed, Read more >

By Emily Temple

Americanah producer wins screen rights to Girl, Woman, Other.

Good news for fans of smart literary adaptations: it looks like Bernardine Evaristo’s Booker Prize-winner Girl, Woman, Other will soon be made into a prestige TV show by the producers of The Constant Gardner, The Little Friend and the upcoming Lupita Nyong’o-starring HBO adaptation Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Raymond Chandler originally wanted Cary Grant to Play Philip Marlowe.

Humphrey Bogart will go down in history as the actor most associated with the detective character Phillip Marlowe, but he wasn’t the first actor to play him, and he wasn’t author Raymond Chandler’s first preference. In 1944, the washed-up musical Read more >

By Olivia Rutigliano

This 1940s Dutch children's book depicts Hitler as a bug who eventually gets eaten.

Attending last week’s New York’s Antiquarian Book Fair, I came across an unusual children’s book: Kriebeltje de Boskabouter (in English: Tickle, the Forest-Gnome). One of the current listings at the rare books dealership Type Punch Matrix, this Dutch children’s paperback Read more >

By Olivia Rutigliano

The cutest feud on Twitter is between a parks department and library in Colorado.

A library just outside Denver was telling people to stay inside before it was cool—and, in the process, having a (pretty adorable) Twitter feud with its local parks department. Jefferson County Public Library dunks on the outdoors every chance it Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Got $200k to spare? Why not bid on this miniature, handwritten Harry Potter book?

Do you consider yourself a hard-core Potterhead? Did you defy your Veron Dursley-esque stepfather by joining the college Quidditch team? Did a rough breakup prompt an ill-advised dalliance with Snapism? Is your work commute enlivened by the dulcet tones of Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Here are the finalists for the 2020 Lambda Literary Awards!

For the past 32 years, the Lambda Literary Awards have been championing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender writers. Past recipients of these awards include Audre Lorde, Alison Bechdel, Roxane Gay, and Michael Cunningham. This year’s award ceremony will be held Read more >

By Katie Yee

A decades-old cookie was found in a centuries-old book.

Sometimes the most interesting thing about a story is what is left unsaid… or uneaten. A tweet by the Cambridge University Library Special Collections account has been circulating ever since one employee made an unusual find in a 1529 edition Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Under quarantine in South Korea? You can now read 50,000 books for free.

This week, amid a deluge of vaguely horrifying, opportunistic-seeming quarantine-related reading lists, here’s something that seems genuinely good: a South Korean e-book startup is waiving its subscription fee for coronavirus patients and people under quarantine in the country. “We hope Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Still a bad person after watching The Good Place? Michael Schur is writing a book for you.

Today, Simon & Schuster announced their acquisition of the first book by Michael Schur, creator of postmodern morality play and philosophical sitcom The Good Place, otherwise known as the best thing on television for a while there. How to Be Good: Read more >

By Emily Temple

10 new books to read this week . . . in the midst of everything.

Every week, the TBR pile grows a little bit more. It’s getting precarious. It’s taking up your whole nightstand. It’s threatening to crush you in your sleep. Well, what are you waiting for? Get cracking. What are you reading this Read more >

By Katie Yee

Congratulations to Patricia Highsmith, who brought Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas together.

The internet is abuzz today with the news that Ben Affleck—perhaps the most famous Bostonian with an enormous phoenix tattooed on his back—and the star, most recently, of Knives Out Ana de Armas are, to quote Page Six quoting a bystander to Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

I can't look away from these delirious paintings of anthropomorphized books.

Over the weekend, I stumbled across the work of British artist Jonathan Wolstenholme, whose watercolors depict, among other things, anthropomorphized old books engaged in various situations, many of them literary. According to his website, his paintings “derive from a love Read more >

By Emily Temple

Woody Allen's memoir has been cancelled. (Proof that protest works!)

In a statement, Hachette Book Group has announced that it has cancelled its publication of Woody Allen’s memoir, Apropos of Nothing, which was originally scheduled for release in April 2020. Hachette will return all rights to the author. “The decision Read more >

By Emily Temple

With help from kids, a 90-year-old Sri Lankan author set a new world record for alternate endings.

If you thought the Choose Your Own Adventure books were magical, one Sri Lankan children’s book author might be up your alley. Sybil Wettasinghe, the 90-year-old author of The Umbrella Thief, a classic children’s book in Sri Lanka, set a new Guinness Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

The Obamas, the Russos, and Riz Ahmed are adapting Mohsin Hamid's Exit West.

Step aside Bad Company, Traveling Wilburys, Audioslave, The Highwaymen, and yes, even my beloved Velvet Revolver, because the supergroup we never knew we always wanted has finally been formed. Joe & Anthony Russo, Barack & Michelle Obama, Riz Ahmed, and Read more >

By Dan Sheehan