The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

I don't know who needs to hear this, but please stop going into bookstores and kicking the books.

Yesterday, Business Insider published a list of 10 things you should never do in bookstores (according to booksellers). Some of 10 warn you against low-grade jerk behavior (like: don’t photograph staff recommendations and then buy those books somewhere else, and don’t hide Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Here is the 2020 International Booker Prize longlist (with good news for indie presses).

The longlist for this year’s International Booker Prize is out, and small presses already have reasons to celebrate: nine of the titles that made the cut come from independent publishers. The book, given every year to a book that’s published Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Bestselling author and real-life Hemingway hero Clive Cussler has died.

Clive Cussler, the author of more than 85 books, written over 4 decades, died at home on Monday, February 24, at the age of 88. Cussler was a major bestseller in his lifetime, selling over 100 million copies of his Read more >

By Emily Temple

Meet AROUND B, the book bot butler.

Maybe I would hate it if it weren’t so cute. I’m talking about AROUND B, a little book bot butler created by Kim Seungwoo and Kyumin Ha of Naver Labs. What is a book bot butler? Glad you asked. The idea Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Will the new adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities still have Big Dickens Energy?

His Dark Materials writer Jack Thorne is set to bring some of that evergreen Big Dickens Energy to the small screen in the form of an upcoming series adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities. Thorne will write and executive produce Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Coronavirus is affecting the Italian publishing industry in a big way.

There’s no bigger global news story right now than the slow but intractable spread of coronavirus, which has been hobbling the normal ebb and flow of everything from the stock market to cruises, theme parks and tourism. The virus has affected Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Volunteer-run, makeshift libraries are popping up at Indian protest sites.

This week, the ongoing protests in India in response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s controversial new citizenship law, which discriminates against Indian Muslims, have intensified and turned violent. But one bright spot is the fact that, as Maroosha Muzaffar reports Read more >

By Emily Temple

Someone wrote a children’s book based on The Office and I will never let my child read it.

I do not understand why you would turn to The Office for anything other than its grimly comic tableaux of late-capitalist malaise and self-deluded mediocrity. Apparently I have missed its potential to teach 4- to 8-year-olds the “importance of teamwork” Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Taco Bell Quarterly is the literary magazine you didn't know you needed.

It happened yesterday at 7:59pm. My dear friend and colleague, Olivia Rutigliano, sent me a text that I’ll never forget. It was a screenshot of her Twitter notifications. Taco Bell Quarterly (@TBQuarterly) had followed her. What is Taco Bell Quarterly? Is Read more >

By Katie Yee

E. L. James' latest sexy novel is coming to the big screen.

Good news for all you lusty E. L. James fans out there: the queen of derided-but-lucrative erotic fiction is headed back to Hollywood. Universal Pictures, the studio that brought her all-conquering Fifty Shades trilogy to the big screen, has this week Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Ariana Reines wins the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.

Congratulations to poet Ariana Reines, who just received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for her latest collection, A Sand Book, which touches on climate change, sexual trauma, ghosting, and other aspects of being alive today. The prize, established 28 years Read more >

By Katie Yee

Here are the most popular self-help books in every state.

They say you can tell a lot about a state by the self-help books its residents read. (Someone has probably said that at some point, anyway.) Lhasa OMS, an acupuncture supply company (okay!), looked at data from Google Trends from Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Who should star in the upcoming BBC adaptation of Conversations With Friends?

Sally Rooney’s takeover of the world continues apace today with the announcement that the Irish literary phenom’s debut novel Conversations With Friends will be adapted into a twelve-part series for the BBC. Like the upcoming BBC/Hulu adaptation of Rooney’s 2019 juggernaut Normal Read more >

By Literary Hub

Judy Blume's Summer Sisters—the sexiest book I read in seventh grade—will be a series.

Judy Blume’s Summer Sisters, a coming-of-age novel about best friends who spend the summers together on Martha’s Vineyard, will be a limited series on Hulu, with Liz Tigelaar, the writer and showrunner of the upcoming Little Fires Everywhere adaptation, as its Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

The Supreme Court won't hear Jon Krakauer's case over records from the University of Montana.

For years, Jon Krakauer has been trying to find out exactly how a Montana education official was involved in the case of a college student who avoided expulsion after being accused of rape. On Monday, the Supreme Court said it Read more >

By Corinne Segal

10 shiny new books you should pick up this week.

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

Toni Morrison, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, and Lupita Nyong'o won NAACP Image Awards.

This past Saturday, the 51st NAACP Image Award winners were announced at a ceremony in California. The annual event celebrates the achievements of people of color in the arts (hello, Lizzo, Entertainer of the Year, I love you), and highlights Read more >

By Katie Yee

Jane Goodall is writing a new book, and it sounds very . . . optimistic.

With any kind of environment-related hope in increasingly short supply, the title and press language for Jane Goodall’s new book seem both refreshing and a little bit like literary time travel. The Book of Hope, which will be published in Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Elon Musk learns all the wrong lessons from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy.

Elon Musk made a tweet about a book. Specifically, a lukewarm recommendation of Isaac Asimov’s seminal sci-fi trilogy Foundation, which, according to a 2017 Rolling Stone interview, taught Musk that “you should try to take the set of actions that Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

If you have £2.5 million, you can buy one of Charles Dickens' "favourite lodging houses."

Today in literary real estate: would you like to buy Bleak House, the Broadstairs, Kent summer home where Charles Dickens wrote “the greater part” of David Copperfield? (Despite its name, Bleak House had nothing to do with the writing of Bleak Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor