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 >
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 >
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 >
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 >
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 >
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 >
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 >
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 >
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 >
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 >
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 >
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 >
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 >
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 >
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 >
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 >
Since 1988, the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism has been shining a light on journalists who call attention to vital current events or societal issues. The titles up for consideration this year tackle Read more >
Is your temperature starting to rise? Been feeling achy lately? Could be a return of Ferrante Fever. The second season of HBO’s gorgeous, luxuriously slow adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet will be premiering on March 16th—and in the meantime, Read more >
Never meet your heroes, kids. I’ve got sad news for you. Turns out, Ben Jonson, the renowned Elizabethan playwright and the first poet laureate of England, was a murderer. On September 22nd, 1598, when he was an (angry) young man Read more >
Are you the parent of a child with an unfortunate predilection for picking their nose or robbing other people’s orchards? If so, help has arrived in the form of some centuries-old, recently digitized books, now available on the British Library’s Read more >
