Yes, as it turns out, Miss Havisham, the aggrieved and decrepit antagonist of Charles Dickens’s novel Great Expectations—the wealthy lady who has never taken off the wedding dress she wore when her fiancé jilted her at the alter a lifetime Read more >
The Aspen Institute has just announced the shortlist for their Aspen Words Literary Prize, an annual award honoring a work of fiction that highlights important contemporary issues. This year’s finalists were selected by Alexander Chee, Amy Garmer, Saeed Jones, Helen Read more >
Literary Hub is pleased to announce that submissions are now open for the fourth annual Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize, which awards $1,000 to an outstanding book collection conceived and built by a young woman, aged 30 or younger, Read more >
Today would have been Toni Morrison’s 89th birthday, and if you can’t make it to one of the many celebrations going on in her honor around the country, you should at least indulge in reading her words—and also, perhaps, in Read more >
Deadline earlier today reported the truly stupendous news that Oscar- and Tony-winning playwright and filmmaker (and current squeeze of the all-conquering Phoebe Waller-Bridge) Martin McDonagh will soon be reuniting his In Bruges stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson for The Banshees of Inisheer, Read more >
According to Vulture, a juror in the Harvey Weinstein rape and sexual assault trial narrowly avoided being dismissed because of [checks notes] her positive review of the novel My Dark Vanessa. The juror had published a review of My Dark Vanessa—which Read more >
I am ready. I have repented my sins and soon I will be in heaven with Christ my savior. Now I must die like a man. –Marshal Rooster Cogburn, True Grit Charles Portis, the reclusive one-time newspaperman and author Read more >
Today, February 18th, 2020, would have been Toni Morrison’s 89th birthday. Though she lived a full life, her death last summer felt unusually abrupt for many people, myself included. I had seen The Pieces I Am, a moving documentary about 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 >
A letter to the editor of a local paper in central Maine published this morning offers a snapshot of the barriers to reading that can still exist in communities with public libraries—and how those barriers are affecting one person who’s Read more >
Once, years ago, on a drive through rural east Galway, I heard a radio advertisement for a warehouse sale taking place that week. “Everyone’s talking about ceramic tiles and low cost wooden flooring!” it boasted. Well, the time of flooring Read more >
There comes a time in every parent’s life when they briefly think, “Wow, I bet I could easily write and publish a really great children’s book and make a lot of money.” Thankfully, most do not even try… Not so Read more >
Who says that two opposing impulses can’t be true, or that a country can’t be simultaneously defined by its patterns of inclusion and exclusion? Today, as The New York Times reports, the Trump administration is sending border patrol agents to sanctuary cities Read more >
In Istanbul on Friday, the Turkish novelist and journalist Aslı Erdoğan was acquitted of multiple charges against her, including accusations of involvement with a terrorist organization and “undermining national unity.” Another charge that blamed Erdoğan for spreading “terrorist propaganda” was Read more >
You really have to admire the vision/insanity of someone who looks at Margaret Atwood’s trilogy of nightmarish cli-fi novels—Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam—and thinks to himself: this would make a hell of a ballet. That insane Read more >
Well this is weird: our vain and demented grifter president is obsessed with badgers. According to The Guardian, details are emerging from Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng’s new book—Sinking in the Swamp: How Trump’s Minions and Misfits Poisoned Washington—that Donald Read more >
The New York Public Library is marking its 125th birthday this year—in part with this list of their favorite books written for adults from the past 125 years, which they hope will “inspire a lifelong love of reading.” The list Read more >
As we all know, there is only one Valentine and it is every book. Luckily, Harrison Ford talking about how great libraries are is an acceptable human Valentine proxy for all books. Why—besides the fact that you can’t spell”Harrison Ford, you Read more >
In recognition of Black History Month and the 150th anniversary of the 15th Amendment’s passage, which (theoretically) enabled black men to vote, the District of Columbia Public Library (DCPL) has been organizing events around the theme of “African Americans and Read more >
The protagonist of Jenny Offill’s new novel, Weather, is Lizzie Benson, a graduate school dropout turned college librarian who is armed with random information and really good at suggesting ways to survive an impending apocalypse. The staff at Literary Hub, deeply concerned Read more >
