The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Reagan Arthur named as publisher of Knopf.

The smoke has been spotted at the corner of Broadway and 56th Street, and Reagan Arthur has been announced as the new publisher of Knopf. Amazingly, Arthur is only the fourth person to helm one of the most important publishing Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Exclusive: watch the trailer for The Booksellers, a new documentary about rare book dealers.

Have you ever dreamed of becoming an antiquarian bookseller? Or just wanted to get to know one better? Or maybe you just like old books a lot. Either way, this is the documentary for you. Directed by D.W. Young and Read more >

By Emily Temple

We're finally getting a TV adaptation of The House on Mango Street.

For a long time, Sandra Cisneros resisted the idea of having her much-loved 1983 classic, The House on Mango Street, adapted for the screen. But the Chicago-born author changed her mind, according to Deadline, because of renewed attention on Latinx immigration narratives Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

The new publisher of The Paris Review is Mona Simpson.

The Paris Review Foundation has announced the appointment of bestselling novelist Mona Simpson as the venerable magazine’s new publisher. As today’s press release details, Simpson—the author of six novels and the recipient of numerous literary accolades including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Bret Easton Ellis thinks people only liked the American Psycho film because of "woke-ness."

Yesterday, MovieMaker published an oral history of the film adaption of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho (a book that Roger Rosenblatt described, in his review in The New York Times, as “the journal Dorian Gray would have written had he been a Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Jeanine Cummins addresses the American Dirt controversy.

Today, Jeanine Cummins appeared at Winter Institute in Baltimore, and as Michael Cader reports for Publishers Lunch, commented on the ongoing controversy over her new novel, American Dirt. Bookseller Javier Ramirez, who introduced Cummins, brought up the topic at the Read more >

By Emily Temple

In 2021, The Great Gatsby will be up for grabs.

Though we can’t know what our world will look like a year from now, at least one thing will be true: The Great Gatsby’s copyright will expire at the end of 2020, officially inducting F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age classic into the Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Here's what you need to know about the biggest literary controversy of the decade (so far).

As you may have noticed if you’re a person who follows Literary Twitter in any fashion, online controversy over Jeanine Cummins’ new novel American Dirt exploded over the weekend. If you aren’t, or if you were engaging in a digital Read more >

By Emily Temple

10 new books to add to your TBR pile.

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

Today on Scottish Twitter: Shell asks poet laureate of profanity Irvine Welsh “not to swear.”  

Can you imagine running a corporate Twitter account and publicly asking Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh not to swear? If you can, maybe you are “Sara” from @ShellEnergy. As people often now do when faced with the infuriatingly scripted, labyrinthine misinformation Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Lee Child wanted to kill Jack Reacher—but instead he's giving him to his little brother.

According to The Guardian, Lee Child, whose popular Jack Reacher books (and by popular, I mean over 100 million books sold in 49 languages across 101 territories) are soon to become an Amazon series, is quitting his most famous character. Read more >

By Emily Temple

Do you even love books if you haven’t collected all of these independent bookseller cards?

Canadian independent publisher (and bookstore!) Biblioasis has printed up a limited run of indie bookseller trading cards, featuring heroic comic book portraits of prominent booksellers. Why? Well, for starters, this week is the annual independent booksellers conference in Baltimore, the Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

The new Little Fires Everywhere trailer is lit in more ways than one.

As you, devoted reader of The Hub, might recall, just before the holidays we were gifted this teaser trailer for the TV adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere. Celeste Ng’s bestselling novel (her claim to flame, if you will) is about Read more >

By Katie Yee

Here's the first trailer for the adaptation of Normal People.

Attention Sally Rooney stans: the first trailer for the 12-part BBC Three adaptation of Normal People, easily one of the most anticipated small screen literary adaptations of the year, is here. “There’s room for different voices in TV now,” director Read more >

By Emily Temple

This is your child's brain on books. It looks a lot different from your child's brain on screens.

A recent study done by the Reading & Literacy Discovery Center of Cincinnati’s Children’s Hospital has shown that too much exposure to screens for children under five years old can have significant impact on brain development. In some ways, this Read more >

By Emily Temple

When a Swedish poet tried to sabotage Samuel Beckett.

It’s true. According to the Guardian, fifty years after Sammy B deservedly won the Nobel Prize—for a body of work which by then included the plays Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Krapp’s Last Tape, as well as the novels Molloy, Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

The BBC's adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Night Watch series looks pretty great.

I have been waiting this since I was 15 (which is, at this point, literally half my life) and now that Sam Vimes and his lovable band of ne’er-do-wells, derelicts, reluctant nobles, and other officers of the Night Watch is Read more >

By Molly Odintz

A round of ap-paws for this bookstore, where you can also adopt a cat!

Sometimes you just have to read between the lines—the felines, that is! There’s something about books and cats that just go together. You’ve probably met your fair share of bookshop cats, but have you ever stumbled into a store looking Read more >

By Katie Yee

A new Missouri bill proposes jailing librarians who provide children "age-inappropriate" books.

A proposed law in Missouri would fine, and possibly jail, librarians who provide books to children that a parental board deemed inappropriate, a policy so extreme that it has attracted national attention. House Bill 2044, or “the Parental Oversight of Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Amazon is bringing Lee Child's Jack Reacher to the small screen.

That’s right, Lee Child fanatics (Lee Children?): not content with the runaway success of its other jacked Jack vehicle (the John Krasinski-starring Jack Ryan), Amazon Studios has this week greenlit Jack Reacher, a TV drama based on the former US Army Read more >

By Dan Sheehan