Talk about a pivot: after philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote his first book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, he grew unhappy, abandoned his teaching post at Cambridge, and started teaching elementary school in rural Austria. The dictionary he created for his students during his Read more >
Deadline announced this morning that Kate Atkinson’s bestselling, award-winning 2014 novel Life After Life is getting the prestige television treatment with the BBC green-lighting a four-part series miniseries adaptation. House Productions have assembled an impressive creative team to bring the Read more >
I had a sixth grade math teacher who told us about Frank Zappa’s children, Moon Unit and Dweezil, and used their names in word problems every class. He made towering realistic paper maché dragons. He was muscular and terrifying. This Read more >
Today, Penguin Random House announced the launch of its new publishing imprint with Roc Nation, an entertainment agency founded by Shawn Carter, known by most as Jay-Z. The imprint, aptly named Roc Lit 101, will focus on publishing “genre-defying literature” Read more >
As you may already know if you’re a frequent reader of this space, I love thinking about book covers. One particular sub-pleasure of this is comparing US and UK covers; it’s fascinating to see different designers’ takes on the same Read more >
This Halloween was . . . admittedly not the best, but next year’s is already shaping up to be much better—now that a collection of original stories in tribute to the late horror writer Shirley Jackson, featuring Joyce Carol Oates Read more >
Weather by Jenny Offill (Knopf) Congratulations to Jenny Offill, who fought off stiff competition (in the form of Garth Greenwell’s Cleanness and Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel, among others) to claim the (much-coveted) title of Best Reviewed Novel Read more >
John le Carré, whose given name was David Cornwell, died on Saturday, December 12, at the age of 89. The cause was pneumonia, his publisher, Penguin Random House, announced in a statement on Sunday. The best-selling author and onetime actual Read more >
For Chanukah this year, we’re looking back—not back to the Maccabees, but still pretty far back. Today we’re “shining a light” (ha ha ha) on some medieval manuscripts that deal with Chanukah. Enjoy! The David Bar Pesah Mahzor, 14th-century Germany. Read more >
Some good holiday news: Costa Coffee and literacy charity The Reading Agency have teamed up to donate 100,000 books to groups hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic. In total, 50,000 book-and-coffee care packages will be donated to food banks, community Read more >
Colorado bookstore chain Tattered Cover has been acquired by an investment group that includes Kwame Spearman, who is Black, an arrangement that has led to more than a few stories referring to Tattered Cover as “the largest Black-owned bookstore in Read more >
Disaffected thinkers smoking cigarettes listening to jazz records and gazing from your unadorned apartments onto sprawling urban landscapes, rejoice! Haruki Murakami is hosting a New Year’s Eve radio special live from a studio in Kyoto. The special will be aired Read more >
For a while, Melania Trump has teased that she might write a book after the Trump family exits the White House. I, like many, had mixed feelings. On one hand, it’d be interesting to see the Trump administration from the Read more >
It’s December 10th, which is holiday time. And I’ve recently been made aware of a new-ish Sense and Sensibility adaptation: Hallmark’s Sense, Sensibility and Snowmen. Sense, Sensibility and Snowmen follows Ella Dashwood, a party planner, who is hired by the Read more >
Earlier this year, Lisa Lucas announced that she would be stepping down as executive director of the National Book Foundation to become Senior Vice President & Publisher of Pantheon and Schocken Books. This morning, the National Book Foundation announced that Read more >
The Albertine Prize, an annual reader’s-choice award, recognizes and honors US-based readers’ favorite work of contemporary French fiction that was translated and published in the US during the previous year. The Award comes with a $10,000 cash prize, split between the has won the 2020 Albertine Prize.">Read more >
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