Now that High Book Award Season is coming to a close (right??), we can focus on the prize that really matters: Literary Review‘s Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Since 1993, the UK-based magazine has “honored the year’s most outstandingly awful Read more >
Last night, the anonymous author (identified only as “a senior Trump administration official”) of the new book A Warning and that op-ed in The New York Times did an AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) over at Reddit. Here are a few highlights from the question Read more >
On Tuesday night, Irish novelist Edna O’Brien was presented with the £40,000 David Cohen prize for lifetime achievement—which The Guardian notes is “regarded as a precursor to the Nobel”—for having “broken down social and sexual barriers for women in Ireland and Read more >
Well, this was bound to happen eventually: “ok boomer” has found its way into a book title. Once a meme that momentarily distracted my generation from our murderous rampage against every pillar of American life, including movies, Applebee’s, mayonnaise, home 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. Michael Eric Dyson, JAY-Z: Made Read more >
It doesn’t seem like editorializing is all that necessary around this cruel and dystopic idea—for-profit prison systems now seem as American as for-profit health care, for-profit education, and, uh, apple pie. But yes, West Virginia inmates will be getting free Read more >
It’s the New York Public Library’s 100 Best Books of the Year list! This one is noteworthy to me because it reflects, shall we say, a more direct engagement with people who read books outside of professional exigencies, who are Read more >
I’d like to salute the brave librarians at Willmar Public Library in Willmar, Minnesota who recently invited local kids to an afterhours shoot em up among the stacks, operating under the idea that if you get kids in the presence Read more >
Thanksgiving is this week, which can only mean one thing: we’ve entered high You’ve Got Mail season. I’ve seen the movie at least a dozen times, so when today I endeavored to find an exact quote—for a blog post about Read more >
For many of you, Thanksgiving represents an anxiety-laden series of conversational challenges. There you are, trapped at the table, trying to navigate the divergent political opinions of libertarian uncles and flat-tax cousins who can’t seem to resist owning you, a Read more >
Charlie Kaufman, the Oscar Award-winning screenwriter of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich, has written a novel! Antkind tells the story of a failed film critic who stumbles upon “an impossible movie”—a three-month-long (!) stop-motion (!!) Read more >
Acclaimed writers Jesmyn Ward, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michael Ondaatje, Edwidge Danticat, and Kevin Young were among the speakers who shared memories of the late Toni Morrison at a three thousand strong celebration of her life and work in the Cathedral Church of Read more >
My personal form of astrology is to anxiously trawl Publishers Marketplace every week. No, wait, hear me out: it’s how I can tell the only future that matters: which books I will be reading a year and a half from now. Also, Read more >
The teaser for director Autumn de Wilde’s upcoming Emma adaptation combines many of the things I love to see in movies: sass against religious figures, meaningful eye contact during highly choreographed dance routines, people eating things while looking suspicious, and Read more >
The Charles Taylor Foundation, a charity organization that supports Canadian writers, gave a cheery explanation for why a literary prize it’s been co-sponsoring for two decades is coming to an end next year: they accomplished exactly what they’d set out to Read more >
Depending on who you are, this news that a doll museum will open in a formerly vacant library building is either kind of cool or will give you endless nightmares—that is, if you ever sleep again. I’m in the second Read more >
The 2019 National Book Awards—aka the Oscars for books—have officially been awarded! This year’s winners are as follows: Young People’s Literature: Martin W. Sandler for 1919, The Year That Changed America. * Poetry: Arthur Sze for Sight Lines. * Translation: Laszlo Read more >
Perhaps you’re already aware that tonight is the National Book Awards, AKA “the biggest night in books,” AKA book prom, AKA the night of a thousand tote bags (just kidding! It’s very fancy). Tonight’s event will be hosted by LeVar Read more >
Climate Emergency noun [C usually singular]: “A situation in which urgent action is required to reduce or halt climate change and avoid potentially irreversible environmental damage resulting from it” Before you say it, I know, and I am as appalled Read more >
The one-mile stretch of upscale London real estate known as “Billionaires Row” isn’t quite Savile. As Business Insider recently revealed, one of the properties in this neighborhood, at 9 The Bishops Avenue, was once the safe house of British-Indian author Read more >
