20 new books to add to your TBR pile.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but your TBR pile absolutely does NOT have too many books and whoever said that to you is a jerk! Here are 20 new titles coming out today to add to the Read more >
The Hub
News, Notes, Talk
Surprise: there's a new novel from Sally Rooney coming this fall.
Attention Sally Rooney fans: today, FSG announced that they will be publishing Rooney’s next novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, on September 7, 2021. (The novel was reportedly sold in a two book deal, which means we have another one Read more >
By Emily Temple
You can design the next Brooklyn Public Library card (and get $2,000).
ATTENTION ARTISTS: The Brooklyn Public Library is looking for a new library card design. They are specifically looking for a work of art that celebrates Black American culture and history! What started as a proposal from Wendy A. Robinson of Read more >
By Katie Yee
If you miss visiting the library, try the Internet Archive's new virtual browsing tool.
It’s been a bad year for libraries and those who love them. Despite some interesting tech innovations (we could have been cleaning our books with UV rays this whole time!), many temporarily reopened libraries are closing again due to surging Read more >
By Walker Caplan
These are the bestselling books of 2020.
You guessed it: A Promised Land, the first volume of Barack Obama’s presidential memoirs, was always going to lay waste to the competition. We called it back in September, and it has now been confirmed. Yes, as reported by Publishers Weekly Read more >
By Dan Sheehan
Looking for a quick read? Here are 4 literary sites that publish great microfiction.
If you’re anything like me, it feels harder than ever to concentrate—clicking from news of COVID mutations to vaccine rollout issues to stimulus check debates to threats to democracy has a way of splitting your attention. We’ve been glutted with Read more >
By Walker Caplan
PHEW: Judy Blume has been vaccinated.
Despite the generally disastrous COVID vaccine roll-out, we as a country have done at least one thing right: protected Judy Blume. This morning, Blume, 82, tweeted that she and her husband had received their first doses of the Moderna vaccine. Read more >
By Jessie Gaynor
Is the next book cover trend . . . rainbows?
As I was scrolling through Lit Hub’s massive 2021 preview, I noticed something: Rainbows. Specifically, several books featuring full-cover, highly saturated, blurrily blended rainbows. I can only assume, considering that rainbows are generally considered to be a) pretty b) gay Read more >
By Emily Temple
Here are the best reviewed books of the week.
Robert Jones Jr.’s The Prophets, Peter Ho Davies’ A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself, and Anna North’s Outlawed all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.” Read more >
By Book Marks
Here's some surprising good news: In the US and the UK, book sales are up and indies are growing.
Here’s some surprising end-of-2020 good news: books are doing . . . well? According to NPD BookScan, unit sales of print books in the United States rose 8.2% in 2020. Units hit 750.9 million this year—57.2 million up from last Read more >
By Walker Caplan
A few literary opinions Jon Ossoff probably has and should definitely tweet about.
This week, we should have had more time to celebrate Jon Ossoff. In the hours before Wednesday turned into a terrible day for democracy, one very good thing happened: Ossoff defeated Republican David Purdue in the Georgia special election runoff, Read more >
By Walker Caplan
Now you can check(mate) in to a Queen's Gambit-inspired hotel room.
In the perfect collision of quarantine binge-watching and post-quarantine travel dreaming, the 21c Museum Hotel in Lexington, Kentucky has created a Queen’s Gambit-inspired hotel room (the Harmon Room), complete with swinging sixties decor and a ceiling chess set (though presumably Read more >
By Jessie Gaynor
Josh Hawley, after inciting a violent, bloody insurrection, has his book canceled.
By now you’ve all probably seen Senator Josh Hawley—the heir apparent to Donald Trump’s dogwhistling, populist demagoguery—getting widely trounced on Twitter for not quite knowing what “Orwellian” means. But, to recap: · Wednesday around noon, Josh Hawley, after inciting for Read more >
By Jonny Diamond
Bookmarked: Philadelphia's poet laureate has launched a "healing poetry" telephone line.
While “self-care” is a phrase that gets thrown around almost indiscriminately in These Times, the Healing Verse Philly Poetry Line, created by Philadelphia poet laureate Trapeta B. Mayson, feels like the truest form of it. The toll-free line will feature Read more >
By Jessie Gaynor
Today is a good day to support the Free Black Women's Library.
I am interrupting your doom-scroll to tell you about the existence of the Free Black Women’s Library, a trading library and “interactive biblio installation” that celebrates the voices of Black women in literature. What started in 2015 as a popup Read more >
By Katie Yee
Watch this forgotten short film written by Dr. Seuss.
Today in 1986 we lost the great P.D. Eastman, who was known for his work under the Dr. Seuss brand of Random House—children’s staples like Go, Dog. Go! and Are You My Mother? But Eastman was also a screenwriter and Read more >
