Oprah Winfrey announced today that her next book club selection would be Deacon King Kong by James McBride, a novel that she says resonates at a time when America is facing a reckoning over race and violence against black people. Read more >
The brilliant Bernadine Evaristo—a longtime advocate for writers and artists of color whose most recent novel Girl, Woman, Other took home last year’s Booker Prize—appeared on the BBC’s topical debate show Question Time last week to talk about the welcome wave of Read more >
What is Bloomsday anyway? The classic Dublin celebration of James Joyce, commonly referred to as “Bloomsday,” is celebrated on June 16 every year, the day Leopold Bloom wandered the streets of Dublin in the epic novel Ulysses. Though usually the Read more >
Worldwide protests ignited by the death of George Floyd have continued, including in Nuneaton, Warkwickshire, where a group of locals thought they were protecting a statue of George Eliot over the weekend. Valiant defenders of this bronze effigy popped up Read more >
Spike Lee hasn’t slowed down in nearly 40 years of filmmaking, and his latest feature after 2018’s Black KkKlansman, Da 5 Bloods, has been receiving critical acclaim for its story and performances. At least one critic called it among the greatest war films Read more >
This morning, I drank my coffee while listening to this 1979 speech, given by James Baldwin in Berkeley. It is no novel thing to remind you, readers of this website, that James Baldwin was one of our most essential speakers, Read more >
Fans of dystopias and good writing rejoice: Today, Knopf announced that it will publish Kazuo Ishiguro’s next novel—his first since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature—on March 2, 2021. Here’s an early description from Knopf: The novel tells Read more >
Ah, Tuesday rears its head again. Consider this your weekly reminder to keep supporting black-owned indie bookstores and new authors. (Special congratulations to our very own Emily Temple, whose debut novel, The Lightness, is out today!) Here’s a baker’s dozen of Read more >
Nick Cave is almost more of a synonym than a person, indicating someone who seems to have their hands in every imaginable endeavor. What is Nick Cave not? He’s a frontman, sure, but also a screenwriter, a film composer, an Read more >
I must have been in high school when I first spotted Gore Vidal’s name on one of the tomes that were his historical novels. Vidal: a man I vaguely knew as one of those figures who had loomed large decades before Read more >
Every year on “a Wednesday in mid-June,” the Royal Society of Literature celebrates the work and legacy of Virginia Woolf. This year, Dalloway Day falls on Wednesday, June 17th (the day after Bloomsday, if you want to make a week Read more >
Back in the Spring of 2018, having already conquered the worlds of music, film, TV, video gaming, and professional wrestling, 4x NBA champion and basketball’s largest greatest renaissance man Shaquille O’Neal—aka “Shaq” aka “The Diesel” aka “Shaq Fu” aka “The Big Daddy” aka Read more >
I am all for more silliness in literature, so I was absolutely delighted by the announcement that Hilary Mantel’s forthcoming collection of essays, book reviews, and memoir, which will be published in early October by 4th Estate Books and the Read more >
Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library initiative, which made more than 1.3 million books available online for free, will end early as publishers sue for copyright infringement. The nonprofit began offering free books during March as the coronavirus pandemic forced Americans Read more >
Think you’ve made good use of the COVID lockdown? Is your sourdough starter in decent shape? Did you achieve Inbox Zero? Has your home gym kept you fighting fit? Congratulations! Those are all admirable achievements and certainly nothing to be Read more >
This week marked the 150th anniversary of Charles Dickens’s death. It was nice to learn that a fancy version of one of Dickens’ most beloved novels, Oliver Twist, will be coming out soon, but man. I wish I didn’t know he’d Read more >
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