Turns out people have some questions about the new coronavirus—and not just “what is social distancing, exactly” and “can I go to the gym?” This morning, Merriam-Webster lexicographer Peter Sokolowski tweeted this list of recent lookups in the digital dictionary: Read more >
This evening, the National Book Critics Circle announced the winners of their annual awards, which celebrates excellent writing and encourages the discourse around literature. These are the only national awards chosen by the book critics themselves. The original ceremony that Read more >
Almost 20 years ago, celebrity biographer Suzanne Finstad published her 2001 bestseller Natascha: The Biography of Natalie Wood. By that point, the vague details surrounding Wood’s death in 1981 made it one of Hollywood’s most infamous mysteries. Wood had gone missing Read more >
Boy do we need it. Lady Gaga and her organization, the Born This Way Foundation, have announced that they’ll be publishing an anthology later this year called Channel Kindness: Stories of Kindness and Community. All of the anthology’s authors are contributors Read more >
Chaos reigns throughout the world, but we should still take a moment to remember Jack Kerouac, Beat-turned-khaki icon, on his birthday. Gap was able to license the photos of Kerouac it used in the 1993 campaign when the feuding relatives Read more >
Yesterday, the American Academy of Arts and Letters announced that the winner of the $100,000 Christopher Lightfoot Walker Award is poet and essayist Leslie Marmon Silko, best known for her writings on her Laguna Pueblo heritage and for the vital Read more >
Sorry, typeset loyalists: A new report from the National Endowment for the Arts is making digital and audio readers look great. The report, based on responses to the 2017 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, shows that digital and Read more >
UPDATE: On Friday, March 13, the New York Public Library announced that all branches would be closing to the public, beginning on Saturday, March 14, through at least Tuesday, March 31. Have books out? Outdoor book drops will also be closed, Read more >
Good news for fans of smart literary adaptations: it looks like Bernardine Evaristo’s Booker Prize-winner Girl, Woman, Other will soon be made into a prestige TV show by the producers of The Constant Gardner, The Little Friend and the upcoming Lupita Nyong’o-starring HBO adaptation Read more >
Humphrey Bogart will go down in history as the actor most associated with the detective character Phillip Marlowe, but he wasn’t the first actor to play him, and he wasn’t author Raymond Chandler’s first preference. In 1944, the washed-up musical Read more >
Attending last week’s New York’s Antiquarian Book Fair, I came across an unusual children’s book: Kriebeltje de Boskabouter (in English: Tickle, the Forest-Gnome). One of the current listings at the rare books dealership Type Punch Matrix, this Dutch children’s paperback Read more >
A library just outside Denver was telling people to stay inside before it was cool—and, in the process, having a (pretty adorable) Twitter feud with its local parks department. Jefferson County Public Library dunks on the outdoors every chance it Read more >
Do you consider yourself a hard-core Potterhead? Did you defy your Veron Dursley-esque stepfather by joining the college Quidditch team? Did a rough breakup prompt an ill-advised dalliance with Snapism? Is your work commute enlivened by the dulcet tones of Read more >
For the past 32 years, the Lambda Literary Awards have been championing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender writers. Past recipients of these awards include Audre Lorde, Alison Bechdel, Roxane Gay, and Michael Cunningham. This year’s award ceremony will be held Read more >
Sometimes the most interesting thing about a story is what is left unsaid… or uneaten. A tweet by the Cambridge University Library Special Collections account has been circulating ever since one employee made an unusual find in a 1529 edition Read more >
This week, amid a deluge of vaguely horrifying, opportunistic-seeming quarantine-related reading lists, here’s something that seems genuinely good: a South Korean e-book startup is waiving its subscription fee for coronavirus patients and people under quarantine in the country. “We hope Read more >
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