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News, Notes, Talk

The shortlist for the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title includes "leather-daddy bounty hunters."

The Bookseller has selected six books for their 46th annual Diagram Prize shortlist for The Oddest Book Title of the Year, a prize they’ve been awarding since 1978. (According to Sarah Lyall, the prize began “as a way for Bruce Read more >

By James Folta

The 2024 Cercador Prize goes to The Book of All Loves.

The Cercador Prize announced this morning that Thomas Bunstead has won the 2024 prize for his translation of Agustín Fernández Mallo’s The Book of All Loves. Established last year, the Cercador Prize is an exciting entrant into the literary-prize sphere: Read more >

By Drew Broussard

I read the government graphic novels Elon Musk thinks are a waste of money.

The term “government-issued graphic novel” shouldn’t fill anyone with excitement. I honestly hadn’t even considered the possibility of their existence until last week when the Twitter account from Elon Musk’s AmericaPAC (which somehow has the account @America on Twitter… oh Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

HarperCollins is selling their authors’ work to AI tech.

On Friday, author Daniel Kibblesmith posted a series of screenshots on Bluesky in order to share a concerning email he received from the agency who’d repped him on his children’s book Santa’s Husband: the book’s publisher, HarperCollins, was offering $2,500 Read more >

By Drew Broussard

Martin Scorsese may be adapting Marilynne Robinson’s Home.

I don’t know how I still manage to be surprised by the odd, odd choices of Hollywood auteurs. I’m a woman of the world. I should know better. Yet the latest literary IP to hit the development pipeline strikes this Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Is Donald Trump going to sue the media into complicity and silence?

Laughter and terror: these will most certainly be the primary contributions of a second Donald Trump administration to the national mood. To wit: a new report from Columbia Journalism Review details a letter from Trump’s lawyer sent to the New Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

We have a dangerous blur: Philip K. Dick's cult essay about false realities is as relevant as ever.

If, at the moment, you find yourself looking around for guidance about, I don’t know, the nature of reality and how easy it is to manufacture it, you could do a lot worse than turning to Philip K. Dick. And Read more >

By Emily Temple

The Onion has bought InfoWars. (And no, this isn't a joke.)

InfoWars—that miserable cesspool of a conspiracy news site, spun from the flax between Alex Jones’s ears—has a new owner. And this one has a sense of humor! Maybe even a soul! Following a well-publicized bankruptcy auction, Jones’s brainwashing platform is Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Want to know how libraries fared on the ballot? This cool non-profit made a chart.

EveryLibrary, a non-profit dedicated to supporting public and school libraries across the country via local grassroots organizing, has been tracking anti-library legislation since 2012. Between the onslaught of book bans and censorship petitions, they’ve naturally had a busy few years. Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Bid on a note from your favorite author in The Common's Postcard Auction.

The Common’s annual Author Postcard Auction is back for its eleventh year! The Postcard Auction offers the chance to bid on a hand-written, personalized postcard just for you, from a ton of great authors, musicians, and more: Tony Kushner, Joy Williams, Read more >

By James Folta

Per his own book, Trump’s Secretary of Defense nominee is down for Civil War II

Jeff Sharlet, author of The Undertow, and one of our very best (and bravest) writers engaging with American fascism as it actually exists on the ground, has done the ugly work of reading Pete Hegseth’s book, The War on Warriors. Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Here are Libro’s bestselling audiobooks of 2024.

Lend us your ears, readers. Today, our friends at Libfro.fm have released a list of the year’s bestselling audiobooks. Data was based on reporting from more than 3,000 independent bookstores. Cake-taking titles span the genre gamut, from romance to mystery Read more >

By Brittany Allen

And the winner of the 2024 Booker Prize is . . .

The winner of the 2024 Booker Prize is Samantha Harvey for her novel Orbital (Grove Press). The announcement was made by Edmund de Waal, Chair of the 2024 judges, in a ceremony in London, on November 12. de Waal described the Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Didion and Babitz! John Berger! Sylvia Plath! 24 new books out today.

It’s a week after America’s latest, and far from greatest, election, a day that many of us are still processing. I have so much to say, as we all do, and I’ll say it elsewhere soon. But for the moment, Read more >

By Gabrielle Bellot

Six newsletters to get you through this week.

It’s the week after the election. You’re inundated with takes, ranging from the knee-jerk-libidinal appeal to the sagely analytical post-mortem. More are certainly coming. Writers be writing. But in the meantime, you’ve got a bed to get out of. Breakfast Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Find your next great read with a few simple—and delightfully weird—questions.

Good news for readers, literary magazine supporters, quiz-lovers, and weirdos: n+1‘s Bookmatch is back! If you make a donation of any amount to n+1 in the month of November, you can take a short, highly entertaining multiple choice quiz (sample Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor