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News, Notes, Talk

Richard Flanagan wins the Baillie Gifford Prize, but won't accept money without a plan to divest.

Out of an impressive shortlist, Richard Flanagan’s Question 7 has won 2024’s Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. Flanagan’s wide-ranging memoir and history weaves together H.G. Wells and Rebecca West’s affair, pre-war nuclear physics, his father’s imprisonment near Hiroshima when the Read more >

By James Folta

The book world's most bloodstained award was handed out in Toronto last night.

The gala for the Giller Prize—formally Canada’s most prestigious literary award, now synonymous with artwashing genocide and apartheid—took place at Toronto’s Park Hyatt hotel last night. Anne Michaels received the 2024 prize for her novel Held. Michaels is a poet Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

What to read if you can't wait for the next season of You Must Remember This.

Karina Longworth, the host and historian behind the in-depth Hollywood history podcast, You Must Remember This, recently teased the long-awaited return of her show. Last week via Insta, Longworth posted a shelf of research books that she consulted while sculpting Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Haruki Murakami! Sondheim! Parks and Rec! 23 new books out today.

November has been quite a month, and one of the few constants it has had is its lack of constancy, its surprises. Still, one thing does remain consistent: that there will be new books to consider each Tuesday. Below, you’ll Read more >

By Gabrielle Bellot

I asked ChatGPT to write its own versions of iconic poems, and they are... not great!

As a lapsed poet with a pessimistic view of humanity, I was disheartened but not remotely surprised to read The Guardian’s report on a study finding that “non-expert poetry readers” preferred poetry written by AI to poetry written by humans. Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

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