Last week’s dramatic crypto crash—which can be laid largely at the feet of former billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried and his crypto exchange FTX—is such an obviously archetypal tale of American hubris that it is a surprise to no one that Michael Read more >
Lately, we’ve been writing a lot about the relentless attacks on libraries by craven gangs of “concerned parents” mobilized by Republican rhetoric and Facebook, so today it’s my pleasure to shine the light on some more fun library news. For Read more >
I guess if you’re a publisher whose stated mission is to disrupt the publishing industry, you have to move fast and break things, no matter how ghoulish that makes you. Such is apparently the case for “hybrid publisher” Ballast Books Read more >
Oh yes. This week, Detroit’s Metro Times highlighted A Ain’t Always for Apple: An Erotic Adult Alphabet Book, which is . . . exactly what it sounds like. The book (which has become a multi-volume series) was written and self-published by Detroit Read more >
Look, it’s easy to dunk on nerd-bro crypto evangelists… So let’s! In a September profile of brand new poor person Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, he makes it pretty clear that books are for beta losers who Read more >
As you may have seen on Book Twitter today, the unionized workers of HarperCollins are striking to secure a fair contract, livable wages, and a more equitable publishing industry. Some 250 employees—across the editorial, publicity, sales, marketing, legal and design Read more >
The trailer for the upcoming Netflix adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s coming-of-age novel The Lying Life of Adults has been released, and it looks appropriately gritty and gorgeous. The 2020 novel follows teenaged Giovanna as she travels the refined, middle-class, 1990s-era Naples Read more >
For as long as humans have been writing, we’ve been writing about the things that make us miserable. And there’s something almost heartening about the knowledge that there are some constants in the history of human misery: tiny, itch-provoking bugs, Read more >
Handsome blonde man Charlie Hunnam recently revealed that he wants to focus more on his writing (same, buddy, same). The star of Sons of Anarchy, King Arthur, The Lost City of Z, and The Gentlemen, and current star of the Read more >
Because I contribute heavily to the Lit Hub Instagram account, I spend an unconventional amount of my free time taking screenshots whenever there’s a writer in a movie or TV show. (To my friends and family who have had to Read more >
Daylight Savings Time has gifted us an extra hour… for reading. (That’s how that works, right?) This week brings new books by Haruki Murakami, Kevin Wilson, Lucy Ellmann, and more. * Haruki Murakami, tr. Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen, Novelist Read more >
In honor of tomorrow’s US midterm elections (NB: please vote), I present: a little literary inspiration for the tireless Democratic party email scribes. Moby-Dick This is important, Ishmael. Mrs Dalloway Mrs Dalloway said she would FUND the GOP HERSELF. David Read more >
Late Thursday night, North Hollywood’s Iliad Bookshop, one of the largest used bookstores in the Los Angeles area, was the target of an alleged arson attack. “Around 11:30 pm, someone piled the Iliad Bookshop’s free books up against the store’s Read more >
From about the ages of ten to sixteen I was an obsessive reader of fantasy; sadly, I eventually gave into juvenile ideas about literary snobbery and drifted away from the genre. Now that I have an 11-year-old of my own, Read more >
Well, here’s a study conducted purely to pander to the book internet: Researchers in the psychology department at St. Mary’s University in Calgary found that seven to eight year olds who read out loud to therapy dogs for fifteen minutes Read more >
Yesterday, Netflix dropped the nudity-forward trailer for its new adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s “controversial classic” Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which was famously banned for being obscene—specifically due to thirteen “episodes of sexual intercourse” in the book, “described in the greatest detail. Read more >
A producing power trio of Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan, The Whale, etc), Danny Stong (Dopesick, Game Change, The Butler) and Kit Steinkellner (Sorry for Your Loss) has scored a pilot order from FX for an adaptation of Read more >
Exciting news for fans of the expanded You’re Wrong Aboutiverse! Michael Hobbes—formerly of the equal parts entertaining and illuminating You’re Wrong About podcast (which he started with Sarah Marshall), currently of the just as excellent, diet-and-wellness-fad-debuking Maintenance Phase (co-hosted with Aubrey Gordon)—has a Read more >
I don’t know about you, but I’ve long desired the chance to hear Werner Herzog and Zlavoj Žižek talk at each other in an infinite loop of gnomic locutions. As celebrity intellectual gadflies with unique speaking styles go, Herzog and Read more >
Joan Didion’s estate sale, “An American Icon: Property From the Collection of Joan Didion,” hosted by Stair Galleries, is open for bidding now through November 16. The collection includes plenty of iconic art, eyewear, and furniture, as well as a Read more >
