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News, Notes, Talk

Here’s another incredibly strange dream-like Chinese bookstore.

With design elements inspired by nearby Tiantai Mountain and the Haishan Islands, a new bookstore in Taizhou City (on China’s central coast) is putting all our cute little corner bookshops to shame. This article was posted in English but is Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

The first trailer for Noah Baumbach’s White Noise has arrived.

May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan. Just ahead of its premiere at the Venice Film Festival next week, the first trailer for White Noise—Noah Baumbach’s black comedy apocalyptic Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Good news for books: The Washington Post’s book section is back!

Sometime around 2006, everyone in publishing began to lament the death of the book section. In the face of declining readership, budget cuts, and mergers, newspapers began to realize that book review sections did not bring in enough ad revenue Read more >

By Emily Firetog

Anne Hathaway is going to star in a Harry Styles fan fiction adaptation. (Yes, you read that right.)

Anne Hathaway, in my eyes, can do no wrong. She captured our childhood hearts in Ella Enchanted and The Princess Diaries. She made us laugh in Get Smart and cry in Les Mis. Most importantly, she prepared us for the grueling years we’d endure Read more >

By Katie Yee

Tess Gunty has won the inaugural Waterstones debut fiction prize.

Congratulations to Tess Gunty, whose critically acclaimed debut novel The Rabbit Hutch has just won the inaugural Waterstones debut fiction prize. The novel (about four teenagers—recently aged out of the state foster-care system—living together in an apartment building in the Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Here are the songs Bob Dylan is writing about in his forthcoming book on “modern song.”

As some of you may already know (and sure, some of you may not care) Bob Dylan is publishing a book this November about his “philosophy of modern song” called… The Philosophy of Modern Song. If you are among those Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Bad Blood: A poet is suing Taylor Swift for more than $1 million for copyright infringement.

Look What You Made Me Do: A poet named Teresa La Dart filed a lawsuit in Memphis this week against her fellow Tennessee poet… Taylor Swift. La Dart claims is seeking more than a million dollars in damages, claiming that Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

30 years ago tonight, Sarajevo's National Library was burned to the ground.

30 years ago tonight, in one of the most infamous acts of cultural genocide in living memory, the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo was razed to the ground. In the night between Aug 25 and Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

The book-banning lawsuit against Barnes & Noble is moving forward in Virginia.

Two Virginia lawsuits that are seeking to restrict young people’s access to books with sexual content will move forward with a hearing this Tuesday, August 30, raising the possibility that Barnes and Noble could require parental consent to sell such Read more >

By Corinne Segal

A comedy duo is replacing the covers of Jared Kushner's book with a new and improved version.

When the Lit Hub staff worked out of an office, some among us were very fond of harmless workplace pranks. (Some day we’ll publish the oral history of the time we replaced the first page of Fleur Jaeggy’s Sweet Days Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

A Texas woman went to the cops about an actual library book.

Jesus. A Texas woman actually went into her local police station—in a town called Katy, just west of Houston—to file a complaint about a book in the Jordan High School library. According to the Houston Chronicle: A Katy ISD police Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

A teacher was removed after sharing this QR code for students to get banned books.

As mass hysteria continues to target American students’ access to information in books, there’s some particularly disheartening news coming out of Oklahoma this week. Wendy Suares, an anchor at KOKH FOX 25, reported on Twitter that a teacher at Norman Read more >

By Corinne Segal

If you're obsessed with Bama Rush Tok, read Eating the Cheshire Cat.

For the second year, the nation (of TikTok users and the middle-aged journalists who write about them) has been gripped by the phenomenon that is sorority rush week at the University of Alabama. As a middle-aged person who is not Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

A new book will collect Jack Kerouac's writings from when he worked as a fire lookout.

Jack Kerouac’s time working as a fire lookout for the U.S. Forest Service on Desolation Peak—a two-month period in 1956—has been much-mythologized at this point, especially by Kerouac himself, as a focus of his book The Dharma Bums along with Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Kate Chopin threw her most famous character under the bus in this ironic rebuttal to critics.

Before there was Twitter, there was the slow burn of print-based literary fighting. Let’s take a moment now to commend a subtle master of the form, writer Kate Chopin, who died this week in 1904. Upon its publication in 1899, Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Look at these beautiful book sculptures adorned in fungi and coral.

Australian artist Stéphanie Kilgast is trying to make a point about the millions upon millions of books that end up in landfills each year. A sculptor who works primarily in discarded materials, Kilgast’s latest series focuses on old books, reimagining Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

20 new books to bite into this week.

New books! The financial bane and emotional buoy of our existence! * Abdulrazak Gurnah, Afterlives (Riverhead) “Riveting and heartbreaking … A compelling novel, one that gathers close all those who were meant to be forgotten, and refuses their erasure.” –The Read more >

By Katie Yee

Sneak a peek at the FBI file for a “very nervous” Dorothy Parker.

What could one say about Dorothy Parker that hasn’t already been said, especially here at Literary Hub dot com? She was a revered critic and essayist, known for her witty one-liners. She inspired Nora Ephron. She worked on the script Read more >

By Katie Yee

Timothée Chalamet and Luca Guadagnino snub Armie Hammer for their new film about cannibalism.

Chew on this, Armie Hammer. After the success of 2017’s Call Me By Your Name, Luca Guadagnino and Timothée Chalamet have reunited for a new literary adaptation—this time without Hammer, despite the fact that the project is a coming-of-age story Read more >

By Emily Temple

Abusive soccer star Ryan Giggs is also responsible for the worst “love” poem ever written.

Former Manchester United soccer star Ryan Giggs’s trial for alleged domestic abuse has revealed many things—mainly that he was an awful, abusive, and toxic boyfriend to Kate Greville. But he may* also be responsible for the worst love poem ever Read more >

By Jonny Diamond