July 17, 2020, 9:28am Let’s welcome Friday with a little bit of light. This morning, three major arts nonprofits, supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, announced a $3.5 million fund that will be used to give one-time grants (between $5,000 and $50,000) to literary arts organizations, publishers, and nonprofits that have
Literature
July 17, 2020, 11:01am Yet again, a debate about color-coordinated bookshelves has sprung up on the internet. This time, it was catalyzed by a tweet from writer and journalist Jennifer Wright, which features said bookshelf style as well as a very fun dress (which is the real star of the show in my opinion): I feel
TODAY: In 1899, Horatio Alger, writer of young adult novels about impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of middle-class security and comfort through hard work, determination, courage, and honesty, dies. Incredibly, 2020 is only half over, which means we’ve got plenty more good books to come… Here are our most anticipated. |
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the meaning and origins of a famous Shakespeare phrase ‘Hoist with one’s own petard’. The expression is well-known, and its meaning is fairly clear to most people: it describes someone who has been scuppered by their own schemes, someone who has come a-cropper
July 17, 2020, 11:08am Variety reports that sales for J.K. Rowling’s books slowed down in June, in a period that appears to be somewhat of an anomaly for the author, as well as out of step with the wider industry. Last year, as sales of print fiction grew by 33.3 percent, Rowling’s sales grew by
TODAY: In 1917, French feminist writer Christiane Rochefort is born. Kelli Jo Ford recommends books that helped her find a way home, from Love Medicine to Salvage the Bones. | Lit Hub “I grew up in a Christian house with a pagan underbelly, and found the two were not quite as oppositional as some may
July 16, 2020, 4:13pm I started writing this post as a counterpoint to the “describe your favorite book in the most boring way possible” trend. It was meant to be something along the lines of “describe a plotless book in the most exciting way possible.” But more I thought about the books below, initially attempting
TODAY: In 1546, writer, poet, and Protestant martyr Anne Askew dies. “You rise in pieces, loved to death, / at last unshackled. / Time will hold your breath.” Read “Salutations in Search Of,” a new poem by Patricia Smith. | Lit Hub “Literature can do one thing no other art form can do: It can let you
‘O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright’ is a famous speech spoken by Romeo in Act I Scene 5 of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. But what does he mean by this speech? Although the meaning may appear to be straightforward, when viewed in the context of the play Romeo’s words shed some considerable
July 15, 2020, 4:08pm Over the years, Lydia Davis has gifted us with dozens of interviews chronicling her relationship to literature, laying out her writing process, and analyzing the many craft-related choices that writers make every day. Today is her birthday and a great time to re-read many of those interviews, with a few selections
TODAY: In 1779, Clement Clarke Moore, author of the Christmas poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (which later became known as “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”), is born. At first Moore had not wished to be connected with the popular verse, given his public reputation as a professor of ancient languages. Can the German path
July 14, 2020, 1:26pm Andrew Weissmann, who served as a prosecutor for Robert Mueller during an investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, is releasing a book this fall—and says it will include details on the investigation’s “mistakes.” Random House will publish Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation on Sept. 29. Weissmann said in
TODAY: In 1898, Eliza Lynn Linton, the first female salaried journalist in Britain, dies. Incredibly, 2020 is only half over, which means we plenty more good books to come… Here are our most anticipated. | Lit Hub Genie Lauren on the rise of Black Twitter, and the social power (and limits) of hashtag activism. | Lit Hub
Originally titled ‘Swinging Birches’, the poem ‘Birches’ is one of Robert Frost’s most widely anthologised and studied poems, first published in 1915. Although Frost’s style is often direct and accessible, his poems are subtle and sometimes even ambiguous in their effects, so some words of analysis may be of use here. You can read ‘Birches’
July 13, 2020, 12:57pm Probably, yes. Back when I had time to read for many hours a day I devoured Seth’s 1,300-page, 1993 epic of love, class, politics, and just about everything else, all of it set against post-partition India’s roiling transition from colonial raj to independent nation(s) (much of the action takes place in
TODAY: In 1914, D. H. Lawrence weds Frieda Weekley. “History is not written just by acts of war and feats of conquest, nor should it be commemorated only in the monuments erected by its victors.” Sofia Perez travels through Spain as it grapples with its Fascist past. | Lit Hub Travel Estelle Laure reminds us
July 10, 2020, 10:40am I am clearly a coastal elite out of touch with how people really read* because I did not know there’s a robust, overcrowded field of sports-themed romance novels. This is one of the things I learned in this feature at The Athletic about one former ad executive’s marketing-driven entrance into the
July 10, 2020, 12:22pm Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust, the man perennially in search of lost time, was born on this day in 1871. The ruminative frenchman is of course best known for his mammoth seven-volume novel À la recherche du temps perdu, in which the taste of a madeleine, and the involuntary memory