August 12, 2020, 11:00am If we here at Lit Hub know anything to be true, it is that one of life’s greatest pleasures is walking into an independent bookstore. These past pandemic-ridden months have obviously made in-person browsing, spine-touching, and book-sniffing impossible. Now that bookshops are opening up again, we’ve asked a few booksellers to
Literature
August 11, 2020, 2:43pm Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelous, the dazzlingly-toothed daytime TV power couple, are partnering with Hulu to bring Silvia Morneo-Garcia’s bestselling horror thriller novel Mexican Gothic to the small screen. Published last month to rave reviews, and recommended by Ripa to her 2.8 million Instagram followers just last week, Mexican Gothic follows Noemí
August 11, 2020, 12:01pm As Lebanon continues to recover from the explosion in Beirut that killed more than 150 people and wounded thousands of others, a group of artists and writers are hosting an online event to raise money for those who are struggling. Fatima Bhutto, a poet and writer based in Pakistan, announced on
TODAY: In 1884, Romanian writer Panait Istrati, nicknamed The Maxim Gorky of the Balkans, is born. “I believe there are essential lies, heroic lies. And I’m very interested in the relationship between secrets and lies.” Margot Livesey and Steven Wingate in conversation. | Lit Hub We should all read more literature in translation—these five July
‘Under Ben Bulben’ was completed in 1938, just one year before W. B. Yeats’s death. This makes it one of his last great poems; indeed, he dictated the final revisions to the poems from his deathbed. Yeats dated ‘Under Ben Bulben’ to September 4th, 1938. The poem is perhaps best-known for its final three lines,
August 10, 2020, 11:01am Beloved NYC bookstore Bluestockings—long a fixture on the Lower East Side—has found a new home. This will come as a relief to downtown book-lovers who worried the iconic feminist bookstore was closing for good due to both pandemic woes and the threat of increased rent (in a pandemic 😬). After a
August 7, 2020, 10:14am Yes. It’s a set of bookshelves that can convert into a coffin. And yes, it’s real. Sure, it sounds like some kind of morbid gag (that we’re all quite enjoying here in the virtual Lit Hub offices, aka Slack), but designer William Warren is taking it very seriously: When you die,
August 7, 2020, 10:31am Just days before it hits shelves, Diane Cook’s upcoming debut novel, The New Wilderness—about a mother’s battle to save her daughter in a world ravaged by climate change—is getting one hell of a publicity boost. Deadline today reported that Warner Bros. Television has acquired the rights to develop the book as a
August 7, 2020, 12:28pm The much anticipated (by me, at least) adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, starring Lily James, Armie Hammer, and Kristin Scott Thomas as Mrs. Danvers (SWOON), and directed by Ben Wheatley, now has a release date: October 21, 2020. Today, Netflix released some first look photos. They do not make me
TODAY: In 1896, Floridian author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings is born. POV shifts and moral dilemmas on Red Headed Stranger: Odie Lindsey on learning to write from Willie Nelson and one of the greatest albums of the 1970s. | Lit Hub Craft Maya Alexandri on navigating the dual nightmare of an opioid epidemic and a global pandemic as an EMT. | Lit
August 7, 2020, 1:04pm This week, a reader broke the usual flow of publicity announcements and pitches in our general inbox to ask: Are we okay? “Increasingly a lot of the links I have selected in the past couple of weeks I find very distressing,” they wrote. (Fair.) They also asked if we could recommend
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle revels in a classic cat poem written by a man in confinement Who invented ‘free verse’? Walt Whitman (1819-92) often gets the credit, although his decision to write in free verse – unrhymed poetry without a regular metre or rhythm – may have been
August 7, 2020, 11:14am Raven Leilani’s Luster, Akwaeke Emezi’s The Death of Vivek Oji, Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, and Jonathan C. Slaght’s Owls of the Eastern Ice all feature among Book Marks’ Best Reviewed Books of the Week. Fiction 1. Luster by Raven Leilani 6 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed “… vibrant, spiky …
August 6, 2020, 3:59pm Another day, another announcement of a memoir from a former Trump collaborator. This time, it’s Fiona Hill, an ex-advisor who testified in Trump’s impeachment inquiry, whose “views about the future of a polarized America” will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2021. I have nothing more to say about these books,
August 6, 2020, 8:49am Phew. I know, you were all waiting on us, right? Especially you, Oprah. Oprah definitely cares what we think. Well, good news everybody: the official position of Literary Hub is that Oprah’s latest book club pick, Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, is a knockout choice. “Of all the books I’ve chosen for book club
Henry V is one of Shakespeare’s most popular and widely studied history plays; indeed, along with Richard III, it is perhaps the best-known. But critics are divided over how we should view Henry V the play – and Henry V the character. Before we offer an analysis of the play, it might be worth briefly
August 5, 2020, 10:00am Nick Miller, Nick Miller. By day, he’s a cranky bartender at a failing establishment. By night, he’s the author of Z is for Zombie and, most notably, The Pepperwood Chronicles. He’s hands-down one of the greatest fictional writers of our time. But what makes Nick Miller such a treasure? He’s lazy.
August 4, 2020, 3:24pm Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them. This week, we spoke to The Night Circus and The Starless Sea author Erin Morgenstern * Book Marks: What book do you think your book is most in conversation with? Erin Morgenstern: The Ten Thousand