In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews a new treasury of 1,000 Scottish words from Robin A. Crawford A clishmaclaver is a Scottish word meaning ‘the passing on of idle gossip, sometimes in a book’. A collieshangle denotes a row or fight in which two people bark at each other.
Literature
August 14, 2020, 1:31pm Every year, Longwood University’s John Dos Passos Prize sets out to celebrate one vital but under-appreciated writer. Previous recipients include Colson Whitehead, Tom Wolfe, and Annie Proulx. (Obviously, they were awarded the Dos Passos Prize before they won, say, two Pulitzer Prizes.) This year’s finalists were announced today. “These finalists represent everything
August 13, 2020, 1:47pm The Women’s Prize for Fiction recently debuted an upcoming project which will mark the 25th anniversary of the prize: an initiative called “Reclaim Her Name” (#ReclaimHerName) which republishes famous works by twenty-five female authors who published under male nom-de-plumes in the 19th and early 20th centuries, including George Eliot, George Sand,
Currently the most brilliant human on the planet, (not just my opinion, but utter fact), Howard Bloom recently released a glorious masterpiece entitled, “Einstein, Michael Jackson, and Me: A Search for Soul in the Power Pits of Rock and Roll.” A modern day prophet and Messiah, Bloom has been called the “next in a lineage
Is it possible that everything we think we know about God, and what God wants, is wrong? Could humanity’s ideas about all this be the greatest inaccuracies . . . ever? Would it matter if they were? The author of the multi-million-selling Conversations with God series places the question squarely before our world in another blockbuster book
Three girls…. Three dead bodies…. The quiet town of Craven Falls is depleting in population. One by one…. Scarlet Fitzgerald thought it would be fun to play a game on Laura Stevenson, a nobody at Craven Falls High. But what happens when the game unleashes buried secrets Scarlet doesn’t want anyone to know? Secrets that
August 13, 2020, 12:28pm There’s nothing I love more than a demonic preacher. Whether it’s murderous Robert Mitchum singing “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” as he stalks children through the friscalating West Virginia dusklight in Night of the Hunter, or supernatural misogynist Nathan Fillion spouting quasi-biblical quotes as he picks off potential Slayers in Buffy,
August 12, 2020, 3:56pm Timing is everything, but during the pandemic, it largely hasn’t been on the side of businesses. So I was recently surprised to see The Strand, whose iconic storefront in Union Square attracts thousands of visitors a year, opening a new branch in my neighborhood last month—and in a space where, just
The Castle of Otranto, often called the first Gothic novel, was published in 1764. Its author, Horace Walpole, was a fascinating man (of whom more below), but so is his most enduring work of fiction. Below, we offer a summary and analysis of The Castle of Otranto, and debunk some myths about this classic work
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
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