Literature

October 4, 2022, 4:33pm (Please not that because the Discourse is the ultimate zombie, many of my 2021 suggestions (Supply Chain Issues, JCO’s Twitter, Emotional BookTok Teen) still apply.) Literary Non-HottieThe perfect for lazy, not-hot party-goers—wear your normal clothes, hold a book, and authoritatively speculate about the inner lives of the smokeshows around you. DOJ

October 3, 2022, 9:30am Ah, paperbacks. So soft and comforting. So nice to curl up with. (No hard edges!) This month sees the publication of paperbacks from Jonathan Franzen, Rebecca Solnit, Patrick Radden Keefe, Louise Glück, and more. Get cozy. * Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads(Picador, October 4) “Crossroads is Franzen’s greatest and most perfect novel to

‘Harrison Bergeron’ is a 1961 short story by the American writer Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007). The story can be categorised as ‘dystopian satire’ or a ‘satirical dystopian story’, but we’ll say more about these labels in a moment. The action of the story takes place in the future America of 2081, where everyone has been made

October 3, 2022, 10:39am German super-discount chain Aldi got called out on Twitter for selling Schindler’s List as a great read for “relaxing” and “unwinding” while on holiday, “a gripping story that will have you hooked as your body soaks in those sun rays.” As you probably know, Thomas Keneally’s 1982 novel, originally published as

September 30, 2022, 12:07pm In a predictable—but nevertheless horrifying—extension of the ongoing wave of book bans across the country (not to mention the bomb threats to a children’s hospital for providing gender-affirming healthcare), Motherboard has reported that at least a dozen public libraries across the country have received bomb and active shooter threats in the

September 30, 2022, 12:14pm Ah, college. Just a handful of blessèd years in which to wear thrifted cardigans, leave your hair unwashed, carry around an underlined copy of White Noise, and close your eyes in the dance party when “All My Friends” comes on, because college-aged hipsters will never, ever admit that “All My Friends”

This year’s longlist for the Baillie Gifford Prize encompasses a diverse selection of some of the best nonfiction published in 2022. Narrative and investigative, historical and contemporary, this year’s longlist examines topics ranging from the British Empire to the paleobiological history of our planet. Below, the longlisted authors answer some of our questions and tell

TODAY: In 1867, Marx’s Das Kapital is published.   Series creator David Milch explains all that filthy language—delivered in iambic pentamer—in Deadwood. | Lit Hub Film & TV “The silence I’m looking for is not so much a quality of sound as a state of mind.” Kamila Shamsie on finding the perfect writing space. | Lit Hub Why revere

September 30, 2022, 12:33pm That’s the same perilous American wilderness that almost killed Leonardo DiCaprio, except 200 years younger, sprier and, one would assume, significantly more bear-ful. Now, I don’t know how many bears feature in three-time National Book Award finalist, Guggenheim fellow, and winner of the Story Prize Lauren Groff’s fifth novel, The Vaster

‘Eleven’ is a short story by the American writer Sandra Cisneros (born 1954). In the story, a girl’s eleventh birthday is ruined when her teacher forces her to take responsibility for somebody else’s sweater. The narrator bursts into tears in front of her classmates and laments the fact that she isn’t older. You can read

TODAY: In 1924, Truman Capote is born.    Who could win the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature? Who should? | Lit Hub Lena Dunham adapts a classic childhood text, the Westworld creators take on William Gibson, and three (!) vampire stories get the screen treatment in the Literary Film and TV You Need to Stream in

September 29, 2022, 2:27pm The Rumors are true! Yesterday, Lizzo became the first and only person on the planet to play this centuries’ old (!) crystal (!!) flute. It’s About Damn Time. This instrument is from 1813, and it belonged to our fourth President, James Madison, so yeah, you could say it’s pretty Special. Give

September 29, 2022, 11:01am Hundreds of authors have signed a letter released today by Fight for the Future, a nonprofit group that addresses digital rights issues, to express support for libraries’ open access to digital books and for protecting their right to lend books in all formats. The letter calls for “[enshrining] the right of

September 28, 2022, 2:53pm There’s no shortage of reasons to love libraries, and here’s another: a new survey from the UK shows a significant number of them are planning to serve as “warm banks” this winter for people who need to take shelter from the cold. Sarah Shaffi reports today for The Guardian that, from

If, as the old quip has it, Hamlet is a great play but it has too many quotations in it, a similar charge might be laid against Macbeth, one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays. So many lines in the play have become proverbial and are often quoted outside of the context of the play itself.

September 28, 2022, 10:13am TIME published its list of the 100 most influential people of 2022 today, and it includes eight writers from across the worlds of poetry, literary fiction, playwriting, journalism, and academia. Here’s what their peers had to say about them, and you can find the full list here. Sally Rooney, novelist “It’s

September 27, 2022, 11:17am Tom Hanks—who previously spent time crushing a beloved indie bookstore with his discount big box chain (which was then probably crushed by Amazon and yes I am talking about his role in You’ve Got Mail and not his real life)—will publish a novel with Knopf this spring. The book, The Making of Another Major

September 27, 2022, 10:44am Pull on your cozy reading sweats already! This week, we’re getting new books by Namwali Serpell, Kate Atkinson, Annie Proulx, Hua Hsu, and more. * Namwali Serpell, The Furrows(Hogarth Press) “Its ambiguities and enigmas add up to not more eddying confusions but to a stark reminder that the only reasonable response