As of this morning, you can now easily buy ebooks from your local indie bookstore. Thanks to Bookshop.org, the reigning David to Am*zon’s Goliath. As Wired reports, a new platform on the site will now sell ebooks directly to customers. Read more >
January is nearing its end, and what a January it has been, marked by natural and political disaster alike, a month in which America, to any paying attention, takes its most overt steps into a pay-to-play system of corruption and Read more >
This Friday, the Trump administration moved to support the proliferation of book bans across the United States. Late last week, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights not-so-quietly dropped 11 open complaints against school districts that have removed what Read more >
Mosab Abu Toha, the award-winning Palestinian poet, writer, and librarian (who, in November 2023, was kidnapped by Israeli forces as he tried to get his young family out of Gaza) has released a statement confirming the destruction of the Edward Read more >
Today, the National Book Critics Circle announced their finalists for the best books published in 2024—30 books in six categories—as well as the finalists or winners of five special annual awards: two lifetime achievement awards, the NBCC Service Award, the Read more >
“Is it or is it not fascism” is a debate we’re going to be having a lot in the next few years, I’m afraid. And while there is perhaps an intellectual rigor to sussing out an answer, there are also Read more >
It’s a funny time to think about national reading habits. I’ve been looking for escape pods, personally. Books that take me far from this particular time and zip code. Perhaps riding the same wave, our friends at The Drift dedicated Read more >
There’s much to say today and this week, particularly for those of you in the United States, as we brace ourselves for the turbulence and tumult of a grinningly authoritarian, grinningly small-minded and small-hearted regime taking control of America’s government. Read more >
With news coming in earlier today that Israel’s security cabinet has, after some delay, ratified the Gaza ceasefire agreement, it looks as if the carnage that has enveloped the strip for over fifteen months will, on Sunday, finally come to Read more >
High-school is Twin Peaks. All the cool girls are Audrey for Halloween, eerily twisting in pencil skirts. Unless they’re the Log Lady. Every cup of coffee is “damn good.” College is Blue Velvet country. At every party, some bro will parrot Read more >
The new year means new calendars you’ll stop using in a month, new resolutions you’ll break in a week, and new public domain works you can remix and ruin all year long. And in 2025, a lot of classics are Read more >
A special collection landed in the Hamptons this week, care of Tom Hanks—the world’s one true pleasure to have in class. As real ones know, Mr. Hanks has long nursed a fetish for typewriters. He spotlit the technology in his Read more >
It’s a grim week for Meta. The company formerly known as Facebook, and before that Facemash, “designed to evaluate the attractiveness of female Harvard students,” now encompasses Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp, and Meta, the failed vision for a remote workplace, Read more >
Is your TBR pile daunting and diffuse? Have you failed to find the kick-off book that suits the vibes of 2025? Or, are you maybe just looking for a structure to put some juice into your reading life? If you Read more >
There are the best books of the year, and then there are the most popular. Print books had a relatively good year in 2024; as Publishers Weekly reports, sales rose by less than 1%—which isn’t much, but represents the first Read more >
Hello, hello, Dear Readers! It’s just about the middle of January, and what a start to the year it has already been, a year already defined, it seems, by its inability to be pinned down, by its chaotic tumult of Read more >
Photo from Fox’s Twitter/X account I’m not a big football fan, but I did watch a lot of skateboarding videos as a teen so I understand the appeal of a sport that involves lots of concussions. So I nearly missed Read more >
Another major academic org is in turmoil over Palestine. This weekend, members of the Modern Language Association (MLA) protested the group’s annual convention in New Orleans after the executive council refused to hold a vote on a pro-Palestinian resolution. As Read more >
In pleasant book news, the New York Public Library has acquired Jhumpa Lahiri’s archive. The beloved multilingual translator and award-winning author’s papers will now be available to view in the Berg Collection of English and American Literature, located in the Read more >
This morning, The Story Prize—which seeks to recognize the best short story collection published every year—announced its three 2025 finalists, chosen from a total of 107 submissions. “Each of these three story collections is so original in conception and brilliantly executed Read more >
