Donald Trump has been a boon for political books. So much so that a rather specific sub-genre—gag books by entertainers that troll the president—is flourishing.
In Michael Lewis’s new book, if Donald Trump is the villain, the federal government and its protectors are the heroes.
The history of US voter suppression, the lives of American Indians, the escape of enslaved Yazidi women: These make up the cheerful topics for this year’s US National Book Award longlist, announced today. The foundation will announce the finalists on Oct. 10 and the winners on Nov. 14.
It’s been 10 years since the global financial crisis, and Americans are slowly reaching for their opera glasses again. Newly released data from the US National Endowment for the Arts shows that attendance at arts performances is back up after a recession-led decline.
Kindly step aside, Harry. Please back up, Mr. Grey. In 2018, Donald Trump is the main character that Americans want to read about.
According to the stewards of the Man Booker prize, the UK’s biggest book award is largely an unliterary affair.
In 2016, Barnes & Noble announced a plan to lure new customers with a wine and beer menu and $24 salmon. The new sit-down restaurants prompted speculation that the flailing bookseller was trying to save itself with food.
On Monday (Sept. 3), the New Yorker announced that its annual festival of live events, taking place in October, would include an onstage interview of Steve Bannon by editor David Remnick. Backlash—on social media, from staff, and from other speakers—swiftly followed. By the afternoon, the magazine had rescinded Bannon’s invite.
This week, the circus that is the world’s highest literary prize has a new sideshow.
More than a decade before J.R.R. Tolkien started The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, he wrote another story about a man chosen to take on pure, epic evil. “The Fall of Gondolin” is considered by some fans to be “the Holy Grail of Tolkien texts.”
At the end of Dirty Dancing, Patrick Swayze returns to the resort that fired him so he can dance with Jennifer Grey in an iconic performance that said, “I’m not going quietly.” Today, Barnes & Noble’s former CEO took the stage for his own final solo.
In Stephen King’s The Body, the young narrator, having just creatively insulted his friends’ mothers, says, “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12. Jesus, did you?” Readers may very well say the same about books. There are certain stories that, when read at formative times, like early adolescence, stick with us for life.
The US bookselling community has a suggestion for the next Barnes & Noble chief executive: What about a bookseller?
Walmart is coming for the king of audiobooks.
Three years ago, N.K. Jemisin was the first black writer to win one of science fiction’s most prestigious prizes, the Hugo for best novel. Then last year, she won it again. This year, yet again, she won the top Hugo award, for The Stone Sky, the last in her Broken Earth fantasy trilogy.
Two years ago in the comic book series Invincible Iron Man, Tony Stark met a young super genius named Riri Williams, a black teen who had successfully reverse-engineered his famous armor.
Earlier this summer, Barack Obama was in study mode. In June, the avid reader and former US president was reading about inequality. In July, he caught up on books from African writers for a trip to the continent.
It’s mid-August, which for season-blessed Northern Hemispherers, means a heap of summer guilt: Guilt that you only made it to the beach twice this summer, that you haven’t eaten enough watermelon, that your kid’s farmer’s tan is barely noticeable. And perhaps for some, guilt that your summer vacation book stack has sat largely untouched, gathering pollen.
Wigtown is a coastal “book town” in Scotland that features an Airbnb rental where bibliophiles can spend their vacation living out the romantic fantasy of running a bookstore. And indeed, according to Shaun Bythell, a year-round bookseller in the same town, it’s deeply romantic work: The evocative smell of books, mixed with cat piss; the customers who openly compare prices on their laptops to Amazon; the book-loving employees, always drunk or severely hungover; the orders for erotica titles such as Tokyo Lucky Hole; and the badgering of aspiring memoirists trying to find a publisher.
On Aug. 5, a searing book came out alleging that in late apartheid-era South Africa, government officials regularly took boys to an island near the city of Port Elizabeth and sexually abused them. A week later, one of its authors, former policeman Mark Minnie, was found dead.
Over the next few weeks, the US will embark on its yearly ritual of back-to-school preparation. Parents will scurry to order fresh pencils, index cards, and lunch containers. Kids, meanwhile, will have their own first-day-of-school frets.
Once upon a time in a forest, a well-meaning hardwood-floor professional was under attack, from a misinformed environmentalist.
This is a developing story.
Patrick Stewart will reprise his legendary role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the 1980s TV show, Star Trek: The Next Generation.
