The best of literary internet Today: In 1592, an epidemic of bubonic plague caused London’s theaters to close for nearly 16 months. Why the aging millennial experience of American life is a cycle of getting your hopes up and disappointed. | Lit Hub Memoirs Justin Ellis explores the labor history and racial solidarity of mid-century
Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines on politics, culture, media, and other topics. Today, we’ve got stories about who owns the public library, tips and insights for overcoming reading decline, and much more. What are public libraries for anyway? Earlier this year, I wrote about how public libraries were redefining
TeaHistorian and novelist Fiona Moseley acknowledged in a 2018 article for the Guardian that the city of York was a major influence on both of her careers. Childhood and adolescence in a place like York, full of time and space, can generate conflict between “the desire to live in the past and the need to
Common Reads, sometimes called One Book, One College, or All Campus Reads, has been a popular project for American colleges and universities for the past decade. They invite incoming students to read the same book and spend the first week – or even the entire first year – talking about it. It’s a smart way
In a new audiobook version of Homer’s nearly 3,000-year-old epic poem “The Odyssey,” the voice of British actor Michael Caine delivers the story’s soaring opening lines in his distinctive, gravelly staccato. “Tell me, O Muse, of the wise man who overthrew the sacred city of Ilium, wandered far and visited the capitals of many nations,
weat five books Consider the shortlist for the annual Bram Stoker Awards an excellent source of horror novel recommendations. Each year, members of the Horror Writers Association – an international group of writers and publishing professionals – nominate new work for consideration in many different literary forms, from screenplays and anthologies to short stories and
Today’s Special Book Deal $1.99 let me down by Nicola Dinan GET THIS DEAL $1.99 good things By Samin Nosrat GET THIS DEAL $2.99 when breath becomes air By Paul Kalanithi GET THIS DEAL $2.99 be ready when luck happens by ina garten GET THIS DEAL $1.99 cactus by sarah haywood GET THIS DEAL $1.99
‘CContinental people live sexual lives; The British have hot water bottles.” Hungarian journalist George Mikes saw it in How to Be an Alien (1946), one of the finest examples of the tradition of foreigners explaining themselves to Britain. From Voltaire to VS Naipaul, outsiders have often highlighted national peculiarities, exposing contradictions inherent in British life
DAfter holding a star-studded wedding in Palermo earlier this month, Usa Lipa and Callum Turner are honeymooning in Italy. But their relationship started with a book: While meeting each other in an LA restaurant, the couple realized that not only were they reading the same novel – Trust by Hernán Diaz – but both had
Sometimes I think, “Ugh. There are so many books in the world, and I’ll never be able to get to them all.” And sometimes I think, “Wow. There are so many books in the world, and it’s fun to try to read as many as you can.” Today, I’m feeling the latter, which is why