A trove of manuscripts acquired from the Bronte family in the 19th century, all but unseen for the past century, will be auctioned at Sotheby’s. Read more
Year: 2021
China to try Australian writer on espionage charges
Yang has been held since arriving in China in January 2019 and has had no access to family and only limited contact with his legal representation, according to Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne. Read more
Damon Young’s “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker” wins Thurber Prize
Young, 42, of Pittsburgh co-founded and was editor-in-chief of “Very Smart Brothas;” he announced his departure from the website earlier this month. He is a columnist for GQ and has been published in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Time Magazine, Ebony and Jezebel magazines. Young describes himself as a “writer, critic, humorist, satirist and professional Black person.”
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If you can bear to read one pandemic dystopia in 2021, this should probably be it
Jim Shepard has earned a cult following for refashioning history’s horrors. “Phase Six,” about a future pandemic, is his timeliest novel yet. Read more
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John Steinbeck’s estate urged to let the world read his shunned werewolf novel
Years before becoming one of America’s most celebrated authors, John Steinbeck wrote at least three novels which were never published. Two of them were destroyed by the young writer as he struggled to make his name, but a third – a full-length mystery werewolf story entitled Murder at Full Moon – has survived unseen in an archive ever since being rejected for publication in 1930. Read more
Italy honors poet Dante with tomb readings 700 years after his death
Italy is honoring one of its most divine poets, Dante, on the 700th anniversary of his death with concerts and exhibits all over the country — as well as evening readings at his tomb. Read more
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77 Strange, Funny, and Magnificent Book Titles You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
The humorous literary award known as the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year has been running since 1978, with past winners including Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality (1986) by Glenn C. Ellenbogen, The Joy of Waterboiling (2018) by Achse Verlag and The Dirt Hole and its Variations by Charles L. Dobbins (2019). But we can go back centuries earlier to find their ancestors. The following are some of the more curious lurking in the corners of library catalogues. Read more
An afternoon inside a bookstore was as glorious as ever. Here’s what I bought.
Wherever I travel, it has long been my custom to check out the local secondhand bookstores. I carry a pocket flashlight for scanning dark shelves and shadowy alcoves, methodically pull out any hardback with a faded spine to verify the title, and never use a cellphone to compare prices with online listings. If I want a book, I’m not going to nickel-and-dime a brick-and-mortar shop, especially when so many of them are struggling. Read more
Sentenced by Algorithm
Is it fair for a judge to increase a defendant’s prison time on the basis of an algorithmic score that predicts the likelihood that he will commit future crimes? Many states now say yes, even when the algorithms they use for this purpose have a high error rate, a secret design, and a demonstrable racial bias. The former federal judge Katherine Forrest, in her short but incisive When Machines Can Be Judge, Jury, and Executioner, says this is both unfair and irrational. Read more
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Valeria Luiselli has won the world’s richest prize for a novel written in English.
Today at the opening of the International Literature Festival Dublin, Dublin’s Lord Mayor Hazel Chu announced that Valeria Luiselli has won the 2021 Dublin Literary Award for Lost Children Archive, her first English-language novel. At €100,000, the award is the world’s largest prize for a single novel published in English. Read more
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