Nationwide, people are playing a lot more chess — usually online or in apps. Both middle and high school kids are playing chess on their phones in the hallways between classes, sneaking moves in when their instruments are down during orchestra practice. Students at one school even turned the winter formal into a makeshift chess tournament. Read more
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World Book and Copyright Day is a celebration to promote the enjoyment of books and reading. Each year, on 23 April, celebrations take place all over the world to recognize the scope of books – a link between the past and the future, a bridge between generations and across cultures. UNESCO’s theme for 2023 – Indigenous Languages! Last year saw the start of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-32) and it’s a UN priority to uphold and promote linguistic diversity and multilingualism. Read more
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Jamil Jan Kochai wins the Aspen Words Literary Prize for his short stories focused on the absurdity and violence Afghans have endured. Read more
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Due to be published just before Bookshop Day on 7 October, Our Strangers will only be sold in physical bookshops, Bookshop.org and selected online independent retailers. Read more
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A California man who pleaded guilty to making online threats to shoot up and bomb the offices of dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster was sentenced to a year in prison this week. Read more
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…upon its publication in 1989, Garden of Seven Twilights was hailed as a masterpiece and showered with accolades—the Serra d’Or Critics prize, the National Prize for Catalan Literature, and many others. Critics blessed Palol with comparisons to Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, and Georges Perec, dubbing his work “the postmodern Decameron.” Garden especially earns this last epithet—it is a frame-narrative monolith, a monstrously pregnant matryoshka doll of nested stories, and a cerebral, ludic, and unapologetically pulpy affair. Read more
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Long before the hippies, a group of thinkers used substances like cocaine, hashish, and nitrous oxide to uncover the secrets of the mind. Read more
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Art transcends the artist. Read more
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Based on the best-selling collection by Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things follows Clare (Kathryn Hahn) a writer who becomes a revered advice columnist while her own life is falling apart. Watch trailer
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…As a writer and editor of true crime, I might be more sensitive to these sorts of factual errors than most people. But they are part of a troubling trend. Errors like the one in “Boston Strangler” threaten the integrity of true crime, which as a genre has grappled with whether the stories it tells about crimes are, in fact, true. Read more
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