Gone Fishing
Michael Seidlinger
While the big players in the publishing biz slow way the hell down in August — they take Fridays off, for god’s sake — we work all the harder in indie… Read more »
“Russian aluminum workers are apparently worthy of special protection”: Lawrence O’Donnell has been reading Seth Hettena
Melville House
In case you missed it, in yesterday’s New York Times, Seth Hettena brought down some serious truth. In an opinion piece for the Times, Hettena—the author of Trump / Russia: A Definitive History—writes of Russian oligarch… Read more »
Anatomy of a (Translated) Page: Basma Abdel Aziz’s The Queue
Elisabeth Jaquette
August is Women in Translation Month — an opportunity to celebrate the hugely important work done by women writers and women translators to make international literature accessible in English. Today, we’re… Read more »
Translation
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Western authors take stand in Israel/Palestine conflict by refusing to be published in Israel
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We put together an anthology of soccer writing for World Cup season
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Olga Tokarczuk wins this year’s Man Booker International Prize
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The TA Translation Prize hopes to shed light on the tireless work that sustains translated literature
Freshman Move-In Day: Why it still sucks for all
Jacques Berlinerblau
“Move-in Day” is the term used to describe an obscure national rite of passage that is loathed by all and sundry. Each year on this occasion, hundreds of thousands of… Read more »
Colleges and Universities
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A gaggle of critical theorists come to Avital Ronell’s defense
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Someone at this university library should have read 1984
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The University of Texas library puts books in storage to make way for makers
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Another day, another fight against the capitalist machine: UW-Madison offers up a plan to "consolidate" libraries, remove millions of books
Fall for the Book announces a new award for writing by immigrants
Michael Barron
We are, as we always have been, a nation of immigration. According to Jie Zong, Jeanne Batalova, and Jeffrey Hallock of the Migration Policy Institute, almost 14% of all people living in America were… Read more »
These women are sending books to the detained kids separated from their parents at the US border
Gaia Steinfeld DeNisi
Thanks to the zero tolerance policy that Donald Trump’s administration began enforcing last April, countless families have been ripped apart at the US-Mexican border in recent months. Currently, more than 2,500… Read more »
A $500,000 grant will help NYU Abu Dhabi make books in Arabic available to displaced populations all over the world
Francesca Capossela
An Arabic digital library has received a $500,000 grant for its ongoing efforts to digitize Arabic texts and make their files accessible. Arabic Collections Online began as an academic undertaking at NYU… Read more »
The San Bernardino Libraries have received a $10,000 grant for bilingual books
Emily Hoffman
In California, a state where half of all children have at least one immigrant parent, libraries are working to accommodate the needs of their patrons. Thanks to a grant from the… Read more »
Nike founder Phil Knight’s memoir Shoe Dog is coming to Netflix
Ryan Harrington
In 2016 Phil Knight–the founder of Nike–published his memoir Shoe Dog. It jumped to #1 on the New York Times Best Sellers list, and moved hundreds of thousands of copies. Now,… Read more »
Adaptations
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Shondaland heads to Netflix with eight new shows, four of which are book adaptations
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Movies are basically just Books 2.0
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Terry Gilliam’s Don Quixote adaptation somehow encounters more trouble
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Ursula Le Guin wrote a character with “red-brown” skin; fifty years later, he’s finally being depicted as a person of color
Shondaland heads to Netflix with eight new shows, four of which are book adaptations
Alex Primiani
If this were 2008, I would tell you to change your dial to ABC as you eagerly awaited the new Shonda Rhimes-produced drama sure to change TV forever. But it’s not… Read more »
Little Free Libraries in Lincoln, Nebraska fight back against Nazi bullshit
Stephanie DeLuca
Little Free Libraries, those wonderful mini-structures that operate on a “take-a-book, leave-a-book” honor system, are places to share books, opportunities to pass along stories and knowledge. Unfortunately, last week in Lincoln,… Read more »
Controversy mounts surrounding the publication of a poem in The Nation
Michael Seidlinger
On July 5th, The Nation published a poem titled “How-To” by Anders Carlson-Wee. The magazine’s editors apparently thought there was no telling the reaction and impact of this poem would have… Read more »
It’s Saturday O’Clock Somewhere
Melville House
So, anyone notice it’s been kinda hot out? Clock these rising temperatures: impeachment articles against Rosenstein, the reunification of some—and very much not all—migrant families, the death at thirty-one of Femen founder Oksana Sachko, and… Read more »
Murakami’s new book faces restrictions in Hong Kong
Nikki Griffiths
Haruki Murakami is one of Japan’s most celebrated authors, selling millions of prize-winning books across the world. His new novel Killing Commendatore went on sale in Japan and China last… Read more »
Censorship
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Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wins re-election in Turkey, further endangering writers and journalists throughout the country
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The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette fires an editorial cartoonist for being “too angry”
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Tehran Book Fair Uncensored continues, highlighting censored voices from the Persian diaspora
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The EU is signaling that it will continue to pressure China for the release of Gui Minhai and Liu Xia
Reprogrammable Braille offers tremendous potential to blind and visually impaired readers
Simon Reichley
We have, over the years, had ample cause to ridicule a good number of faddish “book technologies,” each of which was certain to “change the nature of reading, at scale” or “revolutionize the… Read more »
Study, with a chance of meatballs: Ikea is opening an in-store reading room in a London store
Tom Clayton
Ah, Ikea. Scandinavian, pleasant, clean, cheap, funky, extremely-murky-past-having Ikea. Say what you like about the place, I can’t think of many other stores I’d go if I wanted to, say,… Read more »
Re-reading a Hail and Farewell to James Alan McPherson
Dennis Johnson
Today, on the second anniversary of James Alan McPherson’s passing, we’re revisiting this moving remembrance Melville House co-director Dennis Johnson wrote of him. It was originally published just a few days after McPherson… Read more »
Audits: They’re not just for Al Capone anymore!, Or, How the Carnegie Library got its books back
Susan Rella
Great news for people who hate scumbag book thieves: the culprits of the Pittsburgh Carnegie Library book heist have finally been caught. As a devoted MobyLives reader, you’ll remember this… Read more »
Antiquarian booksellers
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A piece of St. Louis history is found inside a book from 1871
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Could this small New Hampshire bookshop become the (non-evil) Amazon.com of rare books?
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Four teenagers stole rare books from a university library in 2004, and now their heist is being made into a movie
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If someone offers you an Isaac Newton first edition, please return it: Theft at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Library
A Forbes contributor has suggested replacing libraries with Amazon bookstores
Michael Seidlinger
I hate everything about this, but here we go. Panos Mourdoukoutas, chair of the economics department at LIU-Post and a writer for Forbes, has published an opinion piece suggesting that Amazon Books stores… Read more »
The magnificent Wayne Shorter has written a graphic novel to accompany his next album
Ian Dreiblatt
Look up at the stars and imagine what it would be like to be an astronaut or a pilot. Imagine exploring the pyramids or Machu Picchu. Imagine flying like a… Read more »
Behind the Book, a non-profit that brings authors to underserved classrooms, needs help!
Emily Hoffman
As August creeps closer, the end of summer looms, promising of cooler days, Labor Day sales, and, for some, the end of summer programs. At eight public elementary schools across New York… Read more »
The New York Daily News slashes its newsroom in half, calling into question the future of local news
Alex Primiani
This Monday, the Tronc-owned New York Daily News—one of three dailies still operating in the city—laid off half of its newsroom, another major blow to local news in the twenty-first… Read more »
The Man Booker Prize longlist has been announced!
Stephanie DeLuca
Sound the trumpets: the folks behind the Man Booker Prize have announced this year’s longlist on their website. The list is comprised of thirteen books, and includes some firsts: first nominated book published in Ireland, as well as the first graphic novel… Read more »
It’s beginning to look a lot like Hemingway lookalike season
Ryan Harrington
This year, as in every year since 1981, Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West hosted its beloved Ernest Hemingway lookalike contest to celebrate the author’s birthday. On July 21, 2018, Papa would… Read more »
Books for Africa celebrates the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth
Simon Reichley
Nelson Mandela, the socialist freedom fighter who led South Africa out of Apartheid in the nineties died in 2013, and would have celebrated his 100th birthday last Wednesday. To commemorate the… Read more »
Help us debut on the New York Times Best Sellers list and impeach this dangerous president!
Melville House
We’ve written about it before, and we’ll write about it again: we need to impeach this president. Yes. Veteran constitutional attorney and legal scholar Ron Fein put it pretty well in… Read more »
China’s embassy in Stockholm has been harrassing those who speak in defense of Gui Minhai, the Swedish publisher illegally detained in China
Ian Dreiblatt
Over the past few years, we’ve devoted a great deal of attention to the story of Gui Minhai, the Swedish publisher abducted by officials from the People’s Republic of China in 2015, and… Read more »
“Reading to them was the only thing we could do that was normal”: This Florida couple has just given 2,200 books to a local hospital — and they plan on donating more
Gaia Steinfeld DeNisi
Put this in your cynicism and smoke it: Gainesville couple Abby and Ryan Burle are donating 2,200 books to the Northeast Georgia Medical Center’s neonatal ICU after first bonding with… Read more »
Sean Spicer is appearing at the Union Square Barnes and Noble, and the internet is really not here for it
Melville House
Sean Spicer: The spineless fucking Dippin’ Dot that just won’t seem to melt away. Spicer is, as we’ve written many times, a monster. Even now, in a stage of advanced… Read more »
Congressman Keith Ellison asks Amazon why they’re still selling Nazi merchandise
Stephanie DeLuca
As we wrote last week, Amazon is, right now, profiting from the sale of racist and Nazi merchandise, via third parties using their Marketplace platform to move products that include books, clothing,… Read more »
Amazon
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A Forbes contributor has suggested replacing libraries with Amazon bookstores
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Workers in Spain, Poland, and Germany strike against Amazon’s brutal labor practices on Prime Day
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Amazon is selling Nazi books for kids and not doing much to remove them
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Washington Post employees are asking Jeff Bezos for better pay, more job security, and other important things
Chance the Rapper raps about owning the local news site Chicagoist, which happens to be fact
Alex Primiani
Celebrated rapper and Chicagoan Chance the Rapper has just purchased the defunct Chicagoist, according to Robert Channick at the Chicago Tribune. The local news and culture site was once owned… Read more »
British publishers looking to capture post-World Cup fandom
Ryan Harrington
Melville House is no stranger to crashing books. For anyone who doesn’t have their publishing glossary handy: to “crash” a book means to put it on an accelerated writing and production schedule,… Read more »
Reading books is on the decline? No way!
Michael Seidlinger
This just in: Reading is on the decline. Maybe this isn’t so surprising, given the shortening of our attention spans, but people in media and trade publishing are certainly looking to… Read more »
Well now, there was a week that started, continued a while, and ended
Melville House
“Self-portrait with Skeleton” by Lovis Corinth, born 160 years ago today. Here we are again: Saturday. We always seem to run into each other here. That was one serious monster of… Read more »
Strange Stars: An Interplanetary Tour Diary (Part I)
Jason Heller
When my book Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded was about to come out earlier this year, I had plenty of discussions with Melville House’s… Read more »
