Kirsten Gillibrand is publishing a book about suffragists for kids; probably some adults should read it, too
Kirsten Gillibrand, New York’s Democratic junior senator and a potential contender for the 2020 presidential election, has announced that she’ll be writing a children’s book with the stories of ten leaders who fought for… Read more »
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner to receive the Fire and Fury treatment
High finance and million-dollar real estate: they go together like Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. They’re also the two beats of investigative journalist Vicky Ward, who plans to write a book… Read more »
Ursula Le Guin wrote a character with “red-brown” skin; fifty years later, he’s finally being depicted as a person of color
Representation in fantasy literature is a problem. The heroes tend to be white, relegating people of color to roles as sidekicks, villains, and the soon-to-be-killed-to-allow-for-another-plot-point. The problem is exacerbated when adaptations… Read more »
Kristen Stewart is adapting Lidia Yuknavitch’s classic The Chronology of Water
For years, Hollywood has been mining literary gems to adapt as films. Last week, actress and aspiring filmmaker Kristen Stewart spoke of her plans to bring Lidia Yuknavitch’s groundbreaking memoir, The Chronology of Water, to… Read more »
Hook and Satur(day)
SMTWTFS: One of these initials is not like the others. Well, actually, it’s “S,” so it is like one of the others, but we’re talking here about that second “S.” The… Read more »
Sean Spicer at BookExpo
Boston-area bookseller, Melville House author, and beloved MobyLives columnist Josh Cook first published these thoughts on his blog, In Order of Importance. With his permission, and some updates, we’re excited to repost them here. The Trump administration’s first,… Read more »
As US-Iranian relations worsen, Tehran’s book festival might be getting better
It’s... the Melville House Post-London Book Fair Debrief Extravaganza! (For short, the MHP-LBFDE!)
Far-right violence has been reported at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair
Brooklyn Book Festival 2017: I just wanna say, that was some festival of books
Bill Murray will continue to live his best life by reciting Walt Whitman in a Greek amphitheatre
Join me now as we journey through the mists of time to 1979. A long, hot summer is in full, ahem, swing. Caddyshack, the cult screwball golfing comedy, is being filmed. It’s… Read more »
Mary Wollstonecraft to become the subject of some Bronze Statuecraft
In the US, it’s been a weird and unchill year for statuary. In the UK, where things are looking a lot chiller, they took another turn for the brighter this week, when… Read more »
Isaac Asimov to David Letterman in 1980: “I just tried to write stories that would sell so I could pay my way through college”
It’s hard to imagine any better way to cold boot your Friday morning than to watch this incredible 1980 TV spot featuring science fiction legend Isaac Asimov and David Letterman. Maybe the… Read more »
Could this small New Hampshire bookshop become the (non-evil) Amazon.com of rare books?
The bad: Baldface Books in Dover, New Hampshire, is closing its brick-and-mortar store. The good: Baldface Books is still going to be active as an online seller. The very good:… Read more »
Four teenagers stole rare books from a university library in 2004, and now their heist is being made into a movie
If someone offers you an Isaac Newton first edition, please return it: Theft at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Library
A flood destroys a trove of Stephen King manuscripts and ephemera
Thousands of rare books have been sold in Ireland, in the largest auction in decades
Remembering Tom Wolfe by some of his best lines (and attire)
The literary world has been piling up the panegyrics all week for Tom Wolfe, the fire-crackling prose writer and purveyor of New Journalism who died on Monday at the age of eighty-eight. Picking up… Read more »
The Wodehouse Prize committee confirms that last year was a humorless clusterfuck
At last, there’s proof of just how unfunny the past year has been. We knew it. I mean, we lived it. Three hundred and sixty-five days tripped over themselves in unmitigated calamity. That the… Read more »
It’s time to play: Fragment of Great Literature or Nine Inch Nails Lyric?
Well, it’s been a hell of a week. People are flagrantly ignoring the due dates of their library books, broccoli is turning up in simply outrageous places, respected authors are scoring… Read more »
Hail and Farewell: Peter Mayer (1936 – 2018)
On Friday, May 11th, the publishing world lost one of its old-school icons when Peter Mayer died in his Soho home at the age of eighty-two. Salman Rushdie’s memoir offers… Read more »
You say classic, I say Melville House classic! A totally subjective selection of ten of our books bound for the ages
We’re all going to hell, but hopefully with the impending destruction of the universe more space will open up for new peaks of literary greatness. Luckily, Maddy Foley over at Bustle… Read more »
A book was returned to a San Francisco library forty-seven years overdue
Better late than never. As Michelle Robertson reports at the San Francisco Chronicle, a library book has been returned late to the San Francisco Public Library after more than forty-seven years — forty-seven years,… Read more »
Someone at this university library should have read 1984
Hofstra University, in the Long Island town of Hempstead, is a relatively young university—founded just eighty-three years ago—and its campus, which spans both sides of a four-lane turnpike, boasts a fairly odd combination of… Read more »
Some further historical insights into C.D. Rose’s Who’s Who When Everyone is Someone Else
As part of our ongoing interest in the nature of the events surrounding the tale told in C.D. Rose’s Who’s Who When Everyone Is Someone Else, on sale now, we… Read more »
Seth Hettena can’t stop, won’t stop explaining Trump’s decades-deep connections to Russian money
Seth Hettena talks Trump and Russian money on All In with Chris Hayes: “You don’t know whether they represent Russian mafia, Russian government, or both”
May the Force Boogie With You: On disco, sci-fi, and other galactic funk
Announcing: The Melville House Nonfiction Open Reading Period!
Ok, so… Why Jerusalem? (Hint: It has a lot to do with a book you may have heard of.)
Last month, GQ set off a tempest in an evangelical teacup. The magazine published a feature titled “21 Books You Don’t Have to Read,” in which twenty-one different authors and GQ staffers… Read more »
Can a film be a book? Jean-Luc Godard thinks so.
At some point in a person’s life, if their achievements have distinguished them among the billions of people on the planet, if their contributions to our civilization will merit study and… Read more »
“Mostly, it’s a book about what democrats can do to level the playing field in electoral politics”: David Faris will talk you into fighting dirty
“I think that there’s a moral reason to award statehood to DC and Puerto Rico, but there’s also a partisan reason — and that is that they would probably send four… Read more »
The EU is signaling that it will continue to pressure China for the release of Gui Minhai and Liu Xia
According to an Associated Press story that circulated widely last week, Donald Trump’s recent, stupid decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal will not spell the end of that arrangement: rather,… Read more »
Gui Minhai, his whereabouts unknown, wins the Prix Voltaire as the international clamor on his behalf grows louder
An award-winning Swedish publisher is disappeared in China... again
China says Gui Minhai has been released. What does that mean?
Three-hundred-year-old Chinese erotica proves we’re all still prudes
The 33⅓ series strikes an innovative deal with Spotify
As we know, audiobooks are becoming a bigger slice of the publishing pie. This means that both publishers’ and audio companies’ thinking caps are presumably securely fastened, as they seek new ways… Read more »
The University of Texas library puts books in storage to make way for makers
Last month, I had the chance to attend the Urban Librarians Conference here in Brooklyn. As I listened to librarians discuss the changing spaces they manage, they talked about more than… Read more »
Seth Hettena can’t stop, won’t stop explaining Trump’s decades-deep connections to Russian money
Welcome, friends, to the working week. Here’s hoping you’ve gotten some rest. The coming days are going to be live. For us, the past few days have definitely been live, thanks in… Read more »
Wonder of wonders, Saturday of Saturdays
Here’s the quick of it: it’s been a hell of a week. Before we go into all of it—and there is, oh children, plenty to go into—one big thing that’s going… Read more »
Seth Hettena talks Trump and Russian money on All In with Chris Hayes: “You don’t know whether they represent Russian mafia, Russian government, or both”
“What I show in my book is that Trump’s ties to Russia are so deep and so complex that you have people, and you don’t know who they are and… Read more »
Some further historical insights into C.D. Rose’s Who’s Who When Everyone is Someone Else
Seth Hettena can’t stop, won’t stop explaining Trump’s decades-deep connections to Russian money
May the Force Boogie With You: On disco, sci-fi, and other galactic funk
Announcing: The Melville House Nonfiction Open Reading Period!
We’re offering three free e-books: It’s the What You Need to Know Now Kit
In response to recent events, Melville House has announced it is offering free e-book editions of several of its recent hit books. The books included are TRUMP / RUSSIA: A… Read more »
A new study suggests Mr. Men Books are sexist
Many of us will have grown up reading the adventures of Mr. Happy, Little Miss Naughty, and friends, with their colourful illustrations and quirky stories. But have you revisited them… Read more »
The AAP has released revised sales data for 2017 and 2016, and the news is… kinda good!
At Publishers Lunch, Michael Cader has a tidy summary of the American Association of Publishers’ revised data for 2017, which contains some surprising revelations. The news is good, more or… Read more »
Librarians are fed up with you people using cheese to mark your pages
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever used as a bookmark? A feather? A candy wrapper? An old photograph of a man’s rear end? (The latter is not just idle conjecture;… Read more »
Did you buy Trump / Russia in hardcover? If so, we’ll send you the ebook for free.
When we publish a book as timely and important as Seth Hettena’s Trump/Russia: A Definitive History, out this week, we try our best to make it as accessible as possible.… Read more »
As US-Iranian relations worsen, Tehran’s book festival might be getting better
Yesterday, Donald Trump pulled out of what was considered to be Obama’s signature foreign policy deal — an agreement with Iran to lift sanctions in exchange for nuclear accountability. In return,… Read more »
A Maine bookstore pulls books by Junot Díaz after allegations
Earlier this week, we wrote that in the wake of #MeToo, some book publishers are pushing to include “morality clauses” in their agreements with authors — the idea being that… Read more »
Romance author to other romance authors: Don’t you dare say “cocky” (yes, really)
There’s so much wretchedness in the world these days, and we hate to add to your ennui, but answer this: if romance writers can’t insert penis euphemisms into their titillating titles, WHAT IS… Read more »
The Philosophy of Beards
Sophia
Spurious, Dogma, & Exodus
Future Days
James Baldwin: The Last Interview
The Day the Renaissance Was Saved
Melancholy Accidents
Nora Ephron: The Last Interview
Not on Fire, But Burning
The Dunwich Horror
Red or Dead
The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture
The Quest for a Moral Compass
The Ghost Network
What We Do Now
La Femme de Gilles
Billy Budd, Sailor
An Exaggerated Murder
The Jane Austen Rules
Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality
The Duke’s Table
Happiness
Rules for Werewolves
The Utopia of Rules
Bolaño
The Weirdness
The Dead
The Dog Walker
Ray Bradbury: The Last Interview
The Establishment
Hannah Arendt: The Last Interview
Half The Kingdom
Bartleby Mug
Contraband Cocktails
We, Robots
How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive
Wittgenstein Jr
The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure
Cat Out of Hell
Ernest Hemingway: The Last Interview
The U.S. Supreme Court Decision on Marriage Equality (Gift Edition)
The Essential Heinrich Böll
Philip K. Dick: The Last Interview
Trainwreck
Bernie goes to the Vatican Bundle
The Dark Net
The Buenos Aires Quintet
Patience and Fortitude
Why I Am Not a Feminist
The Next Next Level
The Art of the Novella subscription + Referral Rewards!
The North of God
A History of Money
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: The Last Interview
“I Would Prefer Not To” Bartleby Tote Bag
Ada’s Algorithm
Gnarr!
The Damned Utd
