Today's Books Pulse
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J.M. Coetzee declines Jerusalem literary festival over Gaza conflict
Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee refused an invitation to the 14th International Writers Festival in Jerusalem, citing Israel’s military actions in Gaza as genocide that implicates the entire society, including its intellectual community. In his letter to festival director Julia Fermentto‑Tzaisler, he argued that collective guilt cannot be ignored and warned that Israel’s reputation will suffer.
Whining About Publishing Since 139 AD
The article traces the origins of organized publishing to ancient Rome, where wealthy patron Atticus built a slave‑run workshop to copy Cicero’s essays and later expanded to a full‑scale book‑selling business on the Argiletum street. By the second century AD the Argiletum bustled with booksellers, public readings, and scroll advertisements, creating a thriving market for literary works. Authors received no royalties; writers like Martial complained that their widely distributed scrolls earned them nothing. The piece highlights how early publishing relied on physical labor, open copying, and author‑driven promotion.
Repetition Creates Subtle Microtension in Storytelling
Microtension is story tension on a micro level, or in small, barely noticeable increments. And repetition of words is one of the most common way to produce it. Insight from C.S. Lakin: https://janefriedman.com/creating-microtension-through-repetition/
Podcast: A Peek Into Canadians' Reading
BookNet Canada’s upcoming 2025 Leisure & Reading report shows 79% of Canadians read a book last year, a modest dip from 84% in 2015 but with a recent uptick over the past five years. Daily reading holds steady at roughly...
HaBO: Age Gap Romance But They’re Both Wealthy
A reader is seeking the title of a contemporary romance set in New York City featuring a wealthy 30‑something male lead and an 18‑19‑year‑old heroine who works as a cleaner despite being secretly affluent. The story opens with an immediate...
The NYT’s List of the Best Books of This Century (the 21st): Not Much Science
The New York Times Book Review released its first “100 Best Books of the 21st Century” list, compiled from a survey of 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers. The list, announced after the first 25 years...
Macau Launches ‘Exploring the World of Literature’ Exhibition Showcasing East Asian Classics
The Public Library of Macau’s Cultural Affairs Bureau opened the “Exploring the World of Literature” exhibition on Oct. 27, 2025, featuring 50 selected works by Mo Yan, Kenzaburō Ōe and Han Kang. Running through June 2026 across ten branch libraries,...
Tom Perrotta and the Summer That Broke a Boy
Tom Perrotta’s latest novel, *Ghost Town*, follows writer Jay Perry’s recollection of a traumatic summer in 1974 when his mother dies, leaving the teenage Jimmy adrift in grief. The story intertwines the narrator’s present‑day literary career with vivid third‑person flashbacks...
Erecting Men
Philosopher Robin Dembroff’s forthcoming book *Real Men on Top* (out May 18, Oxford University Press) argues that patriarchy harms men as much as women, linking systemic gender norms to violence, exploitation, and mental‑health strain. The author recounts a viral 2020...
Utah Adds Two More Books to Banned List; 34 Now Outlawed in State Public Schools
Utah added two more titles—Jaycee Dugard’s *A Stolen Life* and George R.R. Martin’s *A Clash of Kings*—to its state‑wide banned‑books list, bringing the total to 34. The additions follow a lawsuit filed in February challenging the 2024 HB 29 “sensitive material”...
Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update
Daily Nous released its latest Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update, highlighting recent revisions to major encyclopedia entries and new content across several platforms. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy refreshed five entries—including Realism, Inheritance Systems, Plato, Spinoza’s epistemology, and Foucault—while the...
Poem of the Week
Duke University Press highlighted the final "Poem of the Week" featuring “Few Years Later,” a poem from the newly released collection *Ocean, as Much as Rain*. The anthology presents translated works by renowned Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser, edited and translated...
Indie Bookstores Surge 70% Since 2020, Membership Grows
Good News: After 20 years of declining numbers, indie booksellers have come "roaring back." There are about 70% more bookstores now than there were in 2020. The American Booksellers Association membership has grown from 1,900 to 3,200. https://t.co/SbQVRMblkG
Buy Invitational Selling—Profits Support Make‑A‑Wish
My friend Dennis Cummins, who is incredible when it comes to sales and communication, has just released his new book, Invitational Selling. For the first 48 hours, 100% of the proceeds from the launch will be donated to Make-A-Wish.Grab a copy today:...
Deva Fagan’s The Delta Codex Is Excellent Upper MG Sci-Fi
Deva Fagan’s middle‑grade novel *The Delta Codex* (Atheneum, April 2026, $17.99) follows Delta, a young “codex” tasked with silencing a dangerous ancient echo. When she breaks the vow of silence to rescue a girl, Delta’s journey into a hostile wasteland forces...
Matthew Swanson & Robbi Behr’s Life on the Moon Is Cheeky MG Sci-Fi
Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr’s middle‑grade novel *Life on the Moon* debuted on April 14, 2026 as a $17.99 hardcover aimed at readers ages 8‑12. The story follows 12‑year‑old Leo, who joins the first Moon colony only to discover a hidden ecosystem and...
One Great Poem to Read Today: Sarah Jean Grimm’s “Zero Conditional”
Literary Hub is celebrating the 30th National Poetry Month by spotlighting a new poem each workday, and today’s pick is Sarah Jean Grimm’s “Zero Conditional,” first published in February 2026. The poem strings together concise images—a manicured lawn, startled birds, a silent...
A Debut Novel That Writes Magic Into a Difficult History
Jiyoung Han’s debut novel *Honey in the Wound* weaves magical realism into the harrowing history of Korean comfort women under Japanese colonial rule. The story follows Song Young‑Ja and her descendants, each endowed with supernatural powers that turn everyday acts—cooking,...
New Book Fat Swim Explores the Pain and Pleasure of Having a Body
Emma Copley Eisenberg’s 2026 short‑story collection Fat Swim, released by Playboy and Literary Hub, explores body neutrality through diverse characters—young, old, fat, thin, trans—who grapple with pain, pleasure, and societal beauty standards. The book intertwines everyday scenes, from a public‑pool “fat swim”...
TikTok Unveils UK’s First #BookTok Bestseller List, Women Authors Claim All Top 20
TikTok has launched the United Kingdom’s first official #BookTok bestseller list, a hybrid chart that blends physical‑store sales with in‑app engagement data. The inaugural top‑20 is composed exclusively of women writers, highlighting the platform’s power to drive a £86 million (≈$108 million)...
Cities on a Plate: A New Series Tells the Story of Cities Through Food, History, and People
Indian entrepreneur Sri Bodanapu, a former tech marketer in San Francisco, launched the Heirloom Cities series to document urban culinary heritage. The first volume on Mumbai debuted in May 2025 priced at ₹5,100 (≈ $61), and the second on Kolkata, priced at...
Lit Hub Daily: April 28, 2026
Lit Hub Daily’s April 28, 2026 edition curates a wide‑range literary roundup, from the story of Scott Meredith inventing the modern book auction to a look at the 1850s American prose renaissance. It spotlights 20 new titles launching that day, a historical piece...
The Truth In Our Actions
The post reflects on a line from Elizabeth Strout’s *Oh William!* – “When I don’t know what to do, I look at what I’m doing” – and uses it to explore the gap between stated desires and actual behavior. It argues that...
A Must-Read Book By One of Our Sharpest Contemporary Voices
Jia Tolentino’s debut essay collection, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self‑Delusion, is highlighted as a prime gateway into nonfiction for readers accustomed to fiction. The 2019 bestseller, which made Barack Obama’s list of favorite books that year, blends sharp cultural analysis...
Caroline Bicks on MONSTERS IN THE ARCHIVES
In this episode, host Jenna Seery chats with Shakespeare scholar and Stephen King Chair Caroline Bix about her year spent in King’s climate‑controlled archives, which inspired her book *Monsters in the Archives*. Bix recounts how a chance call from King led...
Rhythm Is a Heartbeat by L.H. Cosway
L.H. Cosway’s newest novel, Rhythm is a Heartbeat, follows Shannon, a single mother, and her ex‑husband Jace, a recovering rock star, as they navigate love, family, and an online impersonation scam. The story blends second‑chance romance with mystery, set against...
Translating Oman
The Syracuse University Press hosted the “Translating Oman” event, bringing together leading Omani authors and translators to discuss the country’s emerging literary scene. Participants included translator Zia Ahmed, novelist Bushra Khalfan, and award‑winning translator Marilyn Booth, who highlighted recent and...
The Great Lost Gothic Novel of Italian Romanticism
Francesco Mastriani, a 19th‑century Neapolitan novelist, penned over a hundred serialized novels that captivated a cross‑class readership in the 1850s and 1860s. Though compared to Wilkie Collins and Eugène Sue in his lifetime, his work has never been translated into...
How Halley’s Comet and Celestial Visions Shaped Daisy Pearce’s New Novel
Australian author Daisy Pearce draws on personal comet sightings and centuries‑old celestial lore to craft her new dark fiction, "Dark Is When the Devil Comes." The narrative intertwines the 1997 Hale Bopp appearance, the 1997 Heaven’s Gate mass suicide, and historic...
Book Review: ‘Project Maven,’ by Katrina Manson
‘Project Maven’ by Katrina Manson examines the Pentagon’s AI program that automates target selection and weapon deployment. The book reveals how AI now controls every stage of drone strikes, with human operators often deferring to algorithmic recommendations. It highlights the...
Book Review: ‘The Hothouse’ and ‘Death in Rome,’ by Wolfgang Koeppen
Wolfgang Koeppen’s postwar "Trilogy of Failure"—"Pigeons on the Grass," "The Hothouse," and "Death in Rome"—was originally dismissed by a humiliated West German public in the early 1950s. Decades later New Directions reissued the three novels in fresh Michael Hofmann translations,...
Creating Microtension in Your Story Through Repetition
The article explains microtension—subtle, line‑by‑line tension that works alongside macro plot twists—to strengthen fiction. It highlights repetition, especially anaphora (front‑loaded repeats) and epiphora (end‑sentence repeats), as the most accessible way to create microtension. Using Kristin Dwyer’s *The Atlas of Us*...
The Medicalization of Madness: How Schizophrenia Was Treated Throughout the Ages
The article traces schizophrenia’s treatment from ancient Greek humoral theories through medieval religious rites, 19th‑century moral‑treatment reforms, and the brutal experiments of early‑20th‑century asylums to the breakthrough of chlorpromazine in the 1950s. It highlights how the disease’s name was coined...
Helen Benedict on Chronicling the Legacy of the Iraq War In Fiction
Helen Benedict explains why she turned to fiction after her nonfiction work, *The Lonely Soldier*, exposed sexual abuse of women serving in Iraq. She uses her Reparation trilogy—*Sand Queen*, *The Soldier’s House*, and *Wolf Season*—to give voice to the silences...
Interview | ‘The Loss of Palestine Defined My Father’s Life’: Author Hannah Lillith Assadi
American author Hannah Lillith Assadi’s debut novel Paradiso 17 has been long‑listed for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction. The book is a fictionalized portrait of her father, a Palestinian who was displaced from Safad in 1948 and later lived in...
Week 9: The House of Mirth | Honor in a Corrupt World: Moral Choice and Integrity
Edith Wharton’s novel The House of Mirth reaches a pivotal moral crossroads in week nine, as Lily Bart confronts ethical dilemmas alongside her social decline. The blog post examines Lily’s choice to withhold Bertha Dorset’s incriminating letters, her relocation to...
Join My Short Story Reading at Tunbridge Wells Festival
I’m doing a reading from my short story collection The Body In The Mobile Library at the Tunbridge Wells Literary Festival on Tues 5th May. So come along and get on the receiving end of some literary jouissance. Click here:...
David Birch's "Identity Is the New Money" Tops Finance Literature
Wow. Ten years ago. John Lanchester https://t.co/tvIiviwJYt "David Birch is the author of a fresh, original and fascinatingly wide-ranging short book about developments in the field, "Identity Is the New Money". His is the best book on general issues around new forms...
‘Why Iranians Continue to Seek Refuge in Australia’ by Shokoofeh Azar
Iranian‑Australian journalist Shokoofeh Azar’s 2012 essay “Why Iranians Continue to Seek Refuge in Australia” remains strikingly relevant, exposing the persistent flow of Iranian asylum seekers and the security risks they face. Azar, whose Persian‑language novels are anonymously translated to protect...
A Little Book Tour
Alice Vincent announces a modest UK book tour spanning May to September, featuring stops in Oxford, East London, North London, Kent, and Dorset. The tour coincides with the paperback launch of her memoir "Hark: How Women Listen," which arrives in...
This Dark Night by Deborah Lutz Review – Emily Brontë’s World
Deborah Lutz’s new biography, *This Dark Night*, re‑imagines Emily Brontë as a grounded, tactile craftsman rather than the mythic “madwoman” of popular lore. Lutz anchors the narrative in everyday objects—a cramped bed, pocket‑full of pencils, and household chores—to illustrate how Brontë’s...
Intermediaries of Liberation: Soviet Bureaucrats and the Cold War in Africa
Natalia Telepneva’s new book uncovers how Soviet mid‑level bureaucrats, the *mezhdunarodniki*, turned ideological zeal into concrete policy in Lusophone Africa between 1961 and 1975. By leveraging personal ties with revolutionary leaders, they pushed Moscow to supply arms, advisors, and billions...
You’ve Been Pooping All Wrong: How to Make Your Bowel Movements a Joy by Trisha Pasricha
Harvard gastroenterologist Dr. Trisha Pasricha’s new book, *You’ve Been Pooping All Wrong*, offers a science‑backed guide to improving bowel habits through the brain‑gut‑microbiome connection. It demystifies IBS, explains how stress and neural signals affect stool consistency, and introduces a three‑P...
King of Gluttony by Ana Huang
Ana Huang’s sixth entry in the Kings of Sin series, King of Gluttony, reunites chef Sebastian Laurent and marketing executive Maya Singh in a forced nine‑month partnership that blends a high‑stakes product launch with a simmering enemies‑to‑lovers romance. Set against...
Viktor Frankl’s Lost Lectures on Life’s Meaning Resurface
9 months after his release from the concentration camps, Viktor Frankl delivered a set of staggering lectures about the meaning of life, which remained unknown to the English-speaking world for 70+ years. What a gift to have them now. https://t.co/3ZkFb3gs0f
Scroll.in Probes Indian Book Cover Design: Colonial Legacy, Market Forces
Scroll.in’s recent investigation maps the cultural and commercial forces that shape Indian book cover design, exposing a legacy of colonial influence and a fragmented visual language. The piece argues that the lack of a native design lexicon and market pressures...
Mary Wollstonecraft: Feminist Pioneer and Mother of Frankenstein’s Creator
Born on this day in 1759, Mary Wollstonecraft lived to lay the foundation of what we now call feminism and died giving birth to Mary Shelley. Hers is the bittersweet true love story behind Frankenstein: https://t.co/cZpyMC8mmY
Upward Bound, a Novel by a Profoundly Autistic Author, Raises an Awful but Unavoidable Question: Who Actually Wrote It?
Woody Brown, a 28‑year‑old profoundly autistic writer, released his debut novel *Upward Bound* using a letter‑board communication system. The book quickly rose to the New York Times bestseller list and was spotlighted on NBC’s *Today* show. Brown’s mother assists him by reading his...
Whispers From the Void
In this six‑minute episode titled "Whispers From the Void," host Alex Sterling guides listeners through a surreal, horror‑infused narrative that blurs reality and imagination. The story follows Alex and his companions as they explore a seemingly ordinary storage room that...
Pay‑to‑play Book Promotions Are Scams
It's a scam if someone asks you for money to feature a book in a store. It's a scam if someone asks you to pay to be included in a festival. It's a scam if someone asks you to pay...
Bookbear Local 4/27/26
On April 26, 2026 the New York Times ran a profile of tech entrepreneur Dwarkesh Patel, highlighting his role in shaping AI‑driven businesses. The author of Bookbear Express reaffirmed a commitment to keep the newsletter entirely human‑written, positioning authenticity against the rise of AI‑generated...