Literary Hub
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Here, you'll find fresh, introspective reviews that summarize and reflect the crux of each narrative, from thought-provoking literary gems to pulse-pounding thrillers. Lit Hub is a central place for writers, publishers, books, bookstores, librarians, and readers to congregate and celebrate books and literary culture.
Literary Hub
1h ago
TODAY: In 1920, three days after publication, the first run of Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise sells out.
If you’re going to eat the rich, you should probably read about them. Glenn R. Miller recommends books about generational wealth and inheritance by Jenny Jackson, Thomas Mann, Kevin Kwan, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
Sometimes, the most flawed and human things are also the most divine. Ed Simon discusses The Last Temptation of Christ. | Lit Hub Film
“I wanted Headshot to be a book about what it felt like to play a sport that very few people were watching ..read more
Literary Hub
3h ago
Every month, all the major streaming services add a host of newly acquired (or just plain new) shows, movies, and documentaries into their ever-rotating libraries. So what’s a dedicated reader to watch? Well, whatever you want, of course, but the name of this website is Literary Hub, so we sort of have an angle. To that end, here’s a selection of the best (and most enjoyably bad) literary film and TV coming to streaming services this month. Have fun.
NEW:
Ripley
Netflix, April 4
Literary bona fides: based on Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley novels
Usually, once there’s a perfect adaptati ..read more
Literary Hub
3h ago
Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis, Tessa Hulls’ Feeding Ghosts, and Kristine S. Ervin’s Rabbit Heart all feature among the best reviewed fiction titles of the month
Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews.
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1. Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
8 Rave • 4 Positive • 2 Mixed
“A writer’s book, not a scholar’s; it has no footnotes. Its power lies in the particular reading it gives us of one of the world’s foundational texts … There are some arguable points. Robinson’s depiction of law as a framework of instruction that is up to us t ..read more
Literary Hub
3h ago
Behind the gray, granite façade of the National Gallery of Ireland, there is a painting by Caravaggio which depicts Christ in the moment of his arrest—dejected, betrayed, afraid. It had hung for several decades above the dining room mantle of a local Jesuit mission, but was correctly identified in 1990 and is now on permanent loan to the museum. Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ displays all of the tells of the Baroque master’s genius.
Deploying chiaroscuro, the stark contrast between light and dark that is almost synonymous with Caravaggio, the painting presents the moment following Christ’s ..read more
Literary Hub
3h ago
Percival Everett’s James, Ferdia Lennon’s Glorious Exploits, and Rita Bullwinkel’s Headshot all feature among the best reviewed fiction titles of the month
Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews.
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1. James by Percival Everett
(Doubleday)
14 Rave • 1 Positive
“This is Everett’s most thrilling novel, but also his most soulful. Beneath the wordplay, and below the packed dirt floor of Everett’s moral sensibility, James is an intensely imagined human being … My ideal of hell would be to live with a library that contained only reimaginings of famous novels. It’s a wet-brai ..read more
Literary Hub
3h ago
Each month, our friends at AudioFile Magazine share a curated list of the best audiobooks for your literary listening pleasure.
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MARCH FICTION
The Women by Kristin Hannah| Read by Julia Whelan, Kristin HannahAudioFile Earphones Award
[Macmillan Audio | 15 hrs.]
The sure touch of Golden Voice narrator Julia Whelan transforms Kristen Hannah’s absorbing novel about Vietnam War combat nurses into an addictive listen. An intimate portrait and a sprawling account of a searing time, the story focuses on twenty-year-old Frances McGrath, who, in 1965, impetuously chooses the Army Nurse Corps ov ..read more
Literary Hub
3h ago
This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here.
I wrote Headshot because I wanted to remember what it felt like to be obsessed with playing a sport that nobody was watching. Many literary sports narratives, such as Joyce Carol Oates’s On Boxing, don’t help me remember this feeling because they are texts that are primarily interested in what it feels like to watch a sport, but there are some, rarer, narratives that circle what it feels like to play a sport, what it feels like to be solitary and embodied, and when I read those texts I am able to see a sliver ..read more
Literary Hub
3h ago
In November of 2023, a piece entitled “The Fight for the Future of Publishing” started making the rounds on my various social feeds. Initially, I was disappointed as I began to read the first lines. Not because I disagreed but because I had been working on a similar piece about the book publishing industry that fall, just as I was launching my own independent publishing house, Rise Books. I thought someone had beat me to the punch—but then I kept reading.
The article was from a Substack journal called “The Free Press,” though at the time I did not realize it was connected to Bari Weiss’ media ..read more
Literary Hub
3h ago
One summer day when I was eight, I was riding in the back seat of our family’s four-year-old Ford LTD. Dad was driving and Mom was sitting next to him. The car that we had been following—a new 1968 Lincoln Continental—turned into our neighbor’s driveway. Dad had been admiring it ever since it pulled in front of us two blocks earlier.
“Wait. Is that Frey? Did he get a new car?” my father asked.
“Yes,” my mother answered. “His father died.”
Without missing a beat, I said, “Whoa. Was that the car his dad had?”
Both of them laughed at my question, partly because they knew Mr. Frey’s father and th ..read more
Literary Hub
15h ago
As of this morning, Harvard’s Houghton Library has removed a book bound with human skin from its collection. Or rather, the skin has been removed from the book.
This is in accordance with the findings of a committee appointed to examine human remains in university museum collections. The expunging is also inspired by an open letter from a humanist affinity group who insist that the “loathsome object” be repatriated post-haste to its native France.
So, who is responsible for this most disturbing artifact?
The book in question is Des destinées de l’âme, an 1880s meditation on life after de ..read more