Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 11h

Kirkus Reviews has announced the three winners of the 2025 Kirkus Prize in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, and Young Readers’ Literature.

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 16h

“When I had extricated myself, and my money, from the villain’s clutches, I turned to find my wife gone from the bench on the platform where she had sat down to wait for me.” Read from John Banville’s new novel, Venetian Vespers.

Venetian Vespers

The journey, first to Paris and then through Switzerland and Milan and onwards to Venice, was for the most part pleasant, being blessedly free of many of the wearisome and often infuriating hindran…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 17h

“In all the time I was struggling to nurture my babies, the key to understanding true nourishment lay in satisfying my own body.” @ypathak.bsky.social on motherhood and acts of care.

Love and Sustenance: Why Indian Mothers Obsess Over Feeding Our Kids

Ma mixed boiling dal with buttered rice scooped with her fingers taste of her skin lilt of her tale in my mouth as she sang, bite after bite: one for the village children one for you –“I Have Eaten…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 18h

Caren Beilin’s TBR features books by Isabella Hammad, Stephen King, Lana Lin, and more.

The Annotated Nightstand: What Caren Beilin Is Reading Now, and Next

Caren Beilin’s new novel, Sea, Poison, like her much of her other work, attends to the terrible realities of the medical industry and the personal effect this has on people. (She wrote about how he…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 19h

@philippesands.bsky.social examines Pinochet’s Chile, the Nazis, and how democracy erodes into fascism.

How a Democracy Descends Into Murderous Fascism: On Pinochet’s Chile

It was October 17, 1998, a Saturday afternoon, when I heard the news on the radio, waiting for the football results. It was my thirty-eighth birthday. The former Chilean dictator, General Augusto P…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 20h

@shannonbowring.bsky.social considers the art of getting inside a despicable character’s head.

Beyond One-Note Nastiness: On Getting Inside the Head of a Despicable Character

I have always been fascinated by the question of whether our lives are determined by fate or by choice. In the final installment of The Dalton Novels, a trilogy about a small town in Maine, my char…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 20h

Rebecca Sugar is bringing Moomins to a screen near you.

A new Moomins movie is on the way.

Those loveable Finnish trolls are coming to the American movies! Writer and artist Tove Jansson created the Moomins in the 1940s and the characters have since become a global phenomenon, appearing …

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 21h

And the horrors continue: Cory Doctorow explains how corporate tech enshittifies apps to skirt the law.

How American Tech Cartels Use Apps to Break the Law

The death of competition spells doom for regulation. Competition is an essential component of effective regulation, for two reasons: First, competition keeps the companies within a sector from all …

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 21h

Laura Venita Green on how learning Italian improved her writing in English: “By reading other cultures widely, we can start to see that there truly are countless ways to tell a story.”

A Cross-Genre Trek: How Translation Improved My Debut Novel

When I was thirty-eight years old, in late 2017, it began to feel inexcusable that I was living out my entire life in the typical American fashion: speaking a single language. After all, I spent si…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 22h

Ed Simon explores Americanism in Edgar Allan Poe’s work (and the abject horrors of being buried alive).

To Haunt and Be Haunted: On the Exhumation of Edgar Allen Poe

Imagine that you’ve been buried alive. Don’t question the specifics, whether you’ve been kidnapped or unfortunate enough to fall victim to poorly trained pathologists and morticians, for either way…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

“The Fairfield Day Academy campus was just a big, ranch-style house discreetly set in a quiet residential neighborhood.” Read from The Four Spent the Day Together, a new novel by Chris Kraus.

The Four Spent the Day Together

The Fairfield Day Academy campus was just a big, ranch-style house discreetly set in a quiet residential neighborhood. The treatment was new and Blue Cross didn’t cover it. Except for the office se…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

Kate Cayley considers politics, art, and why we write the extra details.

Why We Write the Extra Details

Some years ago, I saw Yiyun Li interviewed at an event at the Toronto Reference Library. Li, a writer whose stories are compressed and deceptively simple, spoke with humor and a certain hardness, p…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

Ilan Pappé explores the possibilities of a liberated future for Palestine.

Imagining a Liberated Future for Palestine

A proper imagining of liberation cannot rest content with describing the end game: the day of liberation itself and the hard work the day after. This is only the starting point. No less important i…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

Before Mrs. Dalloway, there was Violet. [Sponsored]
hubs.ly/Q03L2_fm0

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

@britt-kathryn.bsky.social rounds up the most banned books of 2025.

Here are the most banned books of 2025.

As we round out #BannedBooksWeek, it’s time to observe a grim new tradition. PEN America has announced its annual most-banned-books-of-the-year list. This year’s crop of “objectio…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

@jamesfolta.com explores MyHouse.wad, a 2023 mod of 1994’s Doom II based on Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves.

The House of Leaves-inspired game MyHouse.wad is just as trippy as you’d think.

This demon shooting video game mod might be your new favorite book. MyHouse.wad is a 2023 mod—short for modification, in this case a series of custom levels—for 1994’s Doom II, the second in …

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

The 24 new books out today include titles by Thomas Pynchon, Chris Kraus, Cory Doctorow, and more!

Thomas Pynchon, Marisa Meltzer, Chris Kraus, and more: 24 new books out today!

The clock struck October, and with it, we welcomed in a slew of meaty, fascinating, and binge-worthy books. At long last, Thomas Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket, a much-anticipated work by the 88-yea…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

On Proust and the search for models of translation: “Indeed, it is a bummer to me that Proust occupies such a rarefied, even elitist, realm in the culture—to the extent he is present at all—because he is far more accessible than most people realize, and a lot funnier.”

On Translating Proust and the Art of Not Reading Ahead

Le devoir et la tâche d’un écrivain sont ceux d’un traducteur. –Marcel Proust, Le Temps retrouvé * The duty and the task of a writer are those of a translator. –The Past Recaptured, tra…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

Today, the National Book Foundation announced the finalists in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature for the 2025 National Book Awards.

Here are the 2025 National Book Awards finalists.

Today, the National Book Foundation announced the finalists in all five categories—Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature—for the 2025 National Book Award…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

@bethmacy.bsky.social recalls how the collapse of local journalism can decimate a community’s sense of trust.

How the Collapse of Local Journalism Led to the Erosion of Community Trust

My family had once been proud of me. In March 2011, my sister Terry went to the trouble of stuffing Post‑it notes into every issue of O, the Oprah Magazine in the checkout line of her grocery store…

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Reposted by Lit Hub

Noemi Press @noemipress.bsky.social · 2d

Thanks to Chris Spaide and @literaryhub.bsky.social for featuring the upcoming collection 13 Questions for the Next Economy by @utopiaminus.bsky.social in Seven Poetry Collections to Read This October!

Read the full article here: lithub.com/inhabiting-t...

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Reposted by Lit Hub

Dorothy, a publishing project @dorothyproject.bsky.social · 1d

"In 1922, Alice B. Toklas stood at the doorway. I willed Lan Thao to take their place."

Lana Lin on the cover of THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF H. LAN THAO LAM, at @literaryhub.bsky.social.

lithub.com/a-new-autobi...

A New Autobiography: On Re-Envisioning Gertrude Stein’s Classic Cover

During the pre-vaccine summer of 2020, I sat behind a long wooden table that my partner, H. Lan Thao Lam, had recently installed for me across from the fireplace in a former sawmill to which we had…

lithub.com

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james folta @jamesfolta.com · 1d

Wrote about a inspired and bizarre Doom II mod paying homage to House of Leaves for @literaryhub.bsky.social

The House of Leaves-inspired game MyHouse.wad is just as trippy as you’d think.

This demon shooting video game mod might be your new favorite book. MyHouse.wad is a 2023 mod—short for modification, in this case a series of custom levels—for 1994’s Doom II, the second in …

lithub.com

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Reposted by Lit Hub

Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 1d

I wrote about Proust in translation/the new IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME for @literaryhub.bsky.social.
Featuring a chat with @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social, whose stunning vol. 2 translation, IN THE SHADOW OF GIRLS IN BLOSSOM, is out now!
lithub.com/on-translati...
#proust
#booksky

On Translating Proust and the Art of Not Reading Ahead

Le devoir et la tâche d’un écrivain sont ceux d’un traducteur. –Marcel Proust, Le Temps retrouvé * The duty and the task of a writer are those of a translator. –The Past Recaptured, tra…

lithub.com

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Reposted by Lit Hub

New Door Books @newdoorbooks.bsky.social · 1d

In @literaryhub.bsky.social, @devintoshea.bsky.social describes how movies are popularizing the classic #Pynchon theme: "The war between the powerful and the powerless."
lithub.com/thomas-pynch...

Thomas Pynchon Has Been Warning Us About American Fascism the Whole Time

Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptations of Thomas Pynchon’s novels—first Inherent Vice in 2014, and now One Battle After Another in 2025—may be tipping the scales, with more first-time Pynchon readers f…

lithub.com

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