Why We Still Need Book Festivals: The health of a society can often be measured by the freedom of its books. Every society that has tried to control its people has started by controlling its books. And every society that has expanded freedom has done the #BookNews #BookstoresandLibraries
Four Hong Kong booksellers have been arrested for selling “seditious titles.”: As the Hong Kong Free Press reported this morning, four booksellers in Hong Kong have been arrested on suspicion of selling “seditious titles.” The store in question is Book Punch, a… #BookNews #BookstoresandLibraries
Paperback vs. Hardcover: Which is Better For Readers (and For Writers)?: If you conducted a survey, I am fairly certain you’d find that the majority of readers prefer paperbacks to hardcover books. I have no stats to back this up, but I know what I’ve heard… #BookNews #BookstoresandLibraries
This library’s annual lock-in is an autodidact’s dream come true.: For the past ten years, the Brooklyn Public Library has played host to a highly niche adult sleepover: the Night in the Library. The annual festival amounts to a series of free public teach-ins,… #BookstoresandLibraries #Events
Who’s behind London’s hottest new bookstore? Freud’s librarian grandson!: Well, “great-great grandson,” to be technical about it. Jonah Freud, heir to the founder of psychoanalysis, is taking London by storm. The entrepreneur recently linked to Lily Allen… #ArtandPhotography #BookstoresandLibraries
The State Department is forcing certain libraries to shutter their passport services.: Nonprofit libraries—or to be precise, any library that receives some of its money from 501 (c) (3) nonprofit contributions—are sundowning their passport services. The federal… #BookstoresandLibraries #Events
A Place For Everyone to Read: Opening a “Cultural Treasure” in Philadelphia: Harriett’s was my last resort. I opened Harriett’s Bookshop, named for historic heroine Harriett Tubman, six weeks before the pandemic, and could have never predicted that my tiny shop… #BookNews #BookstoresandLibraries
Thanks to a group of booksellers, Amazon is pulling out of the Paris Book Fair.: Amazon has pulled out of sponsoring the Paris Book Fair, thanks to pressure from a booksellers’ association: Syndicat de la Librairie Française (SLF). The SLF, which represents… #BookNews #BookstoresandLibraries
This week’s news in Venn diagrams.: It’s the AWP Conference and Bookfair this week, and most of the Lit Hub staff has been in Baltimore. With the editors out of town, those of us not at AWP have been taking good care of the place, and #BookNews #BookstoresandLibraries
Explore Black literary NYC with this map of 100 important spots.: This year is the 100th anniversary of Black History Month, and the bookstore McNally Jackson put together a list of 100 places in New York’s five boroughs that were significant for Black literary… #BookstoresandLibraries #Events
What to read to understand the ICE phenomenon.: Our friends at Verso have prepared this ultra thorough ABOLISH ICE reading list, featuring a number of excellent titles that can help explain how we got here. Histories of American immigration, or the origins of the… #BookstoresandLibraries #Events
The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Nonfiction: Here are this week’s Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers for fiction, based on sales in hundreds of independent bookstores nationwide, generously provided by the American Booksellers Association.… #BookstoresandLibraries #CraftandCriticism
Sales are skyrocketing at DreamHaven books after its owner was photographed protesting.: Greg Ketter of DreamHaven Books in Minneapolis never intended to be a face of the movement. But after he was photographed walking through a cloud of tear gas to a protest… #BookstoresandLibraries #Events
“Everything We Do Matters.” Minneapolis’s Moon Palace Books is a Hub For Anti-ICE Resistance: Angela Schwesnedl from Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis picked up my phone call on Saturday almost two hours to the minute after Alex Pretti was murdered in the street by… #BookstoresandLibraries #Events
Bodies Fall, Not Ideas: On the Zero Line and the Urgency of Preserving Gaza’s Culture: In Gaza, the libraries are gone. We’ve all seen it on our phones, even as censorship continuously prevails. The schools are gone too. What survives, what has always… #BookstoresandLibraries #CraftandCriticism
Twin Cities bookstores are ready for today’s march against ICE.: Reports from the Twin Cities indicate that citizens are helping neighbors every way they can. Today has been dubbed a Day of Truth and Freedom, in light of ICE’s craven siege on the area’s residents.… #BookstoresandLibraries #Events
The Unbanned Book Network is a new initiative fighting for diverse books in the classroom.: A new program called The Unbanned Book Network is stepping in to counter the increased threat of book bans in schools across America. The new initiative was launched this… #BookNews #BookstoresandLibraries
The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Fiction: Here are this week’s Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers for fiction, based on sales in hundreds of independent bookstores nationwide, generously provided by the American Booksellers Association.… #BookstoresandLibraries #CraftandCriticism
The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Nonfiction: Here are this week’s Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers for fiction, based on sales in hundreds of independent bookstores nationwide, generously provided by the American Booksellers Association.… #BookstoresandLibraries #CraftandCriticism
In the Twin Cities, indie bookstores are stepping up to ICE.: As ICE agents continue to terrorize the Twin Cities, indie bookstores are stepping up. As Claire Kirch reported in Publishers Weekly last Friday, booksellers in Minneapolis and St. Paul have joined… #BookstoresandLibraries #Events
You can help build the first public library in Gaza since the genocide began.: Two Palestinians are gathering donations to create a public library in Gaza, after Israel’s war and genocide destroyed nearly all existing libraries, schools, and universities. The two… #BookNews #BookstoresandLibraries
3 Ways to Become a Better Reader: Always Have a Book With You I read somewhere that authors are voracious readers. I would imagine so. When I read, I also feel the urge to create something of my own. Likewise, I don’t think I’ve ever come across #BookstoresandLibraries #CraftandAdvice
Have libraries have become the new Blockbuster?: Streaming is over. The magazine is back. And everyone who’s too online is apparently getting off again. The time is ripe for an analog revolution. And where better to start than the stacks? As Claire Woodcock… #BookNews #BookstoresandLibraries
Life-Giving, Imaginative and Underfunded: Small Press Publishers in Crisis: A recent letter co-written and signed by small press publishers has highlighted the significant pressures they face, threatening them with closure and potentially damaging the literary… #BookNews #BookstoresandLibraries
On the Infinite Lives of the Library: One might say that a library’s most abundant resource—what it lends most freely—is not books and information but time. Time to think, breathe, be, and become. Last spring, in exchange for my service as… #BookstoresandLibraries #CraftandAdvice
The US will reinstate library grants canceled by Trump.: The Institute of Museum and Library Services issued a short and sweet update on Wednesday announcing the restoration of all grants supporting libraries and museums: Upon further review, the Institute… #BookstoresandLibraries #NewsandCulture
Nothing Better Than a Whole Lot of Books: In Praise of Bibliomania: Desiderius Erasmus lived his happiest months from late 1507 into 1508 at the Venetian print-shop of Aldus Manutius. A peripatetic scholar, the Dutch scholar had lived in Rotterdam and London,… #BookstoresandLibraries #Features
Where Time and Space Collide: In Praise of Old Maps: “Maps are funny things because they appear to be the reality, and yet they give you a tremendous opportunity to dream.” –Peter Barber * Not long into my searches of the Map Library I grew impatient to make… #BookstoresandLibraries #Features
The 2025 Cercador Prize goes to The Queen of Swords.: This week, the Cercador Prize announced Christina MacSweeney as the winner of the 2025 prize for her translation of Jazmina Barrera’s The Queen of Swords, out from Two Lines Press. This is the third year of the… #BookNews #BookstoresandLibraries
Five novels to read if you’re fascinated by the Black bourgeoisie.: In a recent piece for Cultured, novelist Rob Franklin observed “a surge” in recent depictions of the Black bourgeoisie. This milieu, defined by a lifting as we climb ethos and certain cultural… #BookstoresandLibraries #Novels
