We've hit the pre-afternoon lull at the shop, so for the next... idk however long we've got til I leave around 5, really, but defo the next half-hour, I'm here for your last-minute book recommendations! If you can't get it from your local shop in time, print out a photo of the jacket and order it!

somebody who ordered a book literally six whole months ago and never responded to our calls/emails about picking it up just came in and performatively apologetically asked if we still had it... and then got very angry when I told them we didn't lol

thinkin about stuff

there is a genre of person who hates AI in *their* field but sees how it could be useful in *other,* less prestigious, fields; ignore them. they are not trying to save the ship. they are just racing you to the lifeboats

two eggnogs in and raving about the Marxist merits of Trading Places to my bemused family, merry christmas to one and all from the hometown sectional!

spectacularly good thread, full of some things I already felt as well as several reminders that I know I needed but I'll bet you do too

BOOTSIE COLLINS: *doing a first take for 'Weapon of Choice'*

You may know @samthielman.com as an elegant, principled political analyst or a vividly insightful literary critic, but did you know that he also writes sublime literary fiction??? subscribe to @flaminghydra.com to learn MORE

smash mouth

not even going to see my folks for Christmas, haven't for years, and I'm STILL sitting here taking psychic damage from my mom

So I'm getting that the new Avengers movie is gonna have a plot that's basically just a sneakily-conservative "how the children will save us or at least fix the sins of their parents" PSA, right?

really killer list

last night, my wife said "as Jennifer Aniston's haircut was to millennials, so Ocean Vuong's is to Gen Zers" and I haven't stopped thinking about it

Spending the day reading Nina MacLaughlin's WINTER SOLSTICE essay and I highly recommend this intentional act, if you can get it today. Otherwise, order a copy now and save it for next year.

Your annual reminder that if you get this cracker joke and are confused by it, it's apparently because "ffi" is a special character in some fonts and when the typeface is changed to one that doesn't have it, those letters disappear. It's supposed to be "coffin medicine".

Quite rich to hear Vauhini Vara talk about not using AI to write for her when she first made her name by publishing an essay co-written by ChatGPT3. The ethical malpractice across the board, man.

This is supremely stupid. Of course they like the writing, it was made from plagiarizing writers. There’s no such thing as “preferring” it, this is like putting your name on Moby Dick and then saying you like “your version” better

My friends, I say this with all the love in my heart: Right now might not be the moment for “But we should be TOLERANT and NUANCED about the plagiarism machines!” Your tolerance and “nuance” will be weaponised by the grifters and their apologists. Please respect yourselves more.

1. First, let's talk about the elephant in the room that he doesn't mention explicitly but haunts the whole piece: climate change is real, we've overshot the goal and the only way to turn the corner is to leave fossil fuel in the ground. To ignore that is to talk about rocketry and ignore gravity.

I can't say with 100% certainty this is false, but I'm looking through the HC Summer catalogues right now and there's no sign of any such title. Also this listing only shows a Kindle option, so I'm betting this is vestigial, a remnant of a several-years-old "maybe in Summer 26?" pin in the calendar.

Sometimes I search for my high school friends online. I haven't spoken to any of them since I was maybe 18, after a pretty tremendous falling out. I've lived almost as long since knowing them as I had when I knew them. But sometimes I look for them, to see where they are now, who they are now.

lol I'm sure it's a bug but lol

This was one of the most fun interviews I’ve done in a while! I loved geeking out over sci-fi, historical fic, and my middle school One Direction phase.

TikTok is going to be the video version of X in a couple months.......

I can't believe none of you told me that the NYMag book-gossip newsletter had actual good gossip.

Happy interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS closest approach day to everyone except avi loeb

I turned off all of the predictive text stuff on my phone — including spell-check and auto-caps/auto-punctuation — and I gotta tell you, it feels shockingly freeing

It was the first film screened at The White House, a horror film.

New Yorkers 👇

only 3 days left to order the deluxe edition!!! or you might never discover the secrets of the @chariotmarketing.bsky.social EMPLOYEE PORTAL by @elainemay.bsky.social 🙀🙀🙀

an author's out there on socials accusing RD of not carrying their book about some historical aspect of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and how that equates to antisemitism, and encouraging people to "fight back by supporting the authors and institutions that refuse to blindly follow the flock" 🙄

Then burn it all down.

at the risk of falling into Mueller-esque fantasies, I do like the tactic from House Oversight where they hear somebody trying to dismiss Epstein stuff and then they go "oh, hey, is this you?" (also fuck David Brooks forever! go home, nerd!)

fun to reflect on a year of great writing at Lit Hub, and nice to have a moment to (personally) reflect on a conversation I had nearly a year ago now that I've thought about more or less every week since

This is great

Outrageously off the mark and every single person responsible should be shitcanned, no excuses. What the actual fuck.

Impeach him the second you get a majority, imo. Let this guy lay it all out.

"I would like this as soon as possible," a customer wrote on a request slip and it's funny how that book is suddenly and rather inexplicably going to take several extra days to arrive

Why must social media always be MORE? I don't need constant, exponential growth. I want to talk about things I enjoy, complain about AI, and promote shit I write. Janice from that retail job I had 15 years ago doesn't give a shit what I think about the Ken Burns doc.

jeeeeeeeeeeesus

I think it's so strange that Tor rarely-if-ever acknowledges the killer blurbs that Lit Hub (myself and others!) puts up for some of their titles. Almost as strange as their near-total lack of promotion for the podcast I ran for them for four years. Anyway, just thinking about that today.

I've been totally obsessed with Madeline Kenney's "Kiss From the Balcony" since @hearingthingsco.bsky.social put it in a five-albums round-up in July. An album that rewards continued close listening but can also serve as great daily-life soundtracking. The kind of art that makes me feel alive.

Every writer who generates a slop image for their work is a class traitor. "I can't afford a visual artist" So your solution is stabbing artists in the back? Stealing from them? Furthermore, slop-generated imagery suggests slop-generated writing. That's how you're presenting yourself.

Proud of the work I've done at @literaryhub.bsky.social and proud to be a human writer, aligned with other human writers. Times is hard, but your support for a site like ours does really mean the world. lithub.com/its-harder-a...

I gotta imagine some of you are the right audience for this, I want to read your poetry and I want to read it on this website: ritualdagger.neocities.org

not feeling great looking at that "printing" subsector

thinking, as one does at this time of year, about the Best Ofs — I'll have something at the new year, as is tradition, but let's just say for now that this song is probably my favorite of the year and will soundtrack a great many stories to come: youtu.be/PuLM7ehsDkY?...

This is one of the weirdest things when people are quoting Shakespeare. Practically every line Shakespeare ever wrote is being said by a character who has his own motivations, context, meaning. the lines by themselves are like saying lama sabachthani without, you know, the Cross

This is a good reminder for those of us making best of lists that if yours looks like everyone else's, it's a sign that you need to read more widely. There is so much great work that often goes unnoticed because it doesn't get a splashy marketing campaign.