"What they often evinced was better than interest, better even than bibliophilia; it was the rare and precious capacity to be interested in what they didn’t already know interested them. It was a willingness to be changed."

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “‘Wuthering Heights’ is a story in which love is an all-encompassing obsession that destroys anything in its path. It is also a story about how love, sustained through generations, eventually redeems that destruction,” B.D. McClay writes.

With Ron Charles and Becca Rothfeld laid off from WaPo, there are now only 5 full-time book critics working in the United States. That's down from 7 when this pubbed last year, though you may find my definition of a "full-time book critic" arbitrary. worldliteraturetoday.org/2025/septemb...

Doesn't feel antiquated to us. The number of writers on Substack drives home the hunger for reading/writing/community among writers. We believe in older fashioned network effects. Best way to show support is here, at annual cost of abt a month & a half of Netflix: bigscorelit.net/subscribe/

beachsloth.substack.com/p/big-score-... This desire to compensate people for the work they produce feels antiquated, almost like a job, which is a nice way of viewing writers.

Today’s haul from The Strand and @bookculture.com - Primo Levi, Iris Murdoch, Sam Lipsyte, and Yukio Mishima

Sent this out via the newsletter earlier and no one really responded to it, so here it is. Someone said writing a poem wasn't an act of resistance, likening it to a fart in the wind; true, but I didn't write this as an act of resistance. I wrote it because I didn't know how else to process it all.

Today’s purchase at the wonderful @flyleafbooks.bsky.social while here in Chapel Hill, NC - The Mezzanine by @nicholsonbaker.bsky.social (which I’ve read and plan on teaching next semester), and Lost in the City, by Edward P. Jones (which I’ve not yet read and I can’t wait to fix that)…

"Literature is fragile. It serves no obvious purpose. It does not feed us or clothe us or, unless you get very lucky, enrich us. But literature is also as close to immortal as any cultural endeavor of humankind has ever been." Gerald Howard www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/o...

The Smart Search List of the Day is: Fee-Free Literary Poetry feat. @paranoidxtree.bsky.social @bigscorelit.bsky.social et al. https://duotrope.com...

Late-breaking update from a litmag now open for submissions (no fee to submit; pays for published work): bsky.app/profile/bigs...

We are currently open for poetry subs for our spring '26 issue & will remain so until Dec. 15th or the moment, nay the very second, we hit 300 subs... bigscorelit.net/2025/12/03/p...

New publisher listing for: Big Score Lit @bigscorelit.bsky.social (Fiction Poetry Nonfiction; pays sometimes). #WritingCommunity