[email protected] www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

New on Book Post → What makes for a good translation of Aurelius’s Meditations? Jason Mott reflects on the latest translation, by Aaron Poochigian, which renders Aurelius’s thinking with empathy and without distortion. books.substack.com/p/review-jas... @liveright.bsky.social

Book curses! Great little blog post by Kait Astrella on these maledictions for the Morgan Library. One guy offers this book "with joyful heart in order that it may be an expiration for all sins committed by him. May he who steals it suffer violent bodily pains.” www.themorgan.org/blog/curses-...

The woman ICE killed in Minneapolis was the poet Renee Nicole Macklin Good. "i want back my rocking chairs, solipsist sunsets, & coastal jungle sounds that are tercets from cicadas and pentameter from the hairy legs of cockroaches" poets.org/2020-on-lear...

who knew the first library they would “burn” would be NASA’s They’re hoping the general public won’t care about rare scientific materials that aren’t about the life sciences But this is our common human heritage they are destroying

CNN graphics put the asterisk in the wrong place, it appears…

The woman killed by ICE today was a poet. She won the 2020 Academy of American Poets, University & College Poetry Prize at Old Dominion University. (And this is Renee from confirmed socials- a photo of a different woman with red lipstick is going around, but that was a classmate.) /

Cool! @worldpoetrybooks.bsky.social @futurepoem.bsky.social

New release from @groveatlantic.bsky.social! Read Anakana Schofield on Xiaolu Guo’s wonderful 2020 book, A Lover's Discourse, here: books.substack.com/p/review-ana... @anakanaschofield.bsky.social

Returning to your novel manuscript-in-progress after a couple weeks away

"The reason that I just became so enamored of working with book reviews is that it just seemed like a really important way to bridge the gap between writing and people." Check out Book Post editor Ann Kjellberg on The Datekeepers podcast! youtu.be/DzC6FeyGTCg?...

The wisdom of Mr. Rogers is eternal:

Welcome to 2026, the future time of METROPOLIS, released in 1927.

Happy New Year! We love sharing these pro-book posters from the Works Projects Administration Poster Collection in the Library's Prints and Photographs Division. Of the 2,000 WPA posters known to exist, the Library of Congress's collection of more than 900 is the largest.

Just making sure that 2025 is definitely over

just want to remind folks that pushback and public outrage stopped them from closing the CDC library. i bet pushback will stop them here, too

PREORDER CANADA ALERT 🚨 Fabulous Cover Alert 🔔 Save a bedraggled writer prompt 🎺 Thank you for sticking with me stamp ❤️ www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/555536...

"What a wonderful meal. Why don't we retire to the drawing room for candy and cigars?"

Another interesting list

this year i published an essay in harper’s about finding a dominatrix as history burns to the socket, a couple of poems in the drift, & a bunch of reviews. the links are in my timeline icyi. whoop de doo

Interesting list from political journalist @daveweigel.bsky.social

In my latest piece for @foreignpolicy.com, I discuss a stunning new documentary on the war in Ukraine that’s just been shortlisted for an Oscar. I highly recommend giving it a watch. foreignpolicy.com/2025/12/19/2...

If you have ever reported on an even mildly conflictual story, this becomes obvious to you once you've got about two phone calls in.

I just need to say this out loud: I finished the draft of my next book. I love a deadline! Mood is this image by Suzanne Szasz of a quilting bee in Central Park in 1973 (year I was born).

from a poem in progress 🤘

“The celebration of Christmas is a meditation on the presence of the miracle in reality—a transformation of the world seen through marvels of changing scale and of paradox.” Read Patricia Storace, A Lilliputian Christmas Feast now on Book Post! books.substack.com/p/diary-patr...

Big thanks to The Browser (thebrowser.com) for recommending our recent post! books.substack.com/p/diary-val-...

Enigmatic relief

Val McDermid’s Deep Winter—a new Book Post Diary on Scottish midwinter, from finding silver threepennies in Christmas pudding with brandy custard to the countdown to the bells on Auld Year’s Day. books.substack.com/p/diary-val-... @groveatlantic.bsky.social @valmcdermid.bsky.social

This beautiful new chapbook from Book Post author Ange Mlinko is out now from Foolscap Press! “From warm Gulf waters to a ‘simulacrum of a mine’ one mile above sea level, Darkroom extends Mlinko's subjects of travel and place, art and music in voluble formal experiments.”

Great piece in The Baffler by Noah McCormack on how many intellectuals saw the spread of literacy as a bane and that the decline of reading, library usage, and newspaper reading began in the fifties. Read here → thebaffler.com/salvos/we-us... @thebaffler.com

[GIFT LINK] Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class. by @danagoldstein.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/u... This has downstream effects for professors. I am all for prioritizing certain readings in courses, but we need students to engage with challenging texts over time.

Does anyone wanna see a really good Getty image of Rita Moreno and Sam The Eagle having dinner in 1979?

Our partner bookstore, Balwin & Co., just announced the official release of their magazine! Currently, it’s only available in-store, but stay tuned for digital purchases in the coming weeks.

Gotta love Rob Reiner’s accent. Is that still produced in the wild? (✍🏼)

Relocating, continued (✍🏼)

Jason Allen-Paisant’s new Diary: Plants and Dreaming moves through memories of Coffee Grove, Jamaica—yam cultivation, lunar almanacs, the language of farming—and what this all means for a creative journey. Read here → books.substack.com/p/diary-jaso...

Relocating observation: striking how many pencils emerge when you take them out of the books you are supposedly in the middle of (✍🏼)

the English Graduate Studies board is getting a little too real

My quote of the day We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist. James Baldwin

Announcing our winter 2025–26 partner bookstore: Baldwin & Company! This phenomenal, Black-owned bookstore provides “nourishment for the soul of New Orleans.” Read more here: books.substack.com/p/meet-our-w...

Varian Skye / Varian Fry. Late to the party #andor (✍🏼)

Loved this. See if you still can (✍🏼) vineyardtheatre.org/shows/the-bu...

Every year, one of @andreamontoro.bsky.social's favorite things to do is staff the Penguin Hotline, where PRH employees field recommendation requests for the holidays. If you're looking for gift ideas from people who sleep, eat, and breathe books, submit a request! It's free!

as a grantwriter, the lack of unrestricted funding is a MASSIVE burden on nonprofits. everyone wants to fund a new shiny pilot program that makes them look like innovators. they don’t want to help make your tried and tested programs that have served the community for 50 years more sustainable

News from Iran, via @publisherswkly.bsky.social #indiebookselling www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

Restless Books celebrates the 10th anniversary of, and announces finalists for, their annual immigrant fiction prize. The prize was recently saved by, and renamed in honor of, comp lit professor Steven Kellman www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

CONFIRMED: Oxford University Press has named ‘rage bait’ as the Oxford Word of the Year 2025. #OxfordWOTY