An editor recommends “84, Charing Cross Road” and “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.” A selection of facsimile letters from Emily Dickinson to her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert.Matt Cosby for The New York Times Dear readers, Even though I’m pretty sure it’s a federal crime, I love reading other people’s mail. I’d never rifle…

Following the incredible success of the YouTube channel Great Art Explained in 15 minutes, arts writer James Payne has launched a brilliant new series offering a fresh look at world literature. Great Books Explained is a collaboration, this time with academics and journalists. The first release was one of the world’s most difficult books, James…

<p text="Deep Reads features The Washington Post’s best immersive reporting and narrative writing.” class=”wpds-c-hcZlgz wpds-c-hcZlgz-bkfjoi-font-georgia wpds-c-hcZlgz-icogOrA-css”>Deep Reads features The Washington Post’s best immersive reporting and narrative writing. KISSIMMEE, Fla. — It was her last Monday morning in the library, and when Tania Galiñanes walked into her office and saw another box, she told herself that…

Bernardine Evaristo ChatGPT seems to have blindsided us all. In less than a year it has proved that it can make writers redundant, which is one of the reasons why the Writers Guild of America recently went on strike, and why a group of novelists, including Jonathan Franzen, Jodi Picoult and George RR Martin, are…

It was Christmas 2020 when Shonda Rhimes’ Bridgerton was released on Netflix. Set in the Regency-era London marriage market, the series was fun, raunchy, compulsively watchable and, literally, pure pleasure (the climax of the final episode was an actual climax). It seemed to provide the escape that a Tiger King fatigued pandemic populace had been…

Bilingual lending library Libros Schmibros, with its puckish Spanglish name and unique business model, arrived in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights in July 2010. At the outset, cofounder David Kipen—then newly returned to his hometown—told PW the space might be a “quixotic” venture, a combination of lending library and low-cost bookstore serving a…

SEATTLE routinely ranks among America’s most literate and well-read cities. Its citizens not only devour books but also foster a diverse array of literary hot spots, big and small. No wonder Seattleites pushed to anoint the metropolis as a UNESCO City of Literature (seattlecityoflit.org). To get on the right page, start at one of the…

A September study released by the PEN America Foundation, a Washington, D.C., based organization that stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States, tracked over 3,000 book bans nationally in public schools and libraries. It found that 40 percent of the bans were happening in the…

We Need Diverse Books, a nonprofit organization that advocates for diversity within the publishing industry, has debuted the new website  Indigenous Reads Rising (IRR). IRR is designed to assist educators in incorporating Native reading into classrooms, and features book lists of Indigenous children’s and YA literature, as well as articles and other resources that provide…