15 Graduation Gifts for English Majors
“WHAT TO GET THE SOON-TO-BE BARISTA IN YOUR LIFE”
“If you happen to have a favorite English major about to burst forth into the hard-scrabble, AI-invested, job-scarce media apocalypse” and are searching for an appropriate gift, Literary Hub has some suggestions.
Prices range from $18 to $1,550. (Of course, you can set your own maximum if you go the old-fashioned, check-writing route.)
Must-Read Novels of Summer 2026
We are now entering true summer. If you’re still working on your summer reading plan, Cal Flynn, deputy editor of Five Books, has some suggestions. Read all about them here.
From Gilead to Ladyland: how the rebellious women of literature offer hope in dark times
Writer Tahmima Anam, whose most recent novel is Uprising, “explores the radical fictional worlds where women have the power.”
The Prehistory of A.I. Slop
“Before ChatGPT, there was the Plot Robot, Auto-Beatnik, and a century’s worth of schemes for automating authorship.”
The idea of mechanically produced prose or poetry is not especially new. Eighteenth-century letter-writing manuals provided fill-in-the-blank templates, because many types of correspondence are set forms: letters of condolence, say, or letters of recommendation. Anxiety about machines replacing humans as writers, and replacing good writing with bad, is also older than you might think.
Really, I had no idea.
To Land a Job in AI, Try Reading Kant
“The world’s leading AI labs are hiring philosophers to think through ethical edge cases and grand questions of mind and morality. Are they another instrument of hype?”
“Philosophers,” writes Joel Khalili for Wired, are “trained to ask (and sometimes maybe even answer)” the kinds of questions developers of AI are concerned with, such as “What is intelligence? What is a mind?”
Read about how the AI industry now employs philosophers and how this emerging technology is shaping academic philosophy departments.
Having trouble focusing on your book? Try immersive reading
For NPR Chloee Weiner reports on the growing trend of immersive reading: listening to an audiobook while simultaneously following along in a printed book.
“In a time of distraction, immersive reading might be what it takes for some readers to steal their attention back — and get lost in a good book.”
The Rise of the Sensitivity Reader
“Adam Szetela’s That Book Is Dangerous! examines the emergence of a new job in publishing—secondary readers who comb through books for possible offenses.”
“Sensitivity readers first came into vogue around 2016, when Jodi Picoult reportedly hired some to help her craft a depiction of a Black nurse in the novel Small Great Things.”
The Man Who Reads Books For a Living (One Every Two Days)
You’ve probably seen, as I have, cute little illustrations on social media that opine “I wish I could get paid for reading all day.”
Well, the very lucky Clarke Speicher actually has that job. He’s “a professional book reader who evaluates literature specifically for screen adaptation.”
I was especially interested in the bits about how Speicher evaluates the differences between a written presentation and a cinematic one.
© 2026 by Mary Daniels Brown
