The Oxford Word of the Year 2025 is rage bait The powers that be at Oxford University Press have chosen rage bait as their word of the year for 2025. Rage bait is defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to […]
Best Books 2025 Publishers Weekly got the ball rolling on the year’s best books lists back in late October. This is the landing page, from which you can connect with focused links of works in a myriad of categories. BEST OF 2025: Holiday Gift Guide BookBub offers a list to help you “find the perfect
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The Essential Kate Atkinson “Surprising, versatile, dark and funny, the British writer has something for (almost) everyone.” Kate Atkinson’s 1995 novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum stands atop my list of Books to Reread, and I swear that some September (my traditional rereading month) I’m going to get to it. Just about everyone in
If you’re still looking for some short reads to hit your annual reading goal, here are some suggestions. 4 Novellas I’ve Come Across (Links are to the Goodreads description.) The Last Children of Tokyo by Yoko Tawada (138 pages) The Odd Woman and the City by Vivian Gornick (192 pages) Seascraper by Benjamin Wood (176
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How the Union Lost the Remembrance War “The victors of the American Civil War failed to write their story into the history books, leaving a gap for the mythologizing of the Confederacy.” “After the American Civil War, there was what historian Robert J. Cook calls a ‘robust and purposeful narrative’ of the Union’s defeat of
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What’s Real and What’s Not: Gish Jen on Writing Between the Factual Lines “Finding the sweet spot between memoir and fiction” Writer Gish Jen considers writing situations that fall somewhere between memoir—or nonfiction—and fiction: “Might the author hope that his or her account, to whatever genre it belongs, will move the reader in a way
Merriam-Webster, the country’s oldest dictionary publisher which is headquartered in Springfield, just released an updated Collegiate edition with 5,000 new entries. Source: Merriam-Webster goes old school with first new hardcover Collegiate dictionary in 22 years | WBUR News I guess it’s time to order a new dictionary.
The Best Literary Love Stories A satisfying literary love story doesn’t need to end happily ever after—but one does need to be left with a sense that two characters belong together, advises the novelist Lily King . . . Thomas Mallon’s Theory of the Diary “The New York writer and editor’s diaries of the AIDS
How to Be a Good Literary Citizen (in Seven Easy Steps) Maris Kreizman writes about “literary citizenship . . . an amorphous kind of concept, often changing with the moment, but needed more than ever today when corporate interests have a stranglehold on the arts, literary institutions are being devastated by the cancellation of NEA
The Ultimate Fall 2025 Reading List “95 BOOKS THE CRITICS THINK YOU SHOULD READ THIS SEASON” LitHub’s annual list, prepared by Emily Temple: This season, I processed 28 lists, which collectively recommended a total of 466 books. 95 of these were included 3 times or more, and these I present to you in descending order
