In their November issue, Wired asks guest editor President Obama for his ten essential books. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, and Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History all make the cut. The magazine estimates that reading all ten books will take only eighty-nine hours.
On the second anniversary of its shut down, the literary blog HTMLGIANT, which was in its previous incarnation a staunch supporter of independent-press writers and books, has returned. The site announced a column providing “anonymous advice on revenge, beauty, and life,” along with an essay on trash and aesthetics, and a glimpse of the home screens of various writers’ cell phones.
Literary Hub announced the addition of four new staff members: Garnette Cadogan, Stephanie Anderson, Tommy Pico, and Stephen Sparks will join the website as contributing editors.
The New York Times will pay over $30 million for The Wirecutter, an online consumer guide that makes money when readers purchase recommended products through online retailers. It may seem like a strange move for the paper, but Poynter explains that “rather than building its affiliate linking business from scratch, the New York Times decided to buy one.”
A new collection of Shakespeare’s works from Oxford University Press will be the first edition of the playwright’s works to list Christopher Marlowe as a co-author on Henry VI, parts one, two, and three.
Jonathan Goldsmith, better known as Dos Equis’s “most interesting man in the world,” has signed a book deal with Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Random House. “More than a memoir,” the still-untitled book will be published next May and consist of “stories about Goldsmith’s truly fascinating life both in and out of Hollywood: getting shot by John Wayne, competing with Dustin Hoffman, drinking with Tennessee Williams, and sailing the high seas with Fernando Lamas, and romancing many lovely ladies.”
Gannett, the largest newspaper company in the US, announced layoffs of two percent of its staff in a memo yesterday. Politico speculates that the move may be in anticipation of the acquisition of Tronc, formerly Tribune Publishing, but note that “execs will say the two are unrelated.”
BuzzFeed reports that Donald Trump supporters have found a new word to shout at journalists: Lügenpresse. Translated as “lying press,” it was first used in Germany in the mid-1800s and later became a Nazi phrase used to attack the media. Reporter Rosie Gray first heard the phrase at a Trump rally last weekend in Ohio, when a man started yelling it at the press. Another attendee “started shouting it too, then . . . made a self-deprecating remark about not pronouncing it right.”
Tonight at the Strand Bookstore, Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson reads from her new book Carry This Book. Lena Dunham will join for a Q&A.
