Today is the official launch date of Literary Hub, “a new home for book lovers” that is supported by more than 125 industry partners. “Each day the site—led by editor in chief Jonny Diamond and executive editor John Freeman—will have a main feature from a partner, an exclusive book excerpt, and original content,” says the press release. Because it’s a books site supported by publishers, we will be interested to see if coverage will be uniformly positive, a la Buzzfeed and The Believer.
Beirut-based Kaelen Wilson-Goldie has written a deeply thoughtful and eloquent article about the Charlie Hebdo attacks, looking not just at the events themselves but at how we have attempted to “explain it, assign it meaning, and make it fit within the wider story we tell ourselves about the worlds in which we live.”
Awards report: Three Percent has announced the longlist for this year’s Best Translated Book prize. And Atticus Lish has won the PEN/Faulker Award for his first novel, Preparation for the Next Life.
In the words of Bookforum editor Chris Lehmann “Tech-utopian Clay Shirky preaching the virtues of skepticism is very much like Charlie Sheen extolling sobriety.”
At Slate, Jordan Weissman responds to a New York Times op-ed on about why tuition has become so expensive—”one of the most confused op-eds on the price of higher education that I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading.”
Vani Hari, also known as the Food Babe, has been widely profiled, has been named the 30th most influential person by Time, and has written a bestselling book called The Food Babe Way. She is also, says Yvette d’Entremont at Gawker, “utterly full of shit.”