Are you content to engage in that most vile sin of this age—privileged disengagement—because the unprovoked atrocities being committed in Ukraine by Russians are too much to deal with? Then we are on different teams. The post Psalm 139 appeared first

"I come to fiction to suspend my disbelief. The book is a drug. I'm trying to take this drug. Get melted off this drug." The post Just Make Someone Feel Something: The Millions Interviews Bud Smith and Rae Buleri appeared first on The Millions.

"It is remarkable to me that I can be a changed person on the other side of one single poem. I have experienced something and now I am different." The post The Hurting Kind: The Millions Interviews Ada Limón appeared first on The Millions.

It is the central job of fiction to tell how things come about, especially unlikely things like an otherwise sane man becoming sexually obsessed with the memory of a dead schoolgirl. The post The William Trevor Reader: “The Death of Peggy Meehan” app

Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Bud Smith, Jacqueline Harpman, Mark Haber, and more—that are publishing this week. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Smith, Harpman, Haber, and More appeared first on The Millions.

I realized that all words, even those contained in secular literature, have the potential to become prayers. The post Prayer Consists of Attention: On Reading as a Spiritual Practice appeared first on The Millions.

"Him will I drag through life's wild waste, /Through scenes of vapid dullness," Mephistopheles says, and it might describe the experience of endlessly perusing Twitter, anesthetizing yourself as you doom scroll. The post Mephistopheles in the Anthrop

"Obviously, there are real risks to writing about the disenfranchised from a position of privilege.... So if I get anything wrong, I’ll deserve whatever criticism comes my way." The post Telling Secrets: The Millions Interviews Steve Almond appeared

The project of the book—to make literary the body horror and psychological turmoil that are part of so many women’s lives—is an exciting one that, in the hands of a more inquisitive writer, could be culture-shifting. The post The Punctuation of Life:

Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Hernan Diaz, Isabel Cañas, Michelle Hart, and more—that are publishing this week. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Diaz, Cañas, Hart, and More appeared first on The Millions.

Anyone who wades into the murk of adult matrimony and its attendant material concerns gets what’s coming to them: infidelity, brutality, misery—disillusionment, at the very least. The post The William Trevor Reader: “Angels at the Ritz” appeared firs

May brings new books from our own Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Elif Batuman, Caio Fernando Abreu, and Hernan Diaz—just to name a few. The post May Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month) appeared first on The Millions.

The fiscal drama is not the point; 'Hello, Bookstore' is neither a Covid movie nor a cliffhanger about The Bookstore’s fate. The film is about doing what you love and loving the people you do it for. The post The Profound Impacts of Decency: On ‘Hell

'City on Fire' is good, old-fashioned American pulp fiction – intelligent, well-written pulp, even – but pulp nonetheless. The post Don Winslow’s ‘City on Fire’: Good, Old-Fashioned American Pulp appeared first on The Millions.

How many college writing courses are built around a book of poetry? What might that open up for students in terms of lessons on reading? What might it teach them about language and its uses? The post Proper Poetical Education appeared first on The Mi

Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Vaishnavi Patel, Janelle Brown, Lara Williams, and more—that are publishing this week. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Patel, Brown, Williams, and More appeared first on The Million

I count this story as the fourth stone-cold masterpiece we’ve encountered so far. The post The William Trevor Reader: “In Isfahan” appeared first on The Millions.

That Tokarczuk's Nobel nomination was rumored to be greatly based on the accomplishments of this book has only magnified the anticipation. And now, it is here. The post The Maybe-Messiah and His Grandmother’s Ghost: On Olga Tokarczuk’s ‘The Books of

At Write or Die Tribe, Jenny Tinghui Zhang discusses her debut novel, Four Treasures in the Sky, and shares advice for emerging writers trying to finish their books. “Don’t get distracted by the progress of others and that’s a roundabout way of sayin

I think of this as a new literary form, a type of novelistic prose poem, a hybrid, a chimera, whose main currency is delight, wonder, and mystery. The post Fourteen First and Last Sentence Novels appeared first on The Millions.

No couple ever recovered from infidelity by only reading books, even the books written for that purpose. But books are what kept me from falling apart. The post Distancing: On the Writers Who Saved My Marriage appeared first on The Millions.

There is no “Frenemies” section in the greeting card aisle at CVS. But here are 10 novels that can maybe make us feel a bit more understood. The post Ten Essential Fictional Frenemies appeared first on The Millions.

I found “The Distant Past” to be an elegant introduction to The Troubles in Trevor’s work. It’s a simple idea, rendered with poignant acuity: the past seems distant, until it isn’t. The post The William Trevor Reader: “The Distant Past” appeared firs

Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Tove Ditlevsen, Louisa Lim, our own Ed Simon, and more—that are publishing this week. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Ditlevsen, Lim, Simon, and More appeared first on The Millions.

Be warned: It ain’t pretty. The post Reading Behind Bars: Eleven Essential Books About Prison appeared first on The Millions.

The episodes of The Swank Hotel are weird because the world is weird. And the world is even weirder when the person you love most on earth might be dead but you still have to go to work. The post Lucy Corin Picks Up Where Virginia Woolf Left Off appe

Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World moved from sixth to third, and scrambled my brain when I read it. All around, the world spun, flowers bloomed, and miseries swapped places with joy—or vice versa, as the case may be. The post T

Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Okwiri Oduor, Lisa Hsiao Chen, and Leigh Newman—that are publishing this week. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Oduor, Chen, Newman, and More appeared first on The Millions.

Trevor’s characters often have very little of value in their difficult lives besides whatever brittle self-conception they have been able to rig up, and the fragile dignity of its preservation. The post The William Trevor Reader: “Raymond Bamber and

I had a dystopian idea in the beginning, and in the end the dystopia caught up with me. The post The Lighter Side of Dan Chaon appeared first on The Millions.