Book Post

12/01/2026

New on Book Post → What makes for a good translation of Aurelius’s Meditations? Jason Mott reflects on the latest translation, by Aaron Poochigian, which renders Aurelius’s thinking with empathy and without distortion.

https://books.substack.com/p/review-jason-mott-on-a-new-translation

Liveright Publishing

An accidental masterpiece and a companion in hard times

11/01/2026

Book curses! Great little blog post by Kait Astrella on these maledictions for the Morgan Library. One guy offers this book "with joyful heart in order that it may be an expiration for all sins committed by him. May he who steals it suffer violent bodily pains.” https://www.themorgan.org/blog/curses-recast-finding-and-cataloging-book-curses-morgan-library-museum

08/01/2026

The woman ICE killed in Minneapolis was the poet Renee Nicole Macklin Good.

"i want back my rocking chairs,

solipsist sunsets,

& coastal jungle sounds that are tercets from cicadas and pentameter from the hairy legs of cockroaches"

On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs by Renée Nicole Macklin

06/01/2026

Xiaolu Guo discusses the reinvention of the Western literary canon in the Lancaster International Fiction Lecture. In her talk, she explores the origins of her novel CALL ME ISHMAELLE, the challenges of writing and responding to literature in a non-native language, and the idea of fiction as a form freer than reality.

In doing so, she enters into dialogue with Herman Melville, Roland Barthes, Kathy Acker, Percival Everett, and others. Embracing her dual role as both saboteur and builder, Guo argues that disruption is the only way forward: “What propels my sabotage is the cultural chasm.” To read the full lecture, click the link here: https://buff.ly/BQLG3lR

Xiaolu Guo’s forthcoming book CALL ME ISHMAELLE is now available for purchase in Europe and will be released in the United States in January. If you’d like to preorder the book and support Words Without Borders, click the link here: https://buff.ly/WyoEGJ8

06/01/2026

Something to look forward to from Grove Atlantic!

Read Anakana Schofield on Xiaolu Guo’s wonderful 2020 book, A Lover's Discourse, here: https://books.substack.com/p/review-anakana-schofield-on-xaiolu

05/01/2026

"The reason that I just became so enamored of working with book reviews is that it just seemed like a really important way to bridge the gap between writing and people."

Check out Book Post editor Ann Kjellberg on The Datekeepers podcast!

https://youtu.be/DzC6FeyGTCg?si=puxE1keac6KrmcTT

05/01/2026

Happy New Year!

We love sharing these pro-book posters from the Works Projects Administration Poster Collection in the Library's Prints and Photographs Division, and it seems there are versions for every time of the year.

The Work Projects Administration (WPA) Poster Collection consists of 907 posters produced from 1936 to 1943 by various branches of the WPA. Of the 2,000 WPA posters known to exist, the Library of Congress's collection of more than 900 is the largest. The posters were designed to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and educational programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia. The results of one of the first U.S. Government programs to support the arts, the posters were added to the Library's holdings in the 1940s.

Image: Poster for statewide WPA Library Project, Illinois, showing an illustration of a child pulling a sled full of books toward a house. Text reads: "January--A year of good reading ahead." Chicago : Illinois WPA Art Project, between 1936 and 1941. Hazlett. Work Projects Administration Poster Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

05/01/2026

25/12/2025

“The celebration of Christmas is a meditation on the presence of the miracle in reality—a transformation of the world seen through marvels of changing scale and of paradox.”

Read Patricia Storace, A Lilliputian Christmas Feast now on Book Post! Includes a special recipe for Lilliputian Quail Eggs 🥚

https://books.substack.com/p/diary-patricia-storace-a-lilliputian

24/12/2025

Big thanks to The Browser for recommending our recent post!

https://books.substack.com/p/diary-val-mcdermid-deep-winter

24/12/2025

Val McDermid’s Deep Winter—a new Book Post Diary on Scottish midwinter, from finding silver threepennies in Christmas pudding with brandy custard to the countdown to the bells on Auld Year’s Day.

Three scenes from Scottish midwinter

23/12/2025

This beautiful new chapbook from Book Post author Ange Mlinko is out now from Foolscap Press!

“From warm Gulf waters to a ‘simulacrum of a mine’ one mile above sea level, Darkroom extends Mlinko's subjects of travel and place, art and music in voluble formal experiments.”