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Graphic reading FREEDOM TO READ ACT READ-IN Join us in urging Governor Hochul to sign the Freedom to Read Act, ensuring our schools are protected from library censorship! Monday Dec. 8 3:30 pm Union Square 17th Street logos along the top for Teen Activist Project, Authors Against Book Bans, American Booksellers Association, and Pen America.

New Yorkers, did you know Gov. Hochul could sign into law protections for school libraries any time she cares to? We don't need to wait. Let her know you want this done now.

Come to Union Square on Monday and join me, @authorsabb.bsky.social and other orgs to remind her what's sitting on her desk

🥴🤢

Brick building bookstore in the snow

Interior of a bookstore with the lights off, snowlight coming in

Snowy village street corner as seen from under the bookstore awning

definitely should not have commuted in a blizzard but at least it was cozy at the store

like can we not

Screenshot from the New York Times Top 10 books of 2025 list Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin, by Sue Prideaux

Wild Thing by Sue Prideaux In the annals of art history, bad boy artists are legion, and the 19th-century French painter Gauguin often figures near the top of the list — denounced as a colonizer who seduced underage Tahitian girls and spread syphilis in the South Seas. Prideaux's enthralling biography, studded with keen close readings of her subject's innovative art, chips away at this caricature, fashioning in its stead a slyly witty portrait of an original and contradictory man who experienced extreme wealth and abject poverty, who abandoned his wife, children and country in pursuit of his singular artistic vision, and who fought for the interests of his Polynesian neighbors against the colonial authorities even as he took in several of their daughters as child brides.

idk man, must we?

I have a customer at the bookstore who comes in every couple of weeks to complain about this show

Jim Downey podcast meme with text “Mahmood Mamdani’s kid?”

humanities scholars today

not to MENTION Mira Nair, but that’s not my beat

Jim Downey podcast meme with text “Mahmood Mamdani’s kid?”

humanities scholars today

Disappointing!

the Sudan Solidarity Collective has partners in El Fashir distributing aid. give what you can

bsky.app/profile/nisr...

Eric Andre wearing a long-sleeved Face/Off t-shirt, standing in a bookstore, holding a copy of Are Prisons Obsolete by Angela Y. Davis, and grinning

forgot to post this

A Bard College student was kidnapped by ICE and Bard’s administration is advocating for his release and has created a website to assist the rest of the community in joining them.

That’s what academic leaders should be doing for their students right now. www.instagram.com/p/DQKSTDJkeF...

Today I met by chance a customer who turned out to be the President of the @spencerruchti.bsky.social Fan Club — a contested and coveted position

taped this to the register and sharing the quoted post with the staff so everyone is prepared

yesterday a couple from Birmingham AL came into the store when I was wearing my @thankyoubooks.bsky.social hat ❤️

I took this picture of Olga and László in London in 2018. Congrats to Krasznahorkai and his translators, including George Szirtes and @ottiliemulzet.bsky.social, and long live a Central Europe free of dictators (foreign and domestic) and full of magnificent minds like these!

oh man I’d love to read Ando’s writing, his buildings are poems

The AI Con: how to fight big tech’s hype and create the future we want, by Emily M. Bender & Alex Hanna

yesterday a customer came up to the counter with this book and I said “it *is* such a con,” and he said “yeah, it is. and I work in AI…”

Wtf.

Two of the victims at the Manchester Synagogue were shot by the Greater Manchester Police. One of them died.

www.irishtimes.com/world/uk/202...

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live...

Early last semester, Droubi said, students began approaching Cheyfitz with complaints that a graduate student in the “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance” class appeared to be recording them, possibly to “gather their names and comments” and intimidate them. “We believe that a student came to the course for the sole reason of surveilling and potentially harming students in the class,” Droubi said. “That ended up proving itself to be true because multiple students came forward and shared their concerns with Professor Cheyfitz.” Cheyfitz said one Palestinian student quit the class after telling him she felt upset and frightened. Current Issue Cover of October 2025 Issue October 2025 Issue According to Cheyfitz, the graduate student often steered conversations away from the assigned readings—which at that point mostly focused on definitions of genocide and international law on Indigenous rights—to defend Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza and argue with others in the class. “He clearly had not done the readings,” Cheyfitz said. “It was disruptive.” Cheyfitz said he met with the graduate student in late January and spoke to him about concerns from his classmates. During the conversation, he asked the graduate student to drop the course, and by the next class, he did, Cheyfitz said. The graduate student, Oren Renard, a PhD candidate in computer science whose identity was confirmed by other students in the class, previously served in Israel’s elite military surveillance agency, Unit 8200, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Cornell is cancelling a distinguished professor's classes on Gaza and suspending him because of the complaints of a student who previously served in Israel's military surveillance agency and was literally recording the comments of other students in class and deliberately derailing discussion.

On this day in 1940, Walter Benjamin took his own life in the town of Portbou, after being denied entry by Spanish officials.

“If the killing of Lorca was Fascism’s first crime against literature, Benjamin’s death was undoubtedly the second.” - The Listener

This is a disgusting, horrifying weaponization of the courts to continue the administration’s persecution of Mahmoud Khalil for free speech

257. The Commission recommends that all Member States: (a) Employ all means reasonably available to them to prevent the commission of genocide in the Gaza Strip; (b) Cease the transfer of arms and other equipment or items, including jet fuel, to the State of Israel or third States where there is reason to suspect their use in military operations that have involved or could involve the commission of genocide; (c) Ensure individuals and corporations in their territories and within their jurisdiction are not involved in the commission of genocide, aiding and assisting the commission of genocide or incitement to commit genocide and investigate and prosecute those who may be implicated in these crimes under international law; (d) Facilitate the investigations and domestic proceedings and take action (including imposing sanctions) against the State of Israel and against individuals or corporations that are involved in or facilitating the commission of genocide or incitement to commit genocide; (e) Cooperate with the investigation of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. 258. The Commission recommends that the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court: (a) Examine, within its continuing investigation in the Situation in the State of Palestine, the crime of genocide for amendment to existing arrest warrants and addition to future application for arrest warrants; (b) Examine the involvement of officials mentioned in this report for inclusion as those most responsible for international crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Today, the UN officially designated Israel’s assault on Gaza as a genocide.

As a party to the Genocide Convention, the U.S. has a legal obligation to obey our own laws, stop weapons sales to Israel, and demand a permanent ceasefire.

End the genocide. Ceasefire now.

Though the man’s killing had been filmed, a fact checker is obliged to seek comment from any party alleged to have committed a crime. I called the soldier’s lawyer. He picked up from a café, where I could hear trance music blasting in the background. The lawyer told me that while, yes, his client did shoot the man picking olives, and yes, the man did die, the Israeli military court found his client not guilty of murder because the man picking olives was a terrorist who was throwing stones. Even though the video did not show the Palestinian man throwing stones, the court said that he was, so he was. QED, his client did not murder anyone, and it would be slanderous for us to say so.

if you read one thing today, make it this absolutely devastating piece from a fact-checker who quit the New Yorker
bidoun.org/articles/hou...

Small DC bookstore reports 60% decline in business since federal surge A bookstore in the Petworth neighborhood reports sales are down a whopping 60% since the federal surge in D.C. began. The small but beautifully arranged Loyalty Bookstore on busy Upshur Street near Ge...

A friend of mine co-owns this bookstore. This is not great.

www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/d...

i sent an order their way and you can to: loyaltybookstores.com

get fucked