July 7 – November 10, 2024

Behind The Shawshank Redemption’s remarkable reversal of fortune

Join Marcus, Jim and Vish as we recap the biggest game of the season so far, where Arsenal had to be at their dastardly, ugly best to keep Man City at bay. It’s refreshing to see two sides who genuinely can’t stand each other. 

We also whip round the rest of what proved to be a cracking Premier League weekend as Luis Diaz brought the fireworks, West Ham continue to welcome opponents in with open arms and the calls for Danny Welbeck to get a surprise England call-up grow ever louder. From one chair in particular… 

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From performing elephants to a WW2 pigeon

A man destroyed a porcelain sculpture by Ai Weiwei seemingly on purpose during the opening reception of an exhibition dedicated to the Chinese dissident artist on Friday evening in Italy.

The destroyed work was Ai’s blue-and-white Porcelain Cube, which was included in a survey on Ai titled “Who am I?” at the Palazzo Fava in Bologna, which opened to the public on Saturday.

Footage of the destruction was captured on CCTV and posted to Instagram by Ai. In the video, the man steps onto the plinth that holds the Cube and pushes it forward, shattering the work. He then lifted up a portion of the broken porcelain over his head. The work was installed in an atrium near the museum giftshop and ticket office.

The Bologna edition of Milan-based daily newspaper Corriere della Sera identified the man as 57-year-old Czech Vaclav Pisvejc, who was stopped by museum security and detained until police arrived. It is still unclear how he entered the museum during the invite-only reception. He was arrested for “destruction, dispersion, deterioration, defacement, soiling and illicit use of cultural or landscape assets,” according to the paper.

Arturo Galansino, the exhibition’s curator and the director general of Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi  in Florence, told Reuters, “Unfortunately, I know the author of this inconsiderate gesture from a series of disturbing and damaging episodes over the years involving various exhibitions and institutions in Florence.”

How the hugely popular sitcom brought a new way of living into the mainstream

Update: At a rally in North Carolina on Saturday, Trump backed away from another debate, saying “The problem with another debate is that it’s just too late. Voting has already started.”

Vice President Kamala Harris accepted an invitation from CNN to debate Donald Trump for a second time on October 23. Now the ball is in the former president’s court.

After getting trounced by Harris in their first debate earlier this month, Trump initially ruled out a second face-off. “THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” he posted on Truth Social two days after the candidates faced off on ABC. But by that Friday, he seemed more open to the idea. “Maybe if I got in the right mood, I don’t know,” he told reporters during a news conference in California.

Donald Trump will be campaigning in North Carolina today—without Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor by his side. The Trump campaign has remained mum about Robinson, a top Trump ally, since CNN reported on Thursday that Robinson had made a series of “inflammatory comments” on a pornographic message board more than a decade ago, including referring to himself as a “black NAZI!” and praising Mein Kampf as a “good read.”

This wasn’t Robinson’s first scandal. Last October, Jewish Insider reported that Robinson had made antisemitic comments on social media going back a decade, including sharing a quote about racial pride that has been attributed to Adolf Hitler.

Trump endorsed Robinson in March despite these remarks, even referring to the candidate, who has denied that systemic racism exists, as “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

Trump won North Carolina in 2020 with his narrowest margin of victory. Politico reports that the Harris campaign sees the scandal as an opening to appeal to voters in the state. “Trump made Mark Robinson,” advisers wrote in a memo, “and he will have to answer for him.”

Here are the posts that readers read the most this week. Catch up—or revisit.

10 Must-Read New Books Out in Fall 2024 to Preorder Now

Fall is the biggest new release season in publishing, and there are so many exciting new books to preorder (or place your library holds on). Strangely, publishers can’t seem to agree on the definition of seasons, so for the purposes of this list, I’m including upcoming books out in September, October, and November. Some of the biggest titles are out this week, so you don’t have long to wait!

The Best New Book Releases Out September 17, 2024

And, to get you fully, absolutely in an autumnal spirit, there are must-read new books coming out this fall that you can preorder, and some recent slashers. Keeping in that same horror vein, the YA category is doing some damage—there are demon deals and biting social commentary in Lamar Giles’ Ruin Road; and Tatiana Schlote-Bonne’s Such Lovely Skin also has a demon, this time a guilt-eating shape-shifting one from a video game.

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.

Welcome to your weekly round-up of all the bookish news worth talking about.

As a bonus for All Access members, here are a bunch of interesting links we didn’t quite get to.