According to an official Facebook post, officers served a search warrant in the 1400 block of 17th Avenue, working alongside federal and local partners. Investigators say the location had been on their radar for some time, citing a recent shooting along with ongoing concerns raised by neighbors and earlier violent incidents linked to the same address.

OPD, in coordination with federal and local law enforcement partners, executed a search warrant at a suspected illegal gambling operation on 4/9/26, in the 1400 block of 17th Avenue.

The investigation began following a recent shooting.

More in the link:https://t.co/twUxnWhxz2 pic.twitter.com/gyCcPoicrn

— Oakland Police Dept. (@oaklandpoliceca) April 13, 2026

When officers entered the property, they detained 10 people. Three of them were arrested because they had outstanding felony warrants, according to police.

Authorities say the search turned up a mix of evidence they believe supports the illegal gambling case. Officers recovered narcotics, a firearm, cash, and equipment associated with gambling operations.

Police have not released the names of those arrested, and they have shared few details about the shooting that helped drive the investigation. They say the case is still active and developing.

Oakland Police illegal gambling raid part of a wider crackdown

Investigators say the operation reflects a general push to respond to community concerns and crack down on locations tied to recurring crime. In this case, police point to neighborhood complaints as a key factor that helped bring attention to the suspected activity.

The department is urging residents to keep reporting suspected illegal gambling or other dangerous activity, saying those tips can help officers step in before situations escalate further.

That enforcement effort comes as authorities pursue related cases tied to underground gambling in Oakland. In a separate case reported by ReadWrite, an alleged illegal casino operator in the city is now facing multiple felony charges.

Police say community reporting plays a critical role in identifying these sites and building cases against those involved.

The April 9 raid was part of a coordinated effort involving multiple law enforcement agencies, though officials have not said how long the investigation had been underway or whether more arrests are expected.

For now, detectives are continuing to review the evidence collected at the scene while they look into whether additional charges could follow. Authorities say the investigation remains open as they track down leads and work to determine the full scope of the suspected operation.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Oakland Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Division.

Featured image: Oakland Police via Facebook

The post Oakland illegal gambling raid detains ten people appeared first on Our Story Insight.

The Empire State is “extremely aggressive” in chasing down wealthy people who attempt to escape high taxes with moves to Florida and beyond – and that could escalate as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani works to increase taxes on top earners, experts told The Post.

Many New Yorkers who mull a move believe it’s enough to follow the “six-months-and-a-day” rule, which maintains you’re a resident if you spend 184 days or more in New York, not including airport layovers and hospital stays.

In reality, New York State law requires people to go a lot further to establish their domicile elsewhere, according to experts. That entails updating their driver’s license, voter registration, bank accounts and mailing subscriptions to their new address, whether that’s in Florida or another state. On top of that each state has its own requirements, too.

“New York is an extremely aggressive state when it comes to state income taxes. They do not like people leaving and they will do whatever they can to trap you back into the New York tax net,” Christine Concepcion, an attorney who advises on international and domestic tax matters, told The Post.

“This isn’t something that you do overnight.”

Meanwhile, Mamdani’s push for a 2% city income tax hike on millionaires — which would raise the rate to 5.9%, on top of federal and state taxes — lies at the heart of his socialist agenda. At least some of the increased revenue will likely be funneled back into auditing and tax enforcement, experts told The Post.

“The way it’s done in a socialist country like Belarus, where I’m from originally, you increase the taxes and you also allocate more money to enforcement,” said Tatiana Tsoir, an accountant and chief executive of Linza Advisors.

New York is a uniquely aggressive state when it comes to tax collection, experts told The Post. Bloomberg via Getty Images

New York auditors are already exacting – which Jon Hoff and his wife, Kathleen Ocorr-Hoff, found out the hard way when they were left on the hook for a $60,000 New York tax bill after they bought a $1 million Naples condo. 

They registered their vehicles, updated their voting registrations, started a business, held bank accounts, owned hunting and fishing licenses and moved their ski equipment and crystal collection to Florida. 

But they kept cashing their paychecks in New York and didn’t give up their local country club memberships – enough evidence to leave them subject to New York taxes. 

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has proposed a 2% tax hike on the city’s top earners. James Keivom for NY Post

The couple challenged the tax bill, then appealed a ruling that the Hoffs had to pay up — but that court decision was ultimately upheld. The couple’s attorneys did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

New York even chases after people living in other states who work remotely for New York-headquartered companies – known as the “convenience of the employer” rule – especially as more people switched to remote work and moved out of state during the pandemic.

“Our organization represented someone who lived and worked in Missouri and tried to file a discrimination claim against his New York-based employer, and New York said that they weren’t responsible for that…but then New York also said he still owed them income tax,” said Andrew Wilford, senior policy analyst at National Taxpayers Union Foundation. 

The client ultimately avoided forking over New York state taxes because he didn’t spend a single day at the office that year. Just one trip to the building for a holiday party would’ve meant he owed taxes, Wilford told The Post.

“If I were to move to Florida, what I would also do is get a reciprocal license in Florida,” Tsoir said of her CPA license. “Because if you’re not licensed in Florida and you claim to live there, it’s kind of strange.”

Many Florida transplants are simply trying to skirt around tax rules, experts told The Post. Syda Productions – stock.adobe.com

Proving residency in a new state could entail buying a cemetery plot, opening a safety deposit box, obtaining a fishing license, finding a new local place of worship or moving artwork, jewelry and sentimental items like wedding photos to your new residence, whether that’s in Florida or any other state. 

“An easy case is if somebody runs a construction company in New York but then also has a home in Florida,” said Randall Fox, partner at Kirby McInerney, a New York law firm. “A construction company is very site-specific, right? So you got to actually be there to do the work.”

For people with school-aged children, auditors will also often check where their kids are enrolled in school.

The state Department of Taxation and Finance did not immediately answer a request for comment.

While New York auditors are especially dogged, it’s also true that many so-called Florida residents aren’t truly moving to the Sunshine State — they’re just trying to skirt tax rules. 

New York loses a resident on net every 2 minutes and 23 seconds, according to research for the National Taxpayers Union Foundation. J.C. Rice for NY Post

“If they’re New Yorkers, they have to pay the taxes like the rest of us and pay for the same services we all have to pay for, and I’m not trying to subsidize the people who decide to spend half the year in Florida,” Fox told The Post. 

When combined with statewide rates as high as 10.9%, Mamdani’s 2% tax hike could see New York’s wealthiest residents facing state and local income taxes as high as 16.8% even before federal taxes, according to Wilford.

Higher taxes could speed up the rate at which New Yorkers have been fleeing the state. New York already loses a resident on net every 2 minutes and 23 seconds, according to Wilford’s research.

That poses a serious threat to the New York state budget, which will have $3.8 billion less 2025 tax revenue to work with because of outmigration, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation estimated.

More high-income New Yorkers started moving to Florida during the pandemic and brought their wealth with them, experts said. Getty Images

“Everything we’ve seen so far from Mayor Mamdani suggests that he is not concerned with the trends that we’re seeing with New York state broadly and New York City as well, where people are headed out because they’re sick and tired of being overtaxed,” Wilford told The Post.

The mayor’s office did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.

Despite high taxes, New York’s millionaire population has continued to grow. But the state’s share of income millionaires has plummeted from a high of 12.7% of the national total in 2010 to 8.7% in 2022, according to Empire Center, a fiscally conservative think tank.

“Whatever you think about what tax rates people should pay, high earners are disproportionately sensitive to tax increases,” Wilford said. “They pay more tax, so they notice an increase of 1% in their tax bill is a lot more money if you’re making a lot more money.”

Wealthy residents are more sensitive to tax increases when it comes to moving out of state, according to Wilford. Bloomberg via Getty Images

Wealthier individuals also have more resources, so it’s easier for them to sell their house, buy another one and move across state lines, he added.

Nearly 900,000 people total left New York state between 2021 and 2024, according to an Empire Center analysis of US Census Bureau data.

From 2018 to 2022, more than 125,000 New Yorkers abandoned the Big Apple for Florida from 2018 to 2022 – taking nearly $14 billion worth of income out of the state, according to a report last May from the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscally conservative watchdog.

About a third of those New Yorkers moved to Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Broward Counties, accounting for a $10 billion reduction in New York City’s adjusted gross income, the report found.

“There’s so much money down there now, it’s insane,” luxury publicist Melanie Holland told The Post. “People that grew up on the island of Palm Beach can’t afford to live over there anymore, it’s so expensive.”

Experts urged high-income New Yorkers to hire a lawyer to help with the move, even though it might be costly – or risk getting hit with eye-popping costs in unexpected New York state taxes.

Florida “has been a place where wealthy New Yorkers have always gone,” Holland said. “[Auditors have] always had their eyes on it. I think what’s happened is that the people who are moving down there aren’t doing it correctly.”

The post How New York’s ‘extremely aggressive’ tax collectors chase down people who leave: ‘They will do whatever they can’ appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Instead, book influencers on every platform can look forward to an influx of comments that say something like, “Some of us can’t read that much because we have full-time jobs. And children.” Some will ask, “How do you read so much?” while others will subtly — or not-so-subtly — imply that the creator didn’t really read 50 or 100 or 400 books this year.

Commenters rush in to litigate those numbers: audiobooks don’t count. And graphic novels don’t count. And romance doesn’t really count. Neither does YA. Or novellas.

Some people even make their own TikToks to reassure others that no one is reading hundreds of books by any definition: they’re all lying about it. They’re making up those numbers to brag.

If you’ve been on the bookish internet for long, you’ll realize the truth: there’s always someone reading more than you. I read about 100 books a year. By normal standards, that’s a huge amount of books. But I personally know multiple readers who get through 500+ books a year. (Yes, really.)

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There is always going to be someone out there who reads more pages per minute, who is able to set aside more time in their day, who can listen to audiobooks faster than you.

I’m always puzzled by people who think that 100 books in a year is an impossible number because I simply do not read very much. I read 30 minutes to an hour every day, sometimes more on the weekends, with a few reading marathon days throughout the year. It doesn’t require being unemployed or not having any other responsibilities in my life to achieve that number. If I truly prioritized reading, if I read anywhere near as much as I scroll on my phone or watch TV or zone out watching YouTube, that number would probably triple.

For those commenters who claim that anyone online who talks about reading more books than them must be lying, I implore you to sit with that feeling for a while. Would you think someone talking about seeing a large number of movies in a year is lying? Would you feel insecure about not watching the same number of movies? What makes reading different?

Most importantly: why do you care how much a stranger is reading? This is a hobby. We’re doing it for fun. I’m not saying that no one on BookTok has ever lied about how much they read, but is it more likely that there’s a conspiracy of bookish influencers faking their Goodreads accounts through the entire year, or that there are some people who just like reading a lot?

So this year, as you hear about other people’s reading totals for the year, remember that the rules are made up and the numbers don’t matter. It’s impossible to compare two people’s reading, between the different formats, styles, reading speeds, and more — and besides, there’s no competition here. One person reading more doesn’t mean there are fewer books for you.

If you’re one of the people who feels compelled to question others’ reading totals in monthly or yearly wrap-ups, maybe it’s time to step away from social media for a while. Try a new hobby. Might I suggest picking up a book?

The comments section is moderated according to our community guidelines. Please check them out so we can maintain a safe and supportive community of readers!

The post People Aren’t Lying About Reading. You’re Just Insecure. appeared first on Our Story Insight.

In honor of Literary Hub’s tenth birthday, we asked over 200 authors, editors, booksellers, publishing professionals, and other literary luminaries to weigh in on a few questions about the past, present, and future of the literary world. We will be sharing their opinions on various subjects with you over the next weeks, but to start, we’ve collated some of the best answers on one of our favorite questions: what’s the best book you’ve read recently?

NB that “recently,” in this case, meant the last 25 years (we’re long-term thinkers), and that rather than ask respondents to choose the best book published in the last 25 years, we asked them simply to pick the best books they read in the last 25 years, to get a more accurate sense of, well, what people are reading, be it new or old. Here are some of their responses, which reflect very little consensus—suggesting that books might not be dying in a monotonous, homogeneous heap after all:

*

James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. It’s a perfect novel, and reads like it could have been published this year.

–Kelsey McKinney, author and co-owner at Defector

Giovanni’s Room. “I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life. I have a drink in my hand, there is a bottle at my elbow. I watch my reflection in the darkening gleam of the window pane. My reflection is tall, perhaps rather like an arrow, my blond hair gleams. My face is like a face you have seen many times. My ancestors conquered a continent, pushing across death-laden plains, until they came to an ocean which faced away from Europe into a darker past.”

That’s the first paragraph. It’s beautiful and embodied, and it immediately positions the reader just-so, so intelligently and succinctly, into a depressive act of atonement, and the text is so immersed in desire and the work is so descriptive, it feels beautiful. I love melancholy, grief, love, and this book fuses all I love.

–Terese Marie Mailhot, author

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss. It’s tight, highly original, and really speaks to the dangers that arise, particularly for girls and women, when a society glorifies its past and clings to a myopic understanding of history for its identity.

–Quan Barry, writer

The Door by Magda Szabó, translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix. It was not written in the last 25 years, but I read it recently. It’s one of those books that shreds every narrative rule and yet (or rather because of that) works so beautifully. It’s riveting character sketch for 4/5 and then all the plot is in the last 1/5 and you don’t mind at all. Also it has one of the best dog characters in literature.

–Rebecca Makkai, writer

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields—it’s big, it’s ambitious, it’s hilarious. There’s a sentence on every page that you’ll want to underline (unless you’re tone deaf or without pencil). And no one reads it any more. But they should. Winning a Pulitzer doesn’t always please posterity. But this one—a novel about how our pasts our continually revised, to comic and tragic effect—deserves to be remembered and rediscovered.

–Jonathan Lee, novelist & TV writer

The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt. I don’t know a single other book that is as brilliant and as captivating as this novel. This is proof that a novel doesn’t need to be watered down in its style or ideas in order to hold a reader’s attention. I wish we all aspired to write books this ambitious and good.

–Isle McElroy, novelist

Lol. Um, Proust?

–Nick During, publicist

Impossible question, but I’ll pick the last book I loved, which is by Benjamin Labatut. When We Cease to Understand the World is gorgeous, prosaic, and saying something very important about violence, genius, madness.

–Ingrid Rojas Contreras, writer

This is obviously an incredibly difficult question so I’m going to cheat and submit four: The Bear, by Andrew Krivak (the best apocalyptic parenting narrative there is); Margaret the First, by Danielle Dutton (compulsively readable, wickedly erudite); When We Cease to Understand the World, by Benjamin Labatut (mindblowing and perfect); and Underland, by Robert Macfarlane (somehow capturing the full breadth of what it means to be human in a book about underground spaces). Ok. If I had to pick just one, I’d go with the Labatut.

–Jonny Diamond, Lit Hub EIC

Philip Roth, Sabbath’s Theater—for the best last line and most romantic golden shower scene of all time.

–Jess Bergman, editor

The Swan Book by Alexis Wright. A satire, not only did it gaff contemporary aboriginal life but also presented the problem of species diversity and the climate disaster in Australia.

–Terese Svoboda, writer

Oblivion: Stories by David Foster Wallace. A deeply disturbing masterpiece, the last great work of an author facing his own ultimate decline.

–Porochista Khakpour, author

25 years ago I was 20 years old, and I had read nothing except Frank O’Hara and Jane Eyre. That’s about when I read Kelly Link for the first time, and so you know what, I’m going to go ahead and say The Book of Love, Kelly’s first novel, which came out last year, because I’d been waiting twenty years for it and it was worth every second of the wait.

–Emma Straub, novelist and bookseller

I was pretty blown away by Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake. The novel intertwines elements of espionage with philosophical explorations of human history, environmentalism, and the complexities of identity and manipulation. There was an aspect to the story that really hit my heart hard in Bruno Lacombe’s radical philosophy, which posits that modern humans have lost their essential connection to the primal elements of existence. He believes that civilization has stripped people of their “salt”—their raw, untamed nature—leaving them spiritually and physically deficient. This idea weaves through the novel as Sadie, the protagonist, becomes increasingly drawn to Bruno’s worldview, challenging her sense of self and mission. The theme explores how people navigate authenticity, survival, and the cost of returning to a more “natural” state in a world shaped by technology and control.

–Brittany Ackerman, writer

City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer. I can draw a straight line from reading this book as a freshman in college to me sitting here, writing to you right now. It’s likely not an exaggeration to say that I would not be who I am without this book—I certainly wouldn’t be a writer. The book is a stitch-up of several stories, but it isn’t a story collection and it isn’t even really a novel in stories—it’s something more complicated, which is part of its charm: it is a novel wherein the main ‘character’ is the city of Ambergris and the stories recounted within are telling the city’s story, even when they’re sometimes very character-driven and, on their own, otherwise rather ‘traditional’ in their way. Reading this book not only infected my dreams (to this day, I dream of strolling down Albemuth Boulevard) but it changed the way I understood story. It’s certainly the most important book of my adult life, which for me is the ultimate metric of ‘best’.

–Drew Broussard, writer/bookseller/Lit Hub Podcasts Editor

I guarantee no one is going to have this same answer but honestly, I was taken apart and put back together by The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Frye by Rachel Joyce. AND also Half a Life by Darin Strauss.

–Mira Ptacin, narrative journalist and memoirist

The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante—it’s as close to flawless as a novel can get.

–Erin Somers, novelist and books reporter

Because there’s no way I can possibly pick a favorite, here is a tie. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton is a perfect novel. And One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabo was the most involving, sweeping reading experience I’ve ever had.

–Brittany K. Allen, writer

All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews or Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker. Any book that centers love, friendship, dependence, entwinement, with humor, grace, sadness, pathos, that has such immense warmth and care at the core, is the best kind of book to me.

–Julia Hass, Book Marks Assistant Editor

Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet.

–Matthew Salesses, writer

Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. Lush, satirical, terrifying, endlessly clever, and sometimes when I reread it I sympathize with these terrible children and sometimes I think I’m peering directly into hell. This one is ripped off so often by writers who don’t come close to conjuring its magic—I think the imitators forget how funny this book is, how deeply pleasurable the prose.

–Brittany Cavallaro, novelist and poet

This is too difficult to answer especially since the last 25 years takes me to 13 years old, so basically this period is my entire reading history. So I’ll just pick the first best book I remember reading which was A Wrinkle In Time by Madeline L’Engle.

–Hannah Lillith Assadi, novelist

2666 by Roberto Bolaño and Natasha Wimmer (because it was devastating and delightful); close runner-up would be Vernon Subutex 1 by Virginie Despentes and Frank Wynne (because it’s a spellbinding, breathtaking feat).

–Jennifer Croft, writer and translator

Vernon Subutex (trilogy) by Virginie Despentes, translated by Frank Wynne. Very few people write about the unhoused in contemporary literature, and why not? Maybe it’s because to write fiction takes immense privilege; Despentes does so with style and significance. It tackles a gentrifying Paris, fascism, racism, Islamophobia, fame, money, sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. Her hero, Vernon, is a fallen Gen-Xer trying to survive it all—and the book is critical of his generation’s hypocrisies. It has a kaleidoscope of characters I still think about. A huge series in France, less so in the U.S., and that boggles my mind because it’s a masterpiece.

–Alex Gilvarry, author

My God, how dare you make me choose. Okay: Edgar Telles Ribiero, His Own Man, translated by Kim Hastings.

–Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Managing Editor

White Oleander by Janet Fitch. This is the first book I ever encountered that seemed to understand the very particular sensation of being a girl surviving in the world, living in grief for a mother who is still alive but unreachable. It is unmatched in its lyric beauty and reads like an epic. It goes to such surprising territory and captures California’s rough beauty. It’s a hypnotizing book and no matter how many times I read it, I burst into tears every time.

–Chelsea Bieker, novelist

Anna Karenina. The way it investigates human psychology absolutely floored me the first time I read it, and I make it a habit to reread the book every year, which teaches me something new every time.

–Esmé Weijun Wang, writer

Five books immediately come to mind that fundamentally changed my sense of how words can speak to human experience—all of which I read in the last 25 years and none of which were published in the last 25 years (sorry): Moby-Dick, James Baldwin’s essays, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Annie Ernaux’s Simple Passion, and Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook—cliché, maybe, but they were all ecstatic reading experiences I’ll never forget.

On the contemporary side, it’s poetry that mostly comes to mind: Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky with Exit Wounds is a book that still stays with me—his novels are poetry, too, don’t let anyone fool you. Ecco’s 2015 anthology of Jorie Graham’s poetry and that doorstopper of Louise Glück’s poetry FSG put out in 2012 also mean a lot to me. But also John Jeremiah Sullivan’s book of essays Pulphead seems criminally under-read, and I would add Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time to this list, too. Ok, also Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station and 10:04, which I think are best read as a diptych.

–Elianna Kan, literary agent

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. I read this novel in 2008, as a junior in college. The book came to me at that impressionable time of my life when I secretly wanted to be a writer but didn’t have the courage to admit it aloud. The language, the characters, the final image—they imprinted in me in a way that has changed the way I write and see art.

–Crystal Hana Kim, writer

Love Me Back by Merritt Tierce, because it changed my perspective about what fictional motherhood can look and sound like.

–Courtney Maum, author and publishing expert

Heavy, for its unwavering honesty and brutality.

–Nathan Deuel, writer and teacher

I’m torn between Linda Gregerson’s Magnetic North and Frank Bidart’s Half-Life: Collected Poems 1965-2016. Bidart’s tracks the development and remarkable range of a truly singular voice in American poetry—elegies, persona poems, the intimate and the abstract, the anxieties and perversions and intimacies of historical and invented figures in addition to “the poet” himself. Gregerson’s shows her at the peak of her signature tercets, weaving together the microscopic and the grand threads of science, art, and history into wonderfully rich sonic landscapes. Gregerson’s is a book, a mind, a poetics that demand an attentive, intelligent reader—something I wish more books of poetry would do.

–Corey Van Landingham, poet

C’mon, this is impossible! I’m inclined to say the Wolf Hall trilogy since they saw me through the early pandemic and, like much else from that time, they live large in my memory.

–Stephen Sparks, bookseller

Dodge Rose by Jack Cox (Dalkey Archive, 2016). This miraculous debut novel has all the hallmarks of a modernist masterpiece, yet it never feels like an imitation or a throwback. In its lithe 201 pages, Cox manages to weave a complex narrative about a pair of young women and the recently deceased widow whose estate they are trying to get in order while incorporating everything from dense Australian property law legalese to onomatopoeic piano-busting pyrotechnics, from eerie Sebaldian black-and-white photos to bravura Joycean punctuation-free streams of consciousness. It’s a book about ownership, history, family, law, revenge, and—in a somewhat subterranean way—colonialism. By burying this story of the indigenous peoples of Australia beneath the larger narrative, letting it only emerge through hints and hushes, Cox mirrors, and thus deliberately showcases, the ways in which colonial powers subjugate through fictions (whether literary, historical, legal, economic, etc). In a better world, novels of this level of sophistication, beauty, erudition, ambiguity, and play would come along more frequently and dominate the literary discourse.

–Tyler Malone, writer and professor

John Berger, Portraits. This book has universes within universes. It is humane, political, searching, wise, as if speaking to us from all times. It holds a lifetime of trying to see.

–Madeleine Thien, novelist

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. A beautiful and curious book.

–James Folta, Lit Hub Staff Writer

Yu Miri’s The End of August (tr. Morgan Giles) is a colossally ambitious and impossibly inventive novel that reckons with cycles of colonial violence and familial betrayal. There are so many incredible ideas on display in this book (one chapter follows a single gust of wind from one side of town to the other, weaving in and out of scenes through drafty windows and chimneys) and you’d be hard pressed to find a book more densely-packed with those moments that you make you go “wow I didn’t even know you could do that!”

–James Webster, Marketing Director (Deep Vellum / Dalkey Archive)

Not published within the last 25 years, but Mrs. Bridge was an absolute revelation as I was trying to figure out if I could write fiction. It cracked open the possibilities of novels in ways I’m still thinking about.

–Jessie Gaynor, writer & Lit Hub editor

I’m going to go with one of my favorites. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. It was a book that I got to read for review as a blank template—my galley, which I still have, doesn’t include a single blurb. Even the hardcover only got advance praise from Kirkus and PW. Now we know that it was brilliantly written, heartbreaking, encompassed art and fandom, how we live in the present moment, and is refreshingly innovative in form. A blazing prizewinner. But to be able to encounter that from the start and think, Wow! Everyone should read this! And then they did. What a cool book experience.

–Carolyn Kellogg, writer and editor

László Krasznahorkai’s Seiobo There Below, tr. Ottilie Mulzet, has been the most enduringly impactful to me personally.

–Brad Johnson, bookseller

At the Autopsy of Vaslav Njinski by Bridget Lowe. It’s the Exile In Guyville of the 21st century thus far, has influenced many poets’ new work, and is an authentic extension of the work of both Dickinson and Plath.

–Peter Mishler, poet and Lit Hub contributing editor

I’m only thirty, so this basically a question that applies to my entire reading life! If I had to pick one, I’d have to say, reading Franny and Zooey at 19 changed the entire course of my life in at least 4 or 5 different ways.

–Sarah McEachern, Rights Director at Deep Vellum

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The post » 58 Books You Need to Read (Recommended by People Who Know) appeared first on Our Story Insight.

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People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry was published in 2021, and four years later, we’re getting a movie adaptation. The film of the same name stars Emily Bader as Poppy and Tom Blyth as Alex, and it comes out on Netflix January 9th. Netflix has just released the first teaser trailer, which you can watch below.

As Netflix described it, “Every summer for nearly a decade, free-spirited Poppy and buttoned-up Alex embark on a travel adventure, but after years of not speaking, one fateful trip brings them back together to confront their unspoken feelings for one another.”

The post Watch the PEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION Teaser Trailer appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Verified figures from YouTube and X show 7.49 million views on Kirk’s own channel, 3.8 million impressions on his account on X, 2.43 million views on Fox News’ YouTube livestream and 1.26 million on the Associated Press’ YouTube feed as of Monday.

That subtotal, tallied from just four outlets, does not include dozens of additional simulcasts on Rumble, Facebook and Twitch, nor replays that continue to climb.

Mourners packed State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., as tens of millions more watched Charlie Kirk’s memorial online and on TV. AFP via Getty Images

Early Nielsen data add another 5.37 million average viewers on cable between 1:30–7:15 p.m. ET.

The Fox News Channel attracted the largest audience among cable news networks — 4.792 million viewers.

CNN, the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned outfit, came in second place with 330,000 total viewers while Comcast’s left-leaning network MSNBC finished third with 251,000 viewers.

Fox News drew nearly 6 million viewers during Erika Kirk’s tribute, the biggest peak of the five-hour service. REUTERS

FNC peaked near 6 million viewers during Erika Kirk’s remarks in the 6 p.m. ET hour.

In the advertiser-coveted 25-54 age demographic, Fox News came out on top, drawing 687,000 viewers in the nearly six-hour block.

CNN drew 48,000 viewers in the 25-54 demographic while MSNBC managed 21,000 viewers.

The Post is owned by News Corp — sister company to Fox News’ parent Fox Corp.

President Donald Trump delivered a eulogy before a live audience of up to 100,000 at Kirk’s memorial. AFP via Getty Images

Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk founded, claimed worldwide livestream totals exceeded 100 million, though that figure could not be independently verified.

The Glendale memorial, held at State Farm Stadium, ran more than five hours and featured tributes, worship music and a eulogy from President Trump.

Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk founded, claimed worldwide livestream totals exceeded 100 million, though that figure could not be independently verified. Youtube/Charlie Kirk

Police estimated the live audience reached up to 100,000 across the stadium, an overflow arena and outdoor viewing areas, but online viewership dwarfed that number.

Earlier this month, coverage of Kirk’s killing boosted cable news primetime averages by more than 60%, suggesting millions more may have tuned in.

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July 24, 2025, 1:23pm

“People in Gaza are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses.”

These are the words of Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, who posted on X earlier today that more than 100 people, “the vast majority of them children,” have now died of starvation in Gaza. Meanwhile, thousands of aid trucks sit at the border, denied permission to enter, while bombs and bullets continue to rain down on the decimated enclave.

Israel’s brutal military assault on Gaza has horrified the world for more than 21 months now, but this latest phase of the genocide—extermination through mass starvation—is a grim new nadir.

Many of us feel paralyzed by despair, waking to images of emaciated Palestinian children on our phone screens each morning, but there are still things we can do to help.

We can protest. We can boycott. We can strike. We can disrupt business as usual until the machinery that facilitates the continuation of this horror grinds to a halt.

And we can donate to mutual aid organizations that are working on the ground to keep Palestinians in Gaza alive. I want to spotlight one of those organizations today:

The Sameer Project is a donations-based rapid-response initiative, led by Palestinians in the diaspora, working to supply aid to displaced Palestinians in Gaza.

In its first year of fundraising, the Sameer Project raised more than $4.3 million for displaced families in Gaza. With that money, the group was able to provide:

12.6 million liters of fresh drinking water.

Medical care for thousands of patients.

1,299 tents, sheltering 9,093 people.

Food for 627,737 people through community kitchens and aid packages.

2,655 packs of diapers. 1,820 pairs of shoes. 3,000 toys.

500 baby outfits to prevent hypothermia.

1,315 blankets.

2,129 formula packets to feed hungry babies.

Salaries for 53 team members—including nurses, doctors, teachers, cleaners, and project managers—which further supported 53 families on the ground.

First aid, hygiene, breastfeeding, and childcare training for 242 people.

The Sameer Project also built the Refaat Alareer Camp—named after the beloved Palestinian poet, activist, and university professor who was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike in December 2023—which contains an educational tent, a medical point, facilities for new and expecting mothers, and tent and toilet facilities for 50 families at any given time. The camp also holds music classes, speech/physical therapy sessions, and VR-assisted trauma therapy.

The Sameer Project usually feeds tens of thousands of people each week, but in recent days the situation in Gaza has become so dire that its staff cannot find sufficient amounts of food to keep community kitchens operational. As the group wrote on its instagram page earlier this week:

…now we can only find limited amounts of nutritional packets and some vegetable in the markets. When we do, this supply goes to the sickest patients in hospitals to keep them alive, and we will continue to do this.

We are still able to buy water and we are still able to buy tents and provide medication. But soon this will not matter when people are dropping in the streets.

The Sameer Project has proven to be one of the last lifelines for tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, and the group desperately needs our continued support.

More than 50% of their donations have been under $10, so even if you can only give the price of a cup of coffee, it truly makes a difference.

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Trump made the remarks in an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” program.

He said the deal he is developing would probably need China’s approval to move forward and he predicted Chinese President Xi Jinping would likely approve it.

President Trump said in an interview that he has found a buyer for TikTok. ZUMAPRESS.com / MEGA

The president earlier this month had extended to September 17 a deadline for China-based ByteDance to divest the US assets of TikTok despite a law that mandated a sale or shutdown without significant progress.

A deal had been in the works this spring that would have spun off TikTok’s US operations into a new US-based firm, majority-owned and operated by US investors, but it was put on hold after China indicated it would not approve it following Trump’s announcements of steep tariffs on Chinese goods.

“We have a buyer for TikTok, by the way,” Trump said. “I think I’ll need probably China’s approval. I think President Xi will probably do it.”

A 2024 US law required TikTok to stop operating by January 19 unless ByteDance had completed divesting the app’s U.S. assets or demonstrated significant progress toward a sale.

Trump described the potential TikTok buyer as a group of group of “very wealthy people.” REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

Trump, who credits the app with boosting his support among young voters in last November’s presidential election, has extended the deadline three times.

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Send questions about the office, money, careers and work-life balance to workfriend@nytimes.com. Include your name and location, or a request to remain anonymous. Letters may be edited.

Too Much Emotional Support

I am at a loss. We recently had a job candidate come in to give a presentation as part of the interview process and bring family members with them — their spouse and several children. This included a 1-year-old who the candidate carried around and interacted with, repeatedly interrupting their own presentation. The candidate also kicked off their shoes and walked around barefoot during the presentation. No one from H.R. was at the presentation (not unusual), but I did mention it to H.R. staff after the fact. The H.R. representative said that it is a generational difference and many candidates are showing up at interviews with parents, spouses, children or other family members in tow. This does not seem professional to me. Have I lost my mind? Does H.R. need to make a “no-family policy” for interviews?

— Anonymous

I’m at a loss as well. A spouse? Several children? Including a baby!

Full disclosure: I can’t tell if I picked this question to answer because it’s so amazingly bananas or because I want to try to figure out if this may, indeed, be a “thing.”

So let’s back up. No, you have not lost your mind. A job candidate’s bringing family members to an interview or presentation does not seem professional to you because in most cases it probably isn’t. And don’t get me started on the shoes.

I can’t think of many reasons that family members would accompany a job candidate to an interview. Frazzled nerves are not enough; emotional support can be offered elsewhere. (Beforehand, of course.) Children can stay with a babysitter or, in this case, be looked after by a spouse.

I can really think of only two situations in which a job applicant’s being accompanied by a family member or spouse makes sense. One: The candidate has mobility issues and needs assistance. Two: The candidate has other disabilities and needs assistance with communicating.

If family members must come along to an interview, this should be signaled by the candidate in advance and a request for accommodations made.

I understand that such situations exist. (Although I suspect you would have mentioned it if anything like that were in play here.) So what I think is really at issue for me is the outrageousness of bringing children. Children are disruptive and demanding. (They’re children, after all.) Couldn’t the candidate’s spouse watch their own children for what I assume was, at most, a couple of hours?

Do you and others in your office need to go as far as pre-emptively discouraging or barring the presence of family (or friends) at interviews at your workplace? I’m not sure it needs to come to that. In a follow-up email exchange, you revealed that you work in academia. So I asked a couple of experts in that field to weigh in on whether this really is a “thing.”

Denise Magner, a reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education, put your inquiry to two of her colleagues who cover the job market and academic-workplace issues; neither of them had heard of this as a trend. Jennifer Furlong, the director of the Office of Career Planning and Professional Development at the City University of New York graduate school, said she has also not heard stories about spouses and children coming to interviews. She added that, though it would be understandable if a job candidate for a faculty position brought family members to a university in order to get a sense of the place, bringing them into an interview or presentation would probably negatively affect the opinion of that candidate by the search committee, regardless of the candidate’s qualifications.

As she put it: “Would I or anyone in my office say that this sounds like a great way to do an interview? No.”

In other words, if this comes up again, you should not feel bad telling the candidate to leave the family outside.

Addicted to Grammar Lessons

My company, which I launched more than 20 years ago, is in the business of public relations. As someone who takes communication seriously, I have a problem when grammar is abused, in or out of a work setting.

An employee was recently discussing her weekend on our Monday Zoom call (we go around the Zoom and share what we did over the weekend). She said, “Me and her went to the movies on Saturday night.”

I couldn’t contain it. I immediately responded with “X and I went to the movies on Saturday night, me and her never do anything, me can’t.” I further explained why me and X can’t go anywhere, like ever, and that there are correct ways to express this. The “me and X” example is what most people, everywhere, are using, and it’s offensive. For my part, I want to know when I say or write something incorrectly.

Technically, this example conversation took place during a work Zoom, but it was a reference to a personal experience. I correct my staff continually because we are in the business of communications, but is this OK? Please say it is. I don’t know if I can live without being able to offer the corrections!

— Anonymous

It’s offensive? I mean, I also take communication seriously. I’m a writer and an editor, after all. But it seems to me that your ire at your employee for mixing up — or, as you say, “abusing” — grammar is a little over the top.

I understand that you may want to know when you’re saying or writing something incorrectly. So do I. I also understand that you are in the “business of communications.” But there’s a time and a place to correct others, and a work Zoom is not that place; it could cause unnecessary embarrassment, and it sends a signal to other staff members that they can’t trust you to speak to them about mistakes in private.

I suggest that you consider changing your approach to how you communicate your concerns. You might consider getting copies of a grammar book for members of your staff and encouraging them to take a look at it. When a mistake is made in writing, respond to the staff member in writing. When and if an oral mistake is made, try to speak to the employee in a more private setting.

Or let it go altogether.

One potential way to get your point across — though it sounds as if maybe your staff got the point long ago — is to have a group conversation reiterating the importance of good grammar in your line of work. (This also might be a good time to hand out some of those aforementioned books.) Don’t single anyone out. Talking in public, even on a casual Zoom, can be nerve-racking for some people.

Also, many of us, even those of us who communicate for a living, make mistakes.

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