TODAY: In 1926, J.P. Donleavy, author of The Ginger Man, is born.
- On Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, and the timeless tradition of mansplaining. | Lit Hub
- “There are things more interesting than people.” Walking in the woods with Richard Powers can be pretty intense. | Lit Hub
- Finally, your favorite 90s Shakspeare adaptions definitively ranked. | Lit Hub
- Neither spy nor innocent: the diplomat as detective in Graham Greene, Javier Marías, Hilary Mantel, and more. | CrimeReads
- “Middlemarch goes further than rejecting social class as an arbiter of worth—it suggests that the vitality required to thrive in a changing world is not to be found in the aristocracy.” Jennifer Egan on George Eliot’s masterpiece. | The Guardian
- PBS’s The Great American Read has released its list of America’s 100 most-loved books (as chosen by a national survey). | PBS
- Years after his death, the great Barry Hannah haunts us still: Michael Bible remembers a true writer’s writer. | Lit Hub
- “They were not sad, lonely spinsters . . . They were actively engaged in culture and spirituality and creation.” Sheila Heti on childless writers and Motherhood. | Publishers Weekly
- Emergence—a multimedia magazine that seeks to “find the timeless connections between culture and ecology”—has launched with writing by Paul Kingsnorth, art by Katie Holten, and more. | Emergence
- Sometimes, the best way to read a book is to mark it up: on the pleasures of handwritten annotation. | Lit Hub
- Four years after his death, revisiting the first English language reviews of every Gabriel García Márquez novel. | Book Marks
- “You can do a lot of pretty philosophizing with yourself and still find that your work relies on the death of another human being.” Cutter Wood on the complicity of true crime writing. | The Paris Review
- A look at the buyers in a recent auction of Sylvia Plath’s belongings, including writer A.N. Devers, who took home Plath’s green tartan skirt. | The New York Times
Also on Literary Hub: Bonnie Nadzam talks to Gregory Blake Smith about writing across time and voice · New poetry from Abraham Smith’s book-length poem, Destruction of Man · Read from Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse
