TODAY: In 1907, Jack and Charmian London sail out of San Francisco Bay on a yacht, beginning the voyage later described in Jack London’s non-fictional, illustrated book, The Cruise of the Snark (1911).
- 365 books to start your climate change library: yesterday it was The Classics, today it’s The Science. | Lit Hub
- “Writing gave Oliver such joy it was infectious to those around him.” On editing Oliver Sacks after he was gone. | Lit Hub
- “A nuanced story of a typecast city.” Can you save a dying Italian town with the art of storytelling? | Lit Hub
- How John Hersey, author of Hiroshima, revealed the horrors of the atomic bomb to wider America. | Lit Hub
- “Everyone thinks it will be different for them.” Michael Croley reflects on decades of rejection and persistence. | Lit Hub
- Happy death day, Shakespeare! (If that is your real name.) On the ongoing obsession with his true identity, and his agnosticism about the existence of an afterlife. | Lit Hub
- “All creative acts demand a fruitful pause at certain points.” Ian McEwan on Bach, Philip Roth and living an episodic life. | Lit Hub
- Writing fiction that’s truer than memoir: Amy Tan reflects on 30 years since The Joy Luck Club. | Lit Hub
- The Limits of the World author Jennifer Acker recommends five novels with interracial love, from Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story to Zadie Smith’s Swing Time. | Book Marks
- The silly, the absurd, and the downright farcical: Adi Tantimedh guides us through the comedy of crime fiction, featuring Janet Evanovich, Carl Hiassen, and many more. | CrimeReads
- “What awaited Véra and Dmitri in France had Vladimir not rescued them?”: Maxim Shrayer remembers his visit with opera singer and translator Dmitri Nabokov, the late son of Vladimir, in Montreux, Switzerland. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- “A thriller is only as good as its villain, and the bad guys here have an undeniable panache.” Laura Miller reviews the Mueller Report (as literature). | Slate
- The memoir Prince was writing at the time of his death, The Beautiful Ones, will be released this fall alongside rare photos, lyrics and more. | Associated Press
- “Like Greek tragedies, these tell-alls each end the same way, with the author being exiled.” The dubious lessons of four Trump tell-alls. | Vice
- “We are all—light-hued and dark-hued, everyday people and distinguished statespersons—blades of grass, nothing more, nothing less.” Mark Edmunson on Walt Whitman as an emblem of American democracy. | The Atlantic
- Neil Gaiman reads Fox in Socks (to benefit refugees). | Neil Gaiman
- In honor of World Book Day, you can stay in these literary-themed AirBnbs for $17 a night, or the average price of a book (wait, does this entire promotion hinge on the double meaning of book?). | Travel + Leisure
Also on Lit Hub: Going deep into the J.P. Donleavy archives • Three poems by Robin Coste Lewis • Read from Michal Hvorecký’s novel Troll (trans. Julia Sherwood).
