TODAY: In 1949, french writer Colette dies.
- So, what if we tried plutonium? On the problems of powering an artificial heart. | Lit Hub
- There’s no fan art quite like Flannery O’Connor fan art: 33 portraits of an American genius. | Lit Hub
- “Diverse books may be good for you, but they are also just as entertaining and escapist as the comfort reads we reach for most readily.” The ongoing struggleto get Americans to read writing in translation. | Lit Hub
- The Summer of 68: on the Vietnam War deserters who sought asylum in Sweden. | Lit Hub
- Do violent revolutions invite dictators? Former vice president Sergio Ramirez on the ongoing crisis in Nicaragua. | Lit Hub
- From Ingrid Rojas Contreras Fruit of the Drunken Tree to Parker Posey’s memoir, the 10 best reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks
- 12 crime books that capture the quiet menace of suburban enclaves. | CrimeReads
- “A Room on the Garden Side,” a semi-autobiographical Ernest Hemingway short story written in 1956, has just been published for the first time. | The New York Times
- If you, like us, could not be more excited for Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of If Beale Street Could Talk, you can now watch the trailer (which was released on Baldwin’s birthday). | Vulture
- “The world is not ending, needless to say . . . but it is, once again, getting hotter and more flammable.” William Finnegan on wildfires. | New York Review of Books
- Norah Lange, chiefly remembered as a muse to Borges despite being an award-winning poet and novelist herself, will finally have one of her books, People in the Room, translated into English. | The Guardian
- “For me, any compelling work of art creates some kind of dislocation, unsettles the air a bit.” An interview with Laura van den Berg. | BOMB
- “He implores us to be critical of both home and the world, without offering unthinking fidelity to either.” Amar Diwakar on the Indian writer and thinker Rabindranath Tagore. | The Baffler
- Je suis la jeune fille! Why we continue to learn French, even though it’s basically useless. | LARB
