TODAY: In 1802, Victor Hugo is born in Besançon, France.
- “There are people who will never talk to me because I’m an outsider.” Sarah Weinman talks to Patrick Radden Keefe about chronicling a 50-year-old murder in his book, Say Nothing. | Lit Hub
- “Squinting is pretty much the limit of Clint Eastwood’s facial range as an actor.” Geoff Dyer, with the deep dive on WWII classic Where Eagles Dare you didn’t know you needed. | Lit Hub
- If de Tocqueville predicted Twitter, Balzac knew Trump would use it: Liesl Schillinger on reading Balzac in the age of Trump. | Lit Hub
- “When the world thinks of Soviet food, it thinks of all the wrong things.” Boris Fishman on scarcity, satisfaction, and the riches of Russian cooking. | Lit Hub
- Don Winslow on the finale of his epic crime trilogy, the omnipresence of the drug trade, and the absurdities of Trump’s wall. | CrimeReads
- My Young Life author Frederic Tuten on five extraordinary memoirs, from Peggy Guggenheim’s Out of This Century to Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. | Book Marks
- “Beauty is a lot easier to prove than intelligence.” On the continued popularity and power of all those photographs of Marilyn Monroe reading. | Affidavit
- The New York Review of Books has named two new editors—both in their 30s—to replace Ian Buruma. | The New York Times
- “Later Le Guin is much dirtier and queerer than earlier Le Guin.” Charlie Jane Anders revisits Ursula K. Le Guin’s Hainish cycle, which includes The Left Hand of Darkness. | Tor
- In actually delightful internet news: James Baldwin was the top trending Google search worldwide in the hours after Regina King’s Best Supporting Actress acceptance speech. | NBC News
- “We have to engage in a deeper, more strategic and more active way with people that our industry has left behind.” On reading, publishing, and being working class. | The Bookseller
- Take a look at the forthcoming BBC adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series. | Deadline
- Literary real estate: The late Philip Roth’s Manhattan apartment has gone to market with a $3.2 million asking price. | The Real Deal
Also on Lit Hub: A poem by Laura Buccieri from her collection Songbook for a Boy Inside • What we don’t talk about when we talk about drinking • Read from Vacuum in the Dark
