TODAY: In 1952, novelist Walter Mosley, whose best-selling historical mysteries feature the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, is born.
- 15 covers of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, ranked from most to least sexist. | Literary Hub
- Good writers borrow, great writers remix: Lincoln Michel on why it’s ok to reuse and recycle old fiction. | Literary Hub
- Iain Sinclair wanders the edgelands and wonders if London ever really ends (and if it ever will). | Literary Hub
- Two great novelists consider the significance of the country house in literature: Tessa Hadley and Lucy Hughes-Hallett in conversation. | Literary Hub
- Murderous nannies, Yellowstone wolves, and more: The best-reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks
- Julian Barnes on Edgar Degas, who “loved talking about art, but hated others talking about it (especially writers).” | London Review of Books
- From subversive anti-capitalist to recovering environmentalist: On the life and work Paul Kingsnorth. | The Nation
- “Timberlake has made a career out of being a chameleon, and who’s to say you can’t try to balance ‘aging family man’ with ‘soulful sex icon.’” Hanif Abdurraqib on Justin Timberlake’s self-fashioning. | Pacific Standard
- “Alex walked up to me and told me he was a Sagittarius. . . And I knew, it was going to work.” Rachel Syme profiles Alex Dimitrov and Dorothea Lasky, a.k.a. the Astro Poets. | The New York Times
- “Administrators are throwing red state politicians a bone by assigning Hillbilly Elegy.” A theory as to why J. D. Vance’s memoir can be found on so many college syllabi. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- Find out what book Blackbeard was reading (or at least stuffing his cannons with) when the Queen Anne’s Revenge went down. | The Guardian
- Jeffrey Toobin’s book American Heiress is being adapted into a feature film, and Patty Hearst is not happy. (Toobin is also executive producing a six-part CNN docuseries on Hearst). | Deadline
Also on Literary Hub: Dear Rick Moody: A son wonders about coming out to his mother · Kushanava Choudhury writes of returning to the city of his childhood · Read from Thomas Pierce’s new novel, The Afterlives.
