TODAY: In 1935, Japanese author and Nobel Prize laureate Kenzaburō Ōe is born.
- “The entire measure of someone’s commitment is how much they post about their commitment.” Rebecca Solnit on how to comment on social media. | Lit Hub
- Paradise Lost: How the transatlantic slave trade helped fuel violent conflict in West Africa. | Lit Hub History
- “I was fascinated by both Jean and Pat’s wartime stories but equally interesting to me were the lives they’d led since 1945.” On writing female spies’ classified adventures. | Lit Hub
- “I try to remember that I’m not my job. I’m not a teacher. I’m not a professor. That’s just work that I do.” Brandi Wells on trying to stay true to her identity as a writer. | Lit Hub
- For your aesthetic edification, here are the 12 best book covers of January. | Lit Hub
- AudioFile’s best audiobooks of January | Lit Hub
- “Ever since humans left this planet, it’s been only machines like 314 and me.” Read from Bora Chung’s new novel, Your Utopia. | Lit Hub Fiction
- Hisham Matar’s My Friends, Adam Shatz’s The Rebel’s Clinic, Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!, Simon Shuster’s The Showman, and Álvaro Enrigue’s You Dreamed of Empires all feature among January’s best reviewed books. | Book Marks
- Nihar Malaviya, Penguin Random House’s CEO, “doesn’t like to talk about himself.” | The New York Times
- One of the most comprehensive bills countering book bans in the US is reintroduced to the New Jersey State Senate | Book Riot
- How to approach a book editor: “What you should do, what you can but don’t need to do, and what you will have to do to get published.” | Chronicle of Higher Education
- Just a normal country doing normal things: Russia has placed London-based, best-selling novelist Boris Akunin on its Most Wanted List, presumably because he’s had the temerity to criticize Vladimir Putin. | PEN America
- “Britney’s stuffed animals sit in a neat row. A snow-white bear wears a baby blue NSYNC T-shirt. The porcelain dolls glare at me.” Emmeline Clein visits the Britney Spears house museum. | The Paris Review
- Kathryn VanArendonk profiles “the mortal queen of faerie smut” Sarah J. Maas. | Vulture
