TODAY: In 1941, Norwegian author Dag Solstad is born.
- The accidental origins of Twitter, in their own words: “What is that? It’s nothing.” | Lit Hub
- When Wilde met Whitman: “The kiss of Walt Whitman is still on my lips.” | Lit Hub
- The 100 best one-star reviewsof The Catcher in the Rye (what does the internet think of literature’s original disaffected teen?) | Lit Hub
- A new window on misogyny: watching The Handmaid’s Tale while transitioning. | Lit Hub
- “He should’ve cut out a lot about these jerks and all at that crumby school. They depress me.” Looking back at the first reviews of The Catcher in the Rye, published 67 years ago today. | Book Marks
- The world of The Big Sleep, and how Raymond Chandler reinvented himself and the crime novel. | CrimeReads
- “Their living space, Apartment 40 as it was called, was a horse stall, 10 feet by 20 feet.” Michiko Kakutani on her family’s internment during WWII. | The New York Times
- Historian Charlotte Grey explains how technology is changing the future of the biography and why literary marathons like Robert Caro’s 5-volume LBJ biography might be a thing of the past. | The Walrus
- “I want to help boys become better, happier men.” On the writers and publishers on a mission to provide healthy models of masculinity for young readers. | The Guardian
- A book critic and a food critic walk into a bar talk Phillip Roth’s favorite jam: Tiptree Little Scarlet Strawberry Preserve. | The New Yorker
- “It still takes me a long time to decide that I might have anything worth saying.” An interview with Ashleigh Young. | Tin House
- How the smallest independent bookstores in America—from 560 to 1,200 square feet—make it work. | Publishers Weekly
