TODAY: In 1899, Yasunari Kawabata, the first Japanese author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, is born.
- Everybody loves a bad guy: 40 of our favorite literary villains. | Lit Hub
- How too much research can ruin your novel: Nick Dybek discovers one too many details. | Lit Hub
- From Norwegian icons to mysterious Mennonites, 5 books you may have overlooked in May. | Lit Hub
- “Bourdain used his tremendous platform to explain to his audience how their own lives were entangled with those of other people.” Kanishk Tharoor on Anthony Bourdain. | The Atlantic
- “I hope this honor helps with the visibility of women’s contribution to the arts. We are still holding up half the sky.” Jeannette Winterson has been made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). | The Irish Independent
- George Eliot fans are attempting to kick-start the restoration of her crumbling former home in Coventry in anticipation of Eliot’s bicentennial next year. | The Guardian
- J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis met 92 years ago today. Look back at what Lewis had to say about The Lord of the Rings (along with W.H. Auden and Edmund Wilson). | Book Marks
- “Some essays are letters into the future.” Masha Gessen on George Orwell’s essay “The Prevention of Literature,” and what it says about writing and totalitarianism today. | The New Yorker
- From Gone Girl to The Passenger, 8 psychological thrillers featuring women starting over. | CrimeReads
- In praise of an afternoon at the movies: Donna Masini on the pleasures of an empty cinema. | Lit Hub
- “Fabulousness is an embrace of yourself through style when the world around you is saying you don’t deserve to be here.” A profile of Fabulous author madison moore. | The New York Times
- How did Jane Austen’s well-read heroines get their books in Regency England? The same way Austen herself did: circulation libraries. | JSTOR Daily
- Jackpot! Eight recent rare book finds in the wild, from early Bat Man to Thomas Paine. | Lit Hub
- “The master’s tools— / I have them. / The house is getting too big.” Three poems by Morgan Parker. | The Rumpus
Also on Literary Hub: The myth of the perfect president: Abraham Lincoln: the antislavery moralist who distrusted abolitionists · Sparring with George Orwell: Alex Comfort, future author of Joy of Sex, wasn’t having it · Read from Hannah Pittard’s new novel, Visible Empire
