TODAY: In 1997, J. K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, is published in London.
- Yes, we do need an erotic novel of consumer goods right now… and it’s called Class. | Literary Hub
- John Winters: I bought Sam Shepard’s clothes off the Internet for “research.” | Literary Hub
- Sometimes, the only way to go home is to write about it: in conversation with Melissa Scholes Young. | Literary Hub
- The best-reviewed books of the week, from a new collection by a contemporary master of storytelling to a biography of Toscanini. | Book Marks
- “In the furry, marmalade-encrusted figure of Paddington, [Michael] Bond provided an enduring object of sympathy, and offered an embodiment of the struggles that a new arrival to any land faces.” On Paddington’s immigrant story. | The New Yorker
- We wept to be reminded of such color: Two poems by Tracy K. Smith. | The Nation
- Idiosyncratic and biased, obfuscatory and boastful, even unctuous and vain: On the guilty pleasure of reading Hollywood memoirs. | Los Angeles Times
- Rosecrans Baldwin recommends works of New England noir, from Ethan Frome to Orson Welles’s The Stranger. | Work in Progress
- The best American fiction has always been regional: Creating a literary map of America. | Granta
- “Budgets cuts have shuttered more than 100 libraries across Britain already, and hundreds more are scheduled for execution.” On the impact of austerity on British libraries. | The Millions
- “It didn’t occur to me to write essays, even though the essay was the form I most loved to read, because I thought you had to be Joan Didion or Zadie Smith or Barbara Kingsolver.” Mandy Len Catron on her path to publishing an essay collection. | Powell’s Books
