TODAY: In 1824, the publisher John Murray decides to destroy the manuscript of Byron’s memoirs (which he has been given to publish) because he believes they would damage Byron’s reputation.
- Michael Ondaatje on Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees, Mavis Gallant’s Paris Stories, and the other books he loves to reread. | Lit Hub
- Marwan Hisham on “getting the fuck out Raqqa” during the Syrian War. | Lit Hub
- Forget the sophomore slump: 6 novels that disprove an old cliché. | Lit Hub
- From Parul Seghal on “Knausgaard unbound” to Jane Smiley on Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse, 5 book reviews you can’t miss this week. | Book Marks
- Sarah Weinman on the life and work of spy novelist Holly Roth, whose disappearance at sea remains a mystery. | CrimeReads
- “Pregnancy, entered into willingly, is an act of generosity, a commitment to share the resources of life with another incipient being. Such generosity is in no other circumstances required by law.” Sally Rooney on the Irish abortion referendum. | The London Review of Books
- “When I write [working-class] characters I try to take you inside what it feels like to be treated with contempt and to have such a narrow range of possibilities out.” An interview with Dorothy Allison. | Guernica
- Rachel Kushner on the things she can’t live without—like her (shoplifted?) Chanel lipstick, her favorite French novel, and her youth-sized J.R. Smith Cavs Jersey. | The Strategist
- “This is just a small way of taking the power back online.” On Kundiman and AAWW’s recent Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon, which focused on “adding and updating information on more than 50 Asian American writers and organizations.” | The Outline
- The water war that polarized 1920s California. | Lit Hub
- Nick Offerman on Wendell Berry, whose writing “thrives on the ground water of his common sense and his affection for his place on earth.” | Library of America
- Not a single book was funny enough to earn the Wodehouse prize for comic fiction this year—the judges looked for “unanimous, abundant laughter” and only managed a few “wry smiles.” | The Guardian
- Two cats interview Meg Wolitzer—in between “pauses to play in the sunshine,” naturally. | The Believer Logger
- The return of socialism in America? The new episode of our Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast featuring Dana Goldstein and Thomas Frank. | Lit Hub
Also on Lit Hub: Celebrating the art of the book cover • Meet the woman bringing a book festival to the Bronx • From Sam Pink’s White Ibis
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