TODAY: In 1859, Jerome K. Jerome, best known for the comic travelogue Three Men in a Boat, is born.
- Kristen Arnett wonders if “the customer is always right” might be wrong for libraries. | Lit Hub
- 50 pulp cover treatments of literary classics (things get a little… awkward). | Lit Hub
- Jennifer Schaffer grapples with questions of motherhood and desire through recent books by Sheila Heti and Meaghan O’Connell. | Lit Hub
- “In the best reviews, the book is just a starting point, which is not an argument for self-indulgence but for its opposite.” An interview with critic David L. Ulin. | Book Marks
- “Part of coming to terms with my longing is embracing new forms of home.” Chinelo Okparanta on craving sanctuary—and Trebor peppermints. | Tin House
- “I do think there are mermen on Tinder. I don’t think you have to go to the ocean to meet your merman.” Melissa Broder on astrology, intimacy, and The Pisces. | Vogue
- Lauren Groff, Amber Sparks, and 12 other writers share their favorite short stories. | American Short Fiction
- “Like, only white people and straight people have ever loved in history? It doesn’t make any sense.” Meet three black women—a writer, an editor, and an art director—who are changing the romance novel industry from the inside. | BuzzFeed
- The little bear that revolutionized children’s books: see the earliest sketches of Winnie-the-Pooh. | Lit Hub
- What happens when you sail straight into a hurricane? On the last hours of the merchant ship El Faro.| Lit Hub
- “Improvisation is how we make nothing out of something.” On Fred Moten’s “radical critique of the present.” | The New Yorker
- The docuseries based on Michelle McNamara’s true-crime book about the Golden State Killer, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, has been greenlit by HBO. | Deadline
Also on Literary Hub: Gay Liberation in 1970s London: Peter Ackroyd on the birth of a nightclub scene · Hillary Chute on pioneering feminist cartoonist Aline Kominsky-Crumb · Read from the novel
The President’s Gardens by Muhsin al-Ramli
