TODAY: In 1595, Nomenclator of Leiden University Library appears, making it the first printed catalog of an institutional library.
- Thomas McGuane talks to Téa Obreht about ranching, writing, and deciding not to live the “literary life.” | Lit Hub
- Zadie Smith, George Saunders, Ursula K. Le Guin and more: read 13 of the best literary interviews in the history of Interview Magazine (RIP). | Lit Hub
- First he was transfixed, then he was… disappointed. On the boyhood classmates who drove Marcel Proust to write. | Lit Hub
- Karl Taro Greenfeld on coming to terms with being a “minor” writer. | Lit Hub
- Your guide to the best ways to enjoy your summer reading (whatever it might be). | Lit Hub
- “The economics of writing about books are not particularly good, and one of the results of that, indirectly, is more positive reviews.” An interview with writer and critic Bradley Babendir. | Book Marks
- Danger lurks just next door: the 10 creepiest neighbors in modern suspense. | CrimeReads
- “There’s no consistent approach. There’s no way in which I’ve mastered writing a novel.” Highlights from Philip Roth’s many “Fresh Air” interviews with Terry Gross. | NPR
- “If ‘outrage’ meant a lynching or rape a mere 150 years ago, how did it come to express something as trivial as one starlet’s retort to another?” ZZ Packer on the evolution of “outrage.” | The New York Times
- “The irony of mounting a serious marketing campaign to sell the foundational document of worldwide communism did not escape us, but neither did it hold us back.” OR Books cofounder Colin Robinson on the time he (almost) got Barney’s to stock the Communist Manifesto. | Jacobin
- A new TV series based on Isabel Allende’s beloved novel The House of the Spirits is in the works at Hulu. | Deadline
- “I wish I could write to you from underwater. . .” Read a “collaborative correspondence” in the poem-letters exchanged by Ada Limón and Natalie Diaz. | The New Yorker
- “You use literature to run away from the void, but you also use it to approach the void.” Zachary Pace interviews Wayne Koestenbaum. | Frieze
- Reading books is nice and all, but have you considered decorating with them instead? | The Washington Post
