TODAY: In 1935, Scottish-born thriller-writer John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, is sworn in as Governor General of Canada.
- The power of Facebook: How big is too big? Alexander Chee and Alexis Madrigal discuss the dark side of social media on our fiction/non/fiction podcast. | Literary Hub
- The food writer who lost her sense of smell. | Literary Hub
- Chasing the Bronte sisters from South India to the Yorkshire moors. | Literary Hub
- 17 books you should read this November. | Literary Hub
- Secrets of the book designer: how to create something from nothing. | Literary Hub
- On the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, Ian Black offers 10 essential works of history on the Israel/Palestine conflict. | Literary Hub
- “She tries to find a female way of being serious.” Martin Amis’ less than glowing 1980 review of Joan Didion’s essay collection, The White Album. | Book Marks
- Don’t be like White House Chief of Staff John Kelly: Let Ta-Nehisi Coates recommend some books to make you less stupid about the Civil War. | The Atlantic
- “She was punishing herself and her charmed life, herself and her embarrassment of riches.” On the fiction of Mary McCarthy. | The Times Literary Supplement
- We need to “think about what we value in politics; how we think about the world and how we value the world, society, communities and ways of living—beyond just a kind of capital gain.” On the enduring relevance of Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax. | New Statesman
- “Every generation wants to believe it’s the last, and yet doesn’t really want to believe this.” On the pleasures of imagining the end of the world, from The Shining to Fallout 4. | The Believer
- “Can this industry, and the men who control it, really only imagine men as angry, violent, hypersexual killers? Can they really only imagine women as pretty, featureless, and into cuddly animals?” Deirdre Coyle on sexism in gaming and Shira Chess’ Ready Player Two. | The New Republic
- Elizabeth Banks is adapting classic feminist kids’ book The Paper Bag Princess for Universal Pictures. | The Hollywood Reporter
- On the cultural rise of “quiet style,” from Annie Baker to Ben Lerner to HBO’s Girls. | The Awl
