TODAY: In 1916, Jack London, author of The Call of the Wild and White Fang, dies.
- Long tables and open bottles: hanging out with Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, and Joseph Brodsky. | Literary Hub
- So why is this obscene? A brief look at the specifics of some famously banned books. | Literary Hub
- Overwhelmed (in just the right way) at Wordstock, the Pacific Northwest’s biggest book festival. | Literary Hub
- Rachel Vorona Cote on George Eliot’s most underrated heroine. | Literary Hub
- Simon Winchester: Jan Morris changed my life. | Literary Hub
- Poet and poetry critic David Biespiel on logrolling, American mythology, and wishing he could have reviewed the first edition of Leaves of Grass. | Book Marks
- “The land outside the town always looks empty and it is.” New work from Joy Williams, Annie Proulx, Danzy Senna, and others in response to photographs by Stephen Shore. | The New York Times Magazine
- From The Autobiography of Gucci Mane to They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us: the best music books of the year. | Pitchfork
- “At the heart of grand narratives about who we are and where we are heading she saw self-deception in the face of meaningless disorder.” On Joan Didion’s resistance to master narratives. | The Point
- “How do we know what we know and what is knowledge itself? These are questions that have affected all of literature.” In the Distance author Hernan Diaz on research, Westerns, and violence. | The Nation
- “Are we supposed to look serious? Are we smiling? How do we look like serious people without looking mean?” The (gendered) politics of choosing an author photo. | Racked
- “You may have thought that Thoreau was busy eating his mom’s pies and hanging out in a cabin, but you were wrong. The poet was actually busy being a world-famous detective.” What if Henry David Thoreau and Sherlock Holmes are actually the same person? | JSTOR
- The Joy Luck Club, White Oleander, and other mother-daughter, coming-of-age stories to read if you loved Lady Bird. | EW
