TODAY: In 1856, the first installment of Madame Bovary is published in Revue de Paris.
- October picks: the 21 books Lit Hub contributors are looking forward to reading in this, the spookiest month.| Lit Hub
- On the literary heroes of teen Benjamin Franklin, from Socrates to The Spectator. | Lit Hub
- Yeah, but when are they going to adapt the sad baby shoes story… From All About Eve to Secretary, 31 movies based on short stories. | Lit Hub
- Autonomous everything: from surgical robots to computerized weapons, algorithms are taking over our world. | Lit Hub
- Nicole Im on suicidal sharks and self-harm, from the new issue of Freeman’s. | Lit Hub
- “I was astounded that a sheriff and his wife could set up housekeeping only steps away from a grim row of jail cells populated with petty criminals, felons and murderers.” On the mom and pop jails of small town America. | CrimeReads
- Award-winning poet and Cave Canem Executive Director Nicole Sealey on why she read a poetry book every day for a month. | Book Marks
- “It’s downright strange that intelligent women would call a book that disposes of its protagonists’ dreams in order to settle them into lives darning socks “required reading” for young girls today.” Reconsidering Little Women as a “feminist” novel. | Vulture
- Anna Leahy on three new books by Ada Limón, Sonya Huber, and Sandra Gail Lambert that “counter traditional narratives that equate illness with weakness and women with hysteria.” | BuzzFeed Reader
- “Speaking of any of this is a transgression.” Leonard Cohen’s son on his father’s final poems. | The Guardian
- “It’s my personal library, in my hand, for that moment.” Kate Dries on re-discovering reading for pleasure, with the help of a free library app. | The Outline
- “When physicians care for their patients, they have a responsibility both to treat, and to heal. And poetry can help with healing.” A Harvard medical student on how doctors can use poetry—and understand it as part of the Hippocratic Oath. | Nautilus
- “In essence, growth means you have to hate yourself before earning the right to love yourself”: the problem with makeover-as-narrative device. | Electric Lit
Also on Lit Hub: Ann Patchett on Sandra Boynton • Two poems by Ursula Le Guin • Read from Craving
