TODAY: In 1740, James Boswell, biographer of Samuel Johnson, is born.
- “Belarusians and Americans both find themselves on a precipice.” Sonya Bilocerkowycz on what it’s like to jaywalk in a dictatorship, at home and abroad. | Lit Hub Politics
- “What else is housekeeping but a kind of magical thinking?” Madelaine Lucas on rituals of home and return in Marilynne Robinson. | Lit Hub Criticism
- The best reviewed science, technology, and nature books, October edition. | Lit Hub, Book Marks
- “Sylvia Plath’s Ariel poems are too-often understood as an apotheosis, which does nothing for a reader curious about Plath’s craft.” Emily Van Duyne considers a monumental new biography of the poet. | Lit Hub Criticism
- “That poets should want to write about dogs seems to me the most natural thing in the world.” Duncan Wu on the poetic appeal of our very best friends. | Lit Hub
- Nicholas McDowell on John Milton, the Gunpowder Plot, and the poet who laughed at Purgatory. | Lit Hub History
- The book that brought writers’ fears and self-doubt into the open: Christina Baker Kline and Bonnie Friedman in conversation about a classic of literary craft, Writing Past Dark. | Lit Hub Craft
- “The wall is not new. The United States has been investing in reinforcing its border with Mexico since 1994.” Claudio Lomnitz considers the cages we build for ourselves. | Lit Hub Politics
- “The latest user manual topics were all to do with checkboxes, but according to the company, I couldn’t say the word ‘check box’ in any part of the user manual.” Lulu Dewey nearly loses it working as a tech writer in Silicon Valley. | Lit Hub
- “In my thoughts I flashed forward to 2020, to swaggering, gun-toting bullies patrolling outside every polling place.” Monica Youn, poet and frontline defender of democracy. | Lit Hub Politics
- Joshua Ferris on Jess Walter, Ron Charles on Bryan Washington, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
- “Some of this shit is for chess people; he is a Sherlock Holmes who pops clues into his mouth for the sheer oral sensation.” Patricia Lockwood on Vladimir Nabokov’s novels, interviews, and opinions. | LRB
- Now seems like a great time to read Muriel Spark’s ghost stories. | Ploughshares
- Daniel Menaker, editor, writer, and “one of the funniest people in publishing,” has died at the age of 79. | LA Times
- Bernardine Evaritsto is curating a book series that will highlight the work of six little-known Black British authors. | Penguin UK
- A school librarian recommends books to help kids understand U.S. elections. | The Virginian-Pilot
- Lynn Steger Strong on teaching, motherhood, and the recent loss of “all those spaces that function as release valve, as opportunities for being something other than the person that we are in our domestic spaces.” | TIME
- Irish author Julia O’Faolain has died at 88. She is often remembered for her Booker Prize-nominated 1980 novel No Country for Young Men. | The Irish Times
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