TODAY: In 1812, Percy Shelley meets journalist and philosopher William Godwin. Two years later, he marries Godwin’s daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.
- What would Susan Sontag have said about the Internet’s relentless desire for rankings? (The books of Susan Sontag, ranked.) | Lit Hub
- “Less like a treasure hunt and more like a nature walk.” The secret to shopping in used bookstores, revealed. | Lit Hub
- Sloganeering, incitement, solidarity, and so much more: all hail the mighty hashtag. | Lit Hub
- “A new generation of readers is coming to Baldwin not just to help them understand the world, but to change it.” Bill Mullen on James Baldwin’s last two unfinished works. | Lit Hub
- Eileen Pollack considers the rage of the angry young men on campus, from the Unabomber to the incels—and our responsibility toward them. | Lit Hub
- On the congressional climate change committee that went toe-to-toe with the Koch Brothers (and how heartbreakingly close they came to making a difference). | Lit Hub
- Why do we refuse to believe climate change is happening? Jonathan Safran Foer on humanity’s struggle with apathy bias. | Lit Hub
- “No hide, no cover of any kind: our only disguise was our own stillness, and it worked.” On sitting still in nature. | Lit Hub
- “I tried to disappear. I wanted no part of celebrity.” On Ann Petry, the author who didn’t care to be remembered. | Lit Hub
- “It’s not reported anywhere, really, but Stephen King is obsessed with Prufrock.” Brenna Ehrlich investigates the horror maestro’s lifelong love affair with T.S. Eliot’s poem. | CrimeReads
- New releases from Ben Lerner, Jeanette Winterson, Tegan & Sara, and Rachel Maddow all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
- “Nostalgia for 70s era bohemia runs high, particularly in these fractious times.” On the ongoing Eve Babitz renaissance (also known as “the Babitzance”). | The New York Times
- The Washington Post reports on a particularly tense Q+A at an event for She Said in DC, where, audience members said, moderator Bob Woodward missed the mark. | The Washington Post
- Siegfried Lenz’s classic 1968 novel The German Lesson (Deutschstunde), published at a time when young Germans were coming to terms with their families’ involvement in WWII, has been newly adapted for film. | DW
- A new generation of primarily female authors is reinventing African historical fiction. | The Christian Science Monitor
- “There’s nothing kids want to do more than prove adults wrong”: A Series of Unfortunate Events, the book series that sent young readers on morbid, humorous misadventures, turns 20. | The Guardian
- Abrams is launching a graphic novel imprint dedicated to LGBTQ stories and creators, curated by Mariko Tamaki. | The Hollywood Reporter
- Relax, bookish scofflaws: the end of library late fees is near. | WSJ
Also on Lit Hub: The books of Susan Sontag, ranked • “Letter from Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz on Seeing His Photograph of Her Hands,” a poem by Barbara Rockman from to cleave • Read from Luigi Malerba’s newly translated novel Ithaca Forever: Penelope Speaks (trans. Douglas Grant Heise).
