TODAY: In 1840, German poet Rudolf Baumbach, a librarian and writer of popular student drinking songs such as “Die Lindenwirtin” (“The Linden Hostess”), is born.
- The sandwich that helped feed Puerto Rico when FEMA failed. Chef José Andrés on getting to work in the aftermath of Maria. | Lit Hub
- The Lit Hub staff’s favorite stories from September. | Lit Hub
- “America may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn’t standing still“: the time e.e. cummings wrote a whole op-ed about how over France he was. | Lit Hub
- “This is the dark side of writing, for which there is no answer”: Abigail DeWitt on the fraught project of translating the trauma of others into fiction. | Lit Hub
- Rachel Nuwer visits the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya, where heroic park rangers battle poaching. | Lit Hub
- The lonely struggle of the British brothers who infiltrated Nazi-occupied France. | Lit Hub
- “There was nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn’t cure.”
Ross Macdonald, Walter Mosley, James Ellroy and other crime writers weigh in on Los Angeles. | CrimeReads - Kate Atkinson’s new WWII novel, Deborah Eisenberg’s first short story collection in twelve years, Ben Fountain’s dispatches from Trump country, and more of the Best Reviewed Books of the the Week. | Book Marks
- Small Wonders: our Literature in Translation Columnist Heather Cleary selects four of her favorite novels which unfold in a single sitting. | Book Marks
- 10 Controversial Classics for Banned Books Week: from the obscene Ulysses to the satanic Harry Potter. | Book Marks
- “Respect and courtesy, campfire storytelling and poetry, musical harmony and yodeling,” and of course, plenty of great hats. On the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, now in its 35th year. | The New York Times
- Don’t quit your day job—or at least know that it doesn’t make you any less of a writer to have one. Laurie Patton against the myth of the “unified identity of the writer.” | The Millions
- “Cusk finds a freedom in art that she cannot locate in life.” Maggie Doherty on Rachel Cusk. | The Nation
- 109 contributors have written to protest the “forced resignation” of Ian Buruma: On the backlash to the backlash to The New York Review of Books. | Daily Intelligencer
- “She had to overcome a mountainous obstacle . . . Her plan to do nothing.” A profile of Deborah Eisenberg. | The New York Times Magazine
- Amazon has opened a new “4-star” concept bookstore in SoHo, just blocks away from the independent bookstore McNally Jackson. | Shelf Awareness
- Meet Yasmin! author Saadia Faruqi on creating “the first and only early-reader chapter-book series for [kindergarten through second grade] by a mainstream publisher that features a Muslim main character.” | Guernica
Also on Lit Hub: Lit Hub Recommends • Read from Bridge of Clay • An excerpt from Moon of the Crusted Snow
