TODAY: In 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville meet for the first time, together with Oliver Wendell Holmes and publisher James Thomas Fields, on a picnic expedition to Monument Mountain.
- “Giving kids books and nutrition is a win-win, all the way around.” Hundreds of libraries across the country are now offering federally funded lunches to children who might otherwise go hungry. | The New York Times
- Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actor, author, and director Sam Shepard and legendary editor Judith Jones have died. | Broadway World, The Washington Post
- “We were friends; good or bad, we were just ourselves. The passing of time did nothing but strengthen that.” Patti Smith remembers Sam Shepard. | The New Yorker
- “My work is about a time when I did fuck a lot of people, and, I guess, people are interested in that.” An interview with the famously reclusive Eve Babitz. | VICE
- Joshua Cohen on the closing of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and the election of Donald Trump. | The Point
- PBS has announced an eight-episode documentary series that will explore the place of reading in American culture entitled The Great American Read. | Publishers Weekly
- No matter how special you are, you’re still just walking dust: A conversation between David Burr Gerrard and Nicholas Mancusi. | BOMB Magazine
- “Martin has captured the longing I feel when I think of the blues of distances I cannot close, and in putting it somewhere where I can see it, has closed the distance.” Larissa Pham on Agnes Martin. | The Paris Review
- 100 great works of dystopian fiction, from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) to Omar El Akkad’s American War (2017). | Vulture
- Being a woman takes up all your time: Flash fiction by Alexandra Kleeman. | BuzzFeed Reader
- On the travels and writing of Penelope Fitzgerald, “a keen consumer of the package holiday.” | Granta
- “What can I do to put a spin on this traditional bookstore model to be a more sustainable business?” Speaking with Noelle Santos about her plan to bring a bring a bookstore to the Bronx. | NPR
- On the urgency of Ishmael Reed’s recently reissued novel Mumbo Jumbo, which reveals that “the world has changed very little” since its original publication in 1972. | The Guardian
- Morgan Parker, sam sax, and Sally Wen Mao are among the finalists for the 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships. | Poetry Foundation
- The list of the highest-paid authors of 2017 is entirely unsurprising, but here it is if you want to see how many millions of dollars J.K. Rowling made. | Forbes
Becoming lost in a disorienting story: six reality-distorting books · The most-anthologized essays of the past 25 years · We got too big for the world: Paul Kingsnorth on life in the end times · Jenny Zhang, N.K. Jemison, and more: 14 books to read this August · Finding solace in the words of furious women · How Hunter S. Thompson would cover Donald Trump · The weird stenographer: Sam Shepard on his long writing life · I used to be a writer—then I got sick: On losing control of one’s body and identity · Rereading Mrs. Dalloway at the same age as Mrs. Dalloway · I can’t teach while wondering who has a gun: On the chilling effect of campus concealed carry laws
The Best of Book Marks:
A children’s fable for adults: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince · The Boston Globe calls Samantha Hunt’s darkly fantastical short story collection “at once annihilating and sublime” · Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn and the detective novel as medical condition · A 1953 review of James Baldwin’s “beautiful, furious” first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain · The tender and the grotesque in Jenny Zhang’s Sour Heart · Watership Frown: a less-than-glowing 1974 New York Times review of Richard Adams’ beloved rabbit adventure story · “There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists”: James Wood on Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives · Porn addiction, Lizzie Borden, alt-right trolls, and more: the best-reviewed books of the week
