TODAY: In 1966, author Sherman Alexie is born.
- “When a famous writer gets a famous prize, we readers are given an opportunity to reread their books, but also to rethink the thoughts that we have had in the past about those books.” Kazuo Ishiguro is the winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature; Josephine Livingstone explains what critics have gotten wrong about him. | Literary Hub, The New Republic
- From Alexandra Kleeman on Twin Peaks: The Return to Marlon James on cathartic screaming karaoke, six writers recommend their favorite cultural experiences of the year thus far. | The New York Times Magazine
- “One wonders why a writer as unique and as integral to Québécois literature as Ducharme hasn’t been better served by translation.” The case for reading Quebec’s most reclusive writer, of whom only three known photos are in circulation. | The Walrus
- “If you isolate any single hypothesis or argument or statistic about the problem of college sexual assault, there will be some way to make it seem wrong,” Jia Tolentino examines the botched review of Vanessa Grigoriadis’s Blurred Lines. | The New Yorker
- Just in time for Halloween, you can now buy Exorcist author William Peter Blatty’s house—and of course, it’s haunted. | Los Angeles Times
- “I’m always trying to look for words inside words. It’s so beautiful to me that the word laughter is inside slaughter.” A profile of Ocean Vuong. | The Guardian
- “They go to a ton of parties, and I am always wondering . . . when do they have a chance to read?!” Four publishing professionals fact-check Lifetime’s book industry comedy, Younger. | ELLE
- Poetry as revolt. Poetry as documentation. Poetry as survival: An interview with Safiya Sinclair. | PEN America
- “In the manner of [Instagram], her work is human experience, tidily aestheticized and monetized, rendered inspirational and relatable in perfect balance.” A profile of Rupi Kaur. | The Cut
- “Do you want a politics of permission that allows you to live the way you do now, or one that makes demands of you?” On Nasty Women and the future(s) of post-Trump feminism. | The Baffler
- Ten-year-old Hemingway wrote about boats, but 11-year-old Austen wrote “tales of sexual misdemeanour, of female drunkenness and violence.” On the humbling juvenilia of famous artists. | The Guardian
- “An unexpected calm carries us for a while—the kind that only comes from briefly stepping out of your own life and into someone else’s.” On taking the Joseph Conrad Cycle Tour of London. | The Times Literary Supplement
- “The most disturbing thing about my mother’s death was that I wasn’t at all afraid or sad. I was devoid of emotion, defined by lack.” Short fiction by Sarah Wang. | BOMB
- “If I were an 18-year-old, I probably would have killed myself.” Speaking with Lani Sarem, author of Handbook for Mortals, the controversial YA book that was removed from the New York Times best-seller’s list for attempting to game the system. | Vulture
This Week on Lit Hub:
Haruki Murakami on his favorite young novelist, Mieko Kawakami · What two very different covers say about our view of Sylvia Plath · 15 books you should read this October · William Burroughs did not like Truman Capote: the ugly art of the open hate letter · Why digital note-taking will never replace the real-life journal · The prettiest of deaths: on consumption chic and impossible standards of beauty · Paul Auster: “I’m not sure the New York Trilogy is even very good” · Hanya Yanagihara revels in the pleasure of reading the first 100 pages of Lolita · How Jeffrey Eugenides fell in love with reading · Armistead Maupin on growing up gay in a proud southern family · If your book presumes an entirely white world, it’s not universal
This Week on Book Marks:
The People vs. Tyranny: On George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia · Half Savage and Hardy, and Free: The New York Times on Jennifer Egan’s new novel, Manhattan Beach · Back in 2006, Ursula K. Le Guin called José Saramago’s Seeing “a novel that says more about the days we are living in than any book I have read” · This week in Secrets of the Book Critics, Tom Beer of Newsday · A 1982 review of Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name · Lambda Literary calls Carmen Maria Machado’s genre-bending short story collection Her Body and Other Parties “a thrilling reading experience” · In the wake of his Nobel Prize win, we look back on the first reviews of every Kazuo Ishiuro novel · Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jeffrey Egenides, Lily Tuck, Muhammad Ali, and more all feature among our Best Reviewed Books of the Week
