- “When you put a snake and a rat and a falcon and a rabbit and a shark and a seal in a zoo without walls, things start getting nasty and bloody.” Bob Woodward has a new book about the Trump White House, and it’s not pretty. | The Atlantic
- Can’t wait to read the next Han Kang novel? Too bad, because she’s going to bury it in a Norwegian forest for the next century. | The Guardian
- “It has been said of me, in the pages of this newspaper, that I am a predator.” Joyce Maynard on J.D. Salinger, #MeToo, and the response to her memoir At Home in the World, then and now. | The New York Times Book Review
- From The Handmaid’s Tale to The Art of the Deal, the 20 books most likely to be left behind in a hotel room. | Travel + Leisure
- “Her novels are a gift, for children and adults.” Brian Philips on the magic of Joan Aiken, one of the 20th century’s best children’s book authors. | The New Yorker
- “Maybe you get a little of euphoria after the adrenaline rush robbing a bank, but other than that there’s nothing to it.” A profile of Nico Walker, the incarcerated author of Cherry. | Rolling Stone
- “Fiction shows us, again and again, that our capacity to imagine other minds is extremely limited.” Why we need to work towards understanding one another before seeking to comprehend animals. | Aeon
- How HBO’s new take on Sherlock Holmes—”young, female, Japanese, and wearing stilettos—injects Holmes’s old white corpse with new energy.” | The New Republic
- “If the purpose of the scene is to evoke a sense of sadness in a writer, I feel that is more challenging than making them laugh or smile.” An interview with Patrick DeWitt. | Electric Literature
- Salinger may have hated birthdays, but for his 100th, Little, Brown is reissuing his major works as a hardcover set anyway. | Vulture
- “In trying to get away from my story, I’d walked in a circle and returned home.” Thea Lim on the difficulties on writing characters of color without giving in to the dominant gaze. | The Paris Review
- Kirby Beaton recommends a book podcast for every kind of reader. | BuzzFeed
- “I’ve come to think of this shelf as an escape from hype, a kind of anti-curation.” Elisa Gabbert on the pleasures of browsing recently returned books at the library. | The New York Times Magazine
- “There were no heart-to-hearts. Sally underwent no psychological examinations; nor did she see a therapist. There was only Before, and After.” Read an excerpt from Sarah Weinman’s The Real Lolita. | The Cut
- 20 years after its original publication, Ron Charles considers Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese?, “one of the most unlikely bestsellers in American publishing.” | Washington Post
- “Whether we’re reading or listening to a text, our minds occasionally wander.” Audiobooks and reading go head to head once more. | TIME
Also on Lit Hub:
Gary Shteyngart has content coming out of his pores (and other revelations) • A taxonomy of college roommates, based on their taste in books (including why all 18-year-old Joyceans are secret grifters) • Why treating John Ashbery’s poetry as a series of puzzles to be solved is missing the point • Inside Bill Cunningham’s war time Paris • What was Truman Capote’s personality type? On the lengths Berkeley researchers went to study creativity • “When you can eliminate or paralyze identity, make your enemies’ cultures either nonexistent or criminal then you’ve done one better than genocide.” Walter Mosley on the terrifying implications of historical erasure • Attention, writers: Pat Barker urges you to disregard the clutter in your under-sink cupboard • Getting inside the mind of a plagiarist: Kevin Young goes deep into the world of American hoaxes • Heather Morris on how she learned the story of Lale Sokolov, the tattooist of Auschwitz • Shaun Blywell has no regrets about his time as the proprietor of a bookstore in rural Scotland (but he allows for ample grumbling) • Low-income communities suffer disproportionately from the effects of climate change; Mary Robinson on the necessity of addressing this dispailarity • Evan Fallenberg writes in praise of epistolary novels (which scratch the snooping itch with none of the real-world consequences) • Nathaniel Rich and Juliana Spahr discuss the politics of climate change and the poetry of politics on Fiction/Non/Fiction; with Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan • Take it from the obsessives: 14 books Lit Hub staff and contributors think you should read this month • The excruciating playlist designed to inflict untraceable physical and psychological damage on detainees at Guantánamo Bay • On cataplexy, the sleep disorder commonly triggered by a joke (or possible by hearing the tragic love story of two lost spirits in the second circle of hell)
Best of Book Marks:
One Person, No Vote author Carol Anderson recommends seven books on democracy and its challenges • This week in Secrets of the Book Critics: PopMatters Contributing Editor Jenny Bhatt on Virginia Woolf, Zadie Smith, and Cultural Critics of Color • Anne Enright on Sally Rooney, motherhood on the road, James Frey’s latest attempts at career suicide, and more Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week • Gary Shteyngart’s Trumpian satire, Lisa Brennan-Jobs’ chronicle of her childhood, and John Kerry’s extra memoir all feature among our Best Reviewed Books of the Week
New on CrimeReads:
From maddeningly impractical aristocracy, to strangely seductive twins, Laura Marshall highlights the marvelous dysfunctions and sociopathic charms of fiction’s most alluring families • Espionage, gaslighting, and conspiracies abound in September’s best crime fiction • As the mystery world’s largest convention, Bouchercon, continues this weekend, a roundtable discussion with the Anthony Awards nominees on the state of the crime novel • From “Psycho” to “The Perfect Nanny”, Sarah Pinborough rounds up 10 mystery novels based on real life crimes • Craig Johnson on westerns, crime, and Longmire Days • “Perfect couples are just a perfect illusion.” Kaira Rouda looks at the vicious intimacies and eternal appeal of the marriage thriller, and picks 7 recent standouts in the genre • “I spend a great deal of time in the city’s cemeteries. I’m not a morose person; there’s just something there for me.” George Pelecanos on his new novel, the new D.C., and old haunts • “There’s something sinister about the Midwest.” A beginner’s guide to Midwestern noir, as recommended by Mindy Mejia • “Nothing is heroic in organized crime.” Roberto Saviano, still a target after the publication of Gomorrah, discusses his new book about the boy gangs of Naples • Back-to-School Noir: Lisa Levy looks at a new generation of campus novels and school mysteries • Author and screenwriter Peter Blauner on depictions of police in crime fiction and finding a space between good cops and bad apples
