TODAY: In 1964, Saul Bellow’s Herzog is published.
- The ultimate best books lists: In which we tally all the big fall lists (math!) to figure out which books have been getting the most chatter. | Lit Hub
- “She taught us what it was to make light. We’ve learned, these past four years, how to transform and act on pain.” Lynn Steger Strong mourns Ruth Bader Ginsburg. | Lit Hub Politics
- “Inferior things became desirable for probably as many reasons as there were people to buy them.” Wendy Woloson provides a brief history of useless American crap. | Lit Hub History
- Indifference and cruelty: Géraldine Schwarz on her family history and what made Nazi Germany possible. | Lit Hub Memoir
- Lucille Clifton didn’t just write poems, she inhabited them: Tracie Morris on hearing the great poet read. | Lit Hub
- “While world leaders swagger, pontificate and posture, the work to combat actual terror is done by those who don’t shoot first and forget to ask questions later.” Kerry Greenwood on Lindy Cameron and war narratives that beyond brute force. | Lit Hub
- In Vigdis Hjorth’s Norway, perfect happiness amounts to complacency: Charlotte Barslund on “a social democracy fraying at the edges.” | Lit Hub Politics
- “This ever-drunk, ever-desiring poet dies in his 85th year when a single raisin gets stuck in his throat.” Buckle-up folks, Dan Beachy-Quick’s going to talk about the ancient Greek poet Anacreon. | Lit Hub
- Terry Goodkind, author of The Sword of Truth series, has died at the age of 72. | Tor
- Want to remember more of what you read? Try reading it out loud. | BBC
- Why Dune is so hard to adapt. | WIRED
- Here are the books designers are reading right now. | Architectural Digest
- “It’s great to read someone trying to translate what is basically just magic.” Sophie Lucido Johnson’s comic review of her favorite introductions to birdwatching books. | The New York Times
- A conversation with Tyson Amir and Michael Davis, founders of The Black Literary Collective. | ABC
- A full-fledged drive-in literary festival will take place in a fishing village in southwest England. | The Guardian