TODAY: In 1927, Nobel Prize Laureate Günter Grass is born.
- “You can feel Daniel Mendelsohn’s own delight in how this project gives him license to wander and roam.” James K.A. Smith on the radical interconnectedness of Three Rings. | Lit Hub Criticism
- Maybe the secret to writing is… not writing? Johanna Hedva takes an unconventional approach to putting words on paper. | Lit Hub Craft
- “I loved that openness of sharing space with other people, but I wasn’t going to get it from a regular apartment.” Diana Lind looks at modern communes and co-living arrangements. | Lit Hub
- “There’s no such thing as guilty reading.” Stephanie Kent on what she found out interviewing booksellers from all 50 states. | Lit Hub
- “We would drive in a rented red gas-guzzler Cadillac to the rolling hills of northeast Iowa, shunning interstates and taking only back roads.” Tom Zoellner follows in the footsteps of poet Carl Sandburg. | Lit Hub
- New titles from Xiaolu Guo, Rebecca Roanhorse, David Leavitt, and Craig Brown all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
- “New stories came pouring out… almost daily dispatches as the virus raged on and New York’s lockdown was extended.” Barry Yourgrau on publishing a pandemic collection in Japan. | Lit Hub Craft
- “Do we have souls anymore? The soul persists in Louise Glück’s repertoire of nouns.” Maureen McLane on poetry “more intimate than any living friend.” | Lit Hub Criticism
- “Don’t think of fantasy as mere entertainment . . . but as a way to train for reality. It always has been, after all.” N.K. Jemisin introduces the 100 best fantasy books of all time. | TIME
- You know what you should do this weekend? Buy some books from your local bookstore. Otherwise it might not be there in the spring. | The New York Times
- Why Peter Mendelsund—“a musician turned designer turned novelist turned painter”—rips the covers off his favorite books. | Inside Hook
- Emma Brainerd-Ryder was an American doctor who established Bombay Sorosis, the first literary society for women in India. | Scroll
- “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” The story behind Menabilly, the English country home that inspired the famous house in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. | Tatler
- During the pandemic, Jonny Diamond paid tribute to his mother by learning the names of trees that surrounded her in life. | The Guardian
- “I never entirely expect a translator to respect me. What I really want is for them to invade me, transcend me, lend me their look.” Andrés Neuman on being translated. | Asymptote