TODAY: In 1948, author of Neuromancer and pioneer of the Cyber Punk genre, William Gibson is born.
- “Union was an admirable goal, but Whitman never fully learned a main lesson of the Civil War: it was, most urgently, a war over slavery.” On Walt Whitman’s war writings. | New York Review of Books
- The Trump bump: how the current political climate has led to a resurgence for feminist bookstores. | Publishers Weekly
- When, if ever, should a dead writer’s wishes be disobeyed? On the complications facing literary executors. | The Guardian
- Jenny Erpenbeck and Susan Bernofsky and Ahmed Saadawi and Jonathan Wright are among the writer-translator duos longlisted for this year’s Man Booker International Prize. | The Man Booker Prize
- What exactly makes a “book town”? Bookselling tourist destinations from New York to South Korea to Finland are a bibliophile’s dream. | Atlas Obscura
- “Coming of age with the b-boys, break dancers, and kids who graffiti-bombed subway cars, these scribes connected Ralph Ellison to Eric B, James Baldwin to bling, contextualizing the hip-hop generation and all its innovation.” How a group of journalists turned hip-hop into a literary movement. | Pitchfork
- “When I got sober, I wanted to know if stories about getting better could ever be as compelling as stories about falling apart. I needed to believe they could.” Leslie Jamison seeks great writing during (and after) recovery. | New York Times Magazine
- Dear everyone: if you’re a writer in America, you’re not being censored. Or: how do people compare “Twitter feminists” to Maoists without dying of shame? | The Outline
- “What does it mean when you lose a home? How do you respond when someone tells you to go home?” The contributors and editor of Go Home! on creating an anthology of the Asian diaspora. | Shondaland
- Uncomfortable comfort and calm masking mayhem: on the reissue of two of J. G. Ballard’s prophetic dystopias, Crash and Super-Cannes. | The New Republic
- “What does it mean for a romance to take the shape of a murder investigation?” On Dorothy B. Hughes’ In a Lonely Place, and how it was transformed by Nicholas Ray. | London Review of Books
- Roald Dahl, Fran Lebowitz, and more: A brief modern history of authors writing smut (and the erotic imprints who published them). | Please Kill Me
- “He was working out the aesthetic principles that would both carry through his poetry and inform his appreciation of painting, drawing, and sculpture.” On John Ashbery’s art criticism. | The Nation
- From The Age of Innocence to Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, 10 books Roxane Gay would take to a desert island. | Vulture
- Meg Wolitzer, Tayari Jones, Michelle Dean, and other female authors on the books they turn to when they’re angry. | Shondaland
Also on Lit Hub:
Poems of resistance from Mary Ruefle, Wendy Xu, Christopher Soto and more • Are you a Matisse or a Picasso? How Leo and Gertrude Stein revolutionized the art world • Did Thoreau actually live on Walden Pond? • 10 writers best known for post-mortem publications •“Letting myself experience the joy of transitioning feels really powerful.” Mallory Ortberg talks to Nicole Chung about writing, feminism, and getting through a rough year • What writing rule would you break? For Laura van den Berg it’s “drown your darlings” • Ali Smith, Anne Carson, Margaret Atwood and more: 10 brilliant retellings of classical myth • What just happened in West Virginia? Elizabeth Catte recommends ten books to better understand the historic teachers’ strike • Introducing the Book Therapist: Rosalie Knecht prescribes the right reading for your literary blues • How many more must die? America’s teachers reflect on gun violence and life after Parkland • What good is a scientific pain scale if nobody believes you? Abby Norman on the origins of dolorimetry and struggling with chronic pain • Is it worth 1,000 words? Mark Sarvas on the way we write art into fiction • From the pages of The New Yorker to the streets of New York: the sad life and times of Maeve Brennan • The glories of disaster in the golden age of exploration: how polar explorer Ernest Shackleton became an international celebrity • The 10 most famous bookstores in the world
The Best of Book Marks:
Go Moan for Man: On what would have been his 96th birthday, we look back at what the critics said about Jack Kerouac’s On the Road • 5 Books Making News This Week: Track Stars, Trauma, and Thrillers • This week in Secrets of the Book Critics: EW’s Leah Greenblatt on Mrs. Dalloway, Graphic Monsters, and Attacks on Books • Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on The Bachelor, Jordan Peterson as snake-oil salesman, and more Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week • Our favorite reviews of the 2017 NBCC Award-winners • Alan Hollinghurst, Marilynne Robinson, Wu-Tang, The Wire, and more all feature among our Best Reviewed Books of the Week
New on CrimeReads:
Ned Beauman weighs in on conspiracy fiction and the role of the author in the era of fake news • Val McDermid on the rise of Tartan Noir • In honor of Saint Patrick’s Day, 15 Irish crime writers to start reading this weekend • Alan Bradley’s reading list for the ghoulish and inquisitive child sleuth • Reflections on the Queen of Crime’s very English murder • Snapshots of the culture of crime reporters, from Chicago to Tijuana • 25 classic crime books you can read in an afternoon (or an evening, or a morning) • Which Shakespeare play is the most noir? Ranking the Bard’s plays as crime fiction