Who wore it best: Edith Wharton or Lil’ Kim? (via @ElectricLit)
Who Wore It Best?
Wetlands
Recommended Reading: Blake Morrison on the literature of England’s flood-prone east coast.
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#SalterProblems
“I suppose the truth is I became a little self-conscious about people telling me how much they loved my sentences,” says James Salter in his interview with Jonathan Lee. “It’s flattering, but it seemed to me that this love of sentences was in some sense getting in the way of the book itself.” As it happens, our own Sonya Chung reviewed Salter’s latest book this week, and she, too, remarked on Salter’s desire “to ‘get past the great writer-of-sentences thing,’ and presumably the ‘writers’ writer’ thing.”
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Toasted Cheese, Just Like Jane Austen Liked
Written by a close family friend, Martha Lloyd’s Household Book includes favorite recipes from Jane Austen's estate, handwritten by Lloyd herself.
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Burn Outs and Genre Blindness
Where does the “panic attack when you think you’re not reading enough” fit in to all of this? Here are a few professional readers on how they keep from mixing business with pleasure. This essay on Lewis Lapham and reading just for pleasure might also tickle your fancy.
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Citizen of the Year Reading List
ICYMI Colin Kaepernick was named GQ‘s 2017 Citizen of the Year a few weeks ago. In light of this honor two of his closest friends “have compiled a list of ‘Freedom Dream’ resources spanning close to two centuries—including books, essays, films, documentaries, songs, and museums—that can help readers, viewers, and listeners to understand race as the central political, cultural, economic, social, and geographic organizing principle of our nation, past and present. For it is only when we acknowledge the centrality of race in dictating the outcomes of life and death in the United States can we begin to work toward meaningful forms of racial justice.” Find the books, music and movies that helped inspire Kaepernick (and that will enlighten you too) here.
A Pulitzer Winner ‘First’ Turns 101
June 7th would have been Gwendolyn Brooks‘ 101st birthday. In remembrance of her we encourage you to read her works and reflect on a legacy. To get you started Shondaland has a good primer on this cool poet, who became the first Black person to win a Pulitzer Prize. Pair it with this essay on Brooks and reading outside your culture.