Bill Gates is the founder of Microsoft, a billionaire, a philanthropist, and an amateur book club leader. He posted his summer reading list on his website, The Gates Notes. You won’t find any beach reads because Gates prefers nonfiction such as However Long the Night: Molly Melching’s Journey to Help Millions of African Women and Girls and The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?. You can read the latter along with him.
Gate Keeper
Civil War & Historical Stupidity
Ta-Nehisi Coates wants to make America less stupid about the Civil War. He recommends five books we should all read to gain a better understanding of American history during this war and assures us that “I’ve tried to think very hard about readability, and to offer books you might actually complete.” So no excuses, start here
The Impossible, Part Deux
Last week, the artist Jason Novak did the impossible and sketched out Finnegans Wake. Apparently it wasn’t enough, though, because now he’s drawn In Search of Lost Time.
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Literary Bald Britney Spears
Following Sarah Hepola’s devastating New York Times Magazine profile of Cat Marnell with empathy and queer theory, Jane Hu’s piece on what it means to read Marnell, to follow her and crave her work even as her work destroys her, merits reading and rereading.
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Sentimental Education
Recommended Reading: On sentimentality in literary fiction and commercial novels.
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Witches of Walgreens
In the spirit of Alex Mar’s Witches of America and Stacy Schiff’s The Witches: Salem, 1692, here’s a piece from Atlas Obscura on pinpointing the exact site of the Salem witch trials. Spoiler alert: it overlooks a Walgreens parking lot.
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Matt Steinglass Contra Katie Roiphe
According to the title of Matt Steinglass‘ new essay (a qualified rebuttal of Katie Roiphe‘s recent piece “The Naked and the Conflicted“), “Today’s Male Novelists Do Write Exuberant Sex Scenes, But Mostly Lesbian Ones“
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