- Molly Ostertag beautifully argues for queer interpretations of The Lord of the Rings. (Polygon)
- Bless the people of r/badscificovers for preserving these howlingly bad book designs. (reddit)
- Donna Ferguson takes a look at The Art of Melancholy, a 400-year-old example of what we now call self-help. (The Guardian)
- Scott Borchert reveals what happened when the federal government paid a bunch of authors to write travel guides (among other things) and turned them loose on America. Hurrah for the Federal Writers’ Project! Even if the results were predictably unpredictable. (The Atlantic)
- Ikechúkwú Onyewuenyi turned James Baldwin’s record collection into a Spotify playlist. (LitHub
- Danika Ellis shares wisdom from ten years of book-blogging. (Book Riot)
- Mark Athitakis and Georges Perec both have trouble organizing their book collections. (Washington Post)
- Lavinia Liang examines the “Eastern Western“—books featuring characters of Asian descent in plots that explore the Western genre. (LitHub)
- Emily VanDerWerff digs into the controversy around Isabell Fall and analyzes her story, “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter,” that sparked the whole thing. (Vox)
