Series creator David Milch explains all that filthy language—delivered in iambic pentamer—in Deadwood. | Lit Hub Film & TV
“The silence I’m looking for is not so much a quality of sound as a state of mind.” Kamila Shamsie on finding the perfect writing space. | Lit Hub
Why revere physical books? George Prochnik has thoughts. | Lit Hub Criticism
Ian McEwan’s Lessons, Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait, Kate Beaton’s Ducks, and Ling Ma’s Bliss Montage all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Month. | Book Marks
A list of psychological thrillers with gobsmacking twists. | CrimeReads
Keith Gessen talks to war-termination theorists about how the war in Ukraine might end. | The New Yorker
Remembering Hilary Mantel, who “reset the historical patterns” with her “arch, elegant, richly detailed” work. | The New York Times
“We always argued and fought, but it was a good argument with a bottle of wine between us. I like kosher salt. She didn’t like it.” Jacques Pépin discusses his friendship with Julia Child, his new cookbook, and more. | Tasting Table
Carolyn Kellogg reports from Joan Didion’s memorial service in New York. | Los Angeles Times
Keishel Williams considers Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun: “Because her work gives every perspective a chance, it can make some people uncomfortable.” | PEN America
“Now I think that things that are artistically good usually have some sort of resonance with things that are ethically good.” Isle McElroy and Torrey Peters talk about cruelty, debuts, and what’s next. | Electric Lit
“Reading these two remarkable books made me freshly grateful for that friendship I once had, and for the ones that have managed to stay true.” Dan Kois considers two new memoirs about platonic male friendship. | Slate
“We created technology that our morality and our idea of life isn’t equipped for.” Svetlana Alexievich talks about the legacy of Chernobyl. | LARB
“I had thought femininity an inherited prison, when it was in fact a value-neutral technology, available to deploy at will.” Sarah Thankam Mathews on hair and femininity. | SSENSE
“So how does it feel to be a metaphor?” Andrea Long Chu considers half-Asian, half-white protagonists in work by Celeste Ng and Jay Caspian Kang. | Vulture
Ali Francis breaks down the controversy around a new unauthorized biography of Anthony Bourdain. | Bon Appetit
Sam Lin-Sommer traces András Koerner’s search for the first Hebrew-lettered cookbook. | Atlas Obscura
“When we own what happened to us—when we own our suffering—it becomes ours to keep and to learn to come to terms with.” Jarvis Jay Masters on writing as a form of power. | Oprah Daily
With more libraries coming under attack from rightwing groups, Jennifer Palmer talks about how books actually end up on school library shelves. | Oklahoma Watch
“There is the dream beyond here, and then there is the dream that is the here.” Hanif Abdurraqib describes the magic of summer basketball. | ESPN
