TODAY: In 1827, Johanna Louise Spyri, author of Heidi, is born. 

• Don’t have time to read every summer reading list? Emily Temple did it for you. Here’s our ultimate summer reading list. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• Hanif Abdurraqib looks at the value of breaking down decorum (and the power of unexpected humor). | Lit Hub Memoir
• Lisa Pratta on exposing corruption within the pharmaceutical industry: “The key to being a good salesperson is being a good listener. As it turns out, the same skill applies to being a whistleblower.” | Lit Hub Health
• “A superb and disturbing vivisection of our darkest urges, this summer’s premier nonfiction read.” 5 book reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks
• Martin Padgett recounts how Michael Hardwick helped overturn sodomy laws in Georgia. | Lit Hub Politics
• “…I was suddenly a very online person who thought I understood exactly how the Internet was changing culture as we knew it.” Janelle Brown recalls the internet of the 90s and trading journalism for fiction. | Lit Hub Technology
• Lauren Rhoades on finding Jewish community and identity in an overwhelmingly Christian Mississippi. | Lit Hub Religion
• Matthew Gavin Frank examines human fascination with submarines and the dark side of our desire to explore the ocean’s depths. | Lit Hub Science
• Dr. Merijn van de Laar explains how studying prehistoric sleep patterns can help us understand our own. | Lit Hub Health
• “I do my best not to stare at Sabine at work. Actually, that isn’t true: I do my best not to get caught staring at Sabine at work.” Read Alyssa Nutting’s story “Peep Show,” from the new anthology Be Gay, Do Crime. | Lit Hub Fiction
• Catherine Lacey writes an ode to her 250-person, all-nudes group chat. | The Cut
• Elissa Gabbert considers the joy of reading one poem in many different languages. | The New York Times
• Jennifer Egan on Jane Austen’s Emma, “the most physically constricted of her works, which makes it also the most virtuosic.” | The Paris Review
• Xiao Yue Shan, Michelle Chan Schmidt, and Georgina Fooks discuss experiencing My Tender Matador as both literature and cinema. | Asymptote 
• “The house was depressing because Pat did not consider herself to be among the living.” Elena Gosalvez Blanco remembers working for Patricia Highsmith. | The Yale Review
• Anne Anlin Cheng takes a deeper look at pessimism, racial oppression, and paranoia in Sinners. | Los Angeles Review of Books

Article continues after advertisement