The NYT asked authors Gillian Flynn and Cheryl Strayed to discuss women authors and women characters and the experience of having your runaway best-seller optioned for a movie adaptation by Reese Witherspoon.

Usual K. LeGuin was the recipient of an award for her distinguished contribution to American letters at the National Book Awards (hence her inclusion in this week's #ReadWomen2014) and she used the acceptance speech to throw shade at the literary community for largely ignoring writers of genre fiction, like herself. She also is not a fan of Amazon, apparently.

Meanwhile, there were some surprises in this year's National Book Awards recipients; I was very pleased to see Louise Gluck and Jacqueline Wilson win for poetry and young people's fiction, respectively, and was very surprised that Marilynne Robinson didn't take home the prize for Lila, which is certainly still a contender for every other major literary award for 2014.