This Week in Books Ursual K. Le Guin Breaks the Internet

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.

This Week in Books Jess Mariano is Josie Pye

The finalists for the National Book Award were announced, and there were some no-brainers like Roz Chast and Marilynne Robinson, but also some surprises like Emily St. John Mandel. Even so, Robinson is going to win the fiction award, right?

The Toast created a Definitive Character Guide to Stars Hollow and Avonlea. I am deep, deep into Gilmore Girls these days, and Anne of Green Gables and I go way, way back, so this is pretty much everything. I particularly appreciated the Tristan DuGrey/Jen Pringle match-up analysis, "Garden-variety bitches."