At Longreads, Paris-based pastry chef Frances Leech reflects on taste, memory, and literature’s most famous confection: the humble madeleine, immortalized in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.

Scott Woods at Scott Woods Makes Lists compiles a sequel to his popular 2016 list of black picture books that aren’t about boycotts, buses, and basketball.

Phenderson Djèlí Clark on getting political in sci-fi/fantasy: “It informs my writing. It informs my characters. It informs my imagination. It informs my very reason for creating. I guess I’ve always known I was a political writer of SFF. Because there are no ‘non-sci-fi/fantasy issues.’”

If the latest celebrity and/or presidential Twitter feud left you uninspired, Emily Temple at Literary Hub is here for the rescue with some of Virginia Woolf’s harshest, wittiest takedowns.

“Fantasy worlds are defined by limits: much is unknown in these worlds, and the unknown either resists being known, or it is left in peace.” A longread on losing oneself in the geography of fantasy worlds, from Middle Earth to Westeros.

“Even at fifty, I feel the stirrings as strongly as a young shepherd boy who dropped everything he knew, crossed the desert, and ultimately found his  heart’s desire.” Musings on books and dreams by Michelle Terry, inspired by Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist.

“Can anyone have this moment? Or is poetry only for some people — the smartest, the richest, the something-est?” At Nerdy Book Club, K-8 librarian Sarah FitzHenry recounts a school event with poet Kwame Alexander in which students discover the power of poetry.

From classic summer reads to powerful poetry, creative nonfiction, and art books, TED speakers provide you with a mammoth reading list for the next couple of months.

J. K. Rowling published Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on June 26, 1997. The blog of the National Library of Medicine’s historical collections celebrates 20 years of Harry Potter with a series of posts, a curated collection, and lectures.

“Sometimes, it was just easiest to choose from what I was given. Was I ungrateful if it wasn’t enough?” Writer Mindy Hung on The Joy Luck Club and Asian representation in popular fiction.

“I was curious about more than just how often ‘girl’ books appeared; I wanted to understand who was writing these books, and the fate of the ‘girl’ in the title.” Exploring today’s book titles, Emily St. John Mandel asks: “Who are these girls? Why are there so many of them?”

An interview with Paul Beatty — the first American to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize for his book, The Sellout.

At REORIENT, Sarah Aziza engages Sayed Kashua in a wide-ranging conversation on identity, exile, and being an Arab author writing in Hebrew.

“The prose is so thick that to me it has the closeness of a summer day; you can feel yourself choking on the humidity, feel the grit of Macondo sticking to the back of your neck, and all you want to do is lie on the tile floor, eat a banana, and sweat.” Honoring literature with pie — a frozen banana pie, for One Hundred Years of Solitude.

At Media Diversified, educator Darren Chetty writes about storytelling, diversity, and how important it is for minority kids to encounter characters that look like them when they read.