1. August’s Poetry Exemplars by Grace Cavalieri. We get it. Grace rules. But could you throw us a bone and read something else once in a while? Just. Put. The. Poetry. Down.


2. “To Fangirl or Not to Fangirl” by Meg Opperman. She swore she’d never get all dopey-eyed around a celebrity, but then Neil Gaiman sat down at the table next to her…


3. Yelizaveta P. Renfro’s review of Queen Sugar: A Novel by Natalie Baszile. We suspect the sudden renewed interest in Renfro’s critique — which ran in 2014, for crying out loud — has to do with Oprah Winfrey recently making Baszile’s book into a TV show.


4. August’s Bedtime Stories. What are publisher Ben LeRoy and writer Jen Maidenberg reading before lights-out? Everyone wanted to know.


5. Russell J. MacMullan’s review of Rampage Nation: Securing America from Mass Shootings by Louis Klarevas. In his evenhanded exploration of made-in-the-USA violence, the author, writes MacMullan, “asserts that gun massacres pose an unacceptable public-safety risk in America.” You’ll get no argument from us.

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