In today's issue, we invite readers to take a closer look beneath surfaces and reexamine first impressions. New York magazine writer Sarah Jones writes "with brutal honesty" about the Covid-19 pandemic's devastating impact on vulnerable populations in Disposable: America's Contempt for the Underclass; while poet Alison Hawthorne Deming gathers optimistic alternatives to political and environmental strife in her "spare, luminous" collection Blue Flax & Yellow Mustard Flower. And young readers can dive deep into the ocean with Anne Lambelet's titular guide, Grimpy, in I'm a Dumbo Octopus!, a "charming, colorful, and funny" introduction to cephalopods that's teeming with cool facts and cuddly creatures.
Plus, for The Writer's Life, Rebecca Romney, author of Jane Austen's Bookshelf, discusses her quest to find the women writers who shaped the work of Jane Austen. Discover how Romney defines a book collector, and how a reader progresses from falling "in love with the story in the book" to falling "in love with the story of the book."