Google Reader, I discovered, is like an infinite attic. Inside it, your old interests, which you’ve outgrown or set aside, keep on growing. It’s as though your old passions wandered off and lived their own lives, without you…

Upon the news that Google Reader would be shutting down, Joshua Rothman logged back in and rediscovered his old self: http://nyr.kr/Z3M1oA

(Source: newyorker.com)

For this installment of What We’re Reading— a series in which New Yorker staffers share their literary engagements of the week— Caleb Crain writes about Charles Williams’s supernatural thrillers:  http://nyr.kr/WKmOoY 

Teju Cole on the civilizing function of literature, and the disparity between Obama’s bookshelf and his use of targeted killings:

How on earth did this happen to the reader in chief? What became of literature’s vaunted power to inspire empathy? Why was the candidate Obama, in word and in deed, so radically different from the President he became?

Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/WYUGMz

Photograph: Pete Souza/The White House/Getty.

Continue reading: 

Here, writer Roxana Robinson reflects on the power and allure of Manhattan bookstores, many of which have closed over the years: http://nyr.kr/UAsTn3

Do you have any fond memories of a particular bookstore? Share them with us in the comments section.

Photograph: Condé Nast Archive

(Source: newyorker.com)

Cartoon by William Haefeli. For more from this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/14A18fV

In light of the recently filed lawsuit against Lance Armstrong and his publishers, alleging that readers purchased the book “based upon the false belief that they were true and honest works of fiction,” Ian Crouch considers why we read memoirs, and what kind of redress disenchanted or disappointed readers should expect: http://nyr.kr/UJSrvD

Photograph by Beatrice de Gea/The New York Times/Redux.

Read new fiction by Tessa Hadley, featured in this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/WZcseQ

A friend of yours has just written a novel? You pick it up gingerly, as if it were a supermarket squash whose weight you mean to assess…

Brad Leithauser on the perils of reading your friends’ novels: http://nyr.kr/THqvYW

Cartoon by William Haefeli. For more: http://nyr.kr/VONWNB