This month, CJR presents “Required Skimming,” a daily miniguide to our staffers’ beats and obsessions, ranging from finance to food. If we overlooked any of your must-read destinations, please tell us in the comments.
• Arts and Letters Daily: One of the oldest—and still one of the best—hand-curated aggregators of smart cultural essays and book reviews.
• Publishers Weekly: Unmatched in the breadth of its books coverage. A must-read for anyone interested in new releases.
• New York Daily News Page Views: I’m pretty sure we had the name first, but the Daily News‘s books blog, under the capable editorship of Alexander Nazaryan, more than does it proud.
• Los Angeles Review of Books: A great, comprehensive new online-only books site, where big names and complete unknowns write some of the most thought-provoking reviews around.
• Identity Theory: Matt Borondy’s site runs solid reviews and great author interviews. Don’t miss the extensive interview archive, reaching back to 2000.
• Open Letters Monthly: Engaging, entertaining long- and short-form culture coverage.
• Barnes and Noble Review: Remember back in the day, when Amazon used to run really great original books content? Barnes and Noble still does that! Don’t scoff: It’s smart, worthwhile stuff.
• Bookforum: A wonderful omnibus lit site from the long-running print magazine.
Justin Peters is editor-at-large of the Columbia Journalism Review.