Teju Cole on Tomas Tranströmer: “To read Tranströmer—the best times are at night, in silence, and alone—is to surrender to the far-fetched.”

• Stephanie Anderson on Maile Meloy’s The Apothecary: “Meloy’s precise historical details anchor the book nicely, yet manage not to draw too much attention to themselves.”

• Eugene Lim on Choukitsu Kurumatani’s The Paradise Bird Tattoo: “If not wholly unique in tone and content, a very good book on a great theme: the isolato in both the noir-y tradition of Philip Marlowe and the devastatingly pure refusnik ‘tude of Bartleby.”

• Gabrielle Gantz reports on readings at WORD and McNally Jackson.

• At HTML Giant, Roxane Gay looks at the latest issue of Beecher’s.