Book Excerpts That Don't Suck

Defector Reads A Book

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This is Defector, a new sports blog and media company. We made this place together, we own it together, we run it together. Without access, without favor, without discretion, and without interference.

Defector

Books

Defector At The Movies

Music

Arts And Culture

Grace Byron is a critic, reporter, and novelist based in Queens. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Bookforum, and elsewhere. Her debut novel Herculine is out now.

Grace Byron

The Gentle Parenting Of Ben Lerner’s ‘Transcription’

Nicholas Russell is a writer from Las Vegas.

Nicholas Russell

Interviews

Namwali Serpell On Understanding Toni Morrison The Author, Not The Icon

Jonah Walters

Stephen Fishbach’s Reality-TV Novel Is More Reality TV Than Novel

Barry Petchesky

WRITER DAN SIMMONS PUBLISHES 'FIRES OF EDEN'

Dan Simmons Is Dead, So It’s Time To Read ‘Hyperion’

<a href="https://twitter.com/petesegall?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Pete Segall</a> lives in Chicago. His fiction has appeared in The Bennington Review, Conjunctions, The Drift, and elsewhere.

Pete Segall

A collage featuring three of the different paperback covers for "Cleo Birdwell"'s 1980 novel Amazons.

Don DeLillo’s Funniest Novel Is A 1980 Hockey Sex Romp He Won’t Acknowledge

Patrick Redford

PARIS, FRANCE - MAY 11: Yoko Tawada, Japanese writer poses during portrait session held on May 11, 2006 in Paris, France. (Photo by Ulf Andersen/Getty Images)

Yoko Tawada Is A Genius In Any Language

Erin Somers is the author of the novel The Ten Year Affair.

Erin Somers

Talking To A. Natasha Joukovsky About Men, Myths, And March Madness

Columnist. Author of many <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Drew-Magary/e/B001JS8R52/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_book_1">fine works of literature</a>, including Point B. Handsomest man in the world.

Drew Magary

Life Lessons

Confessions Of A Bookanizer

charismatic megafauna (they/them)

Sabrina Imbler

a screenshot of an email exchange with "Elena Ferrante", which contains six back-and-forth emails out of an exchange of 12

Life's Rich Pageant

What I Learned From My Annoyingly Long Correspondence With “Elena Ferrante”

Defector Staff

Defector Wuthers Some Heights

Where Is Cinema?: An Interview With A.S. Hamrah

Eli Cugini

Fanfiction’s Total Cultural Victory

James Webster

Elisa Shua Dusapin Is The Real Deal

Danny Funt

Journalismism

How Bill Simmons Went All In

Natan Last Has Thought A Lot About Crosswords

Year In Review

The Best Things We Read In 2025

Brandy Jensen

American Cant

Becca Young

Maggie Nelson Sputters And Stalls In ‘The Slicks’

Jack Hanson

Patricia Lockwood’s Inexhaustible Mind

Seth Harp Talks About The Rot At The Core Of America’s Empire

Kelsey McKinney

elyse myers in a yellow shirt smiles at the camera

How Normal Is A Celebrity Allowed To Be? 

Thomas Pynchon Is Laughing All The Way To The Brink

Joel Pinckney

‘The High Heaven’ Is A Beautifully Grounded Debut Novel

Jae Towle Vieira [they/them] works as a producer for Normal Gossip. Their fiction has been published in The Normal School, New England Review, Carve Magazine, Passages North, Fairy Tale Review, and elsewhere.

Jae Towle Vieira

Here Is What Reading To My Child Has Done To My Brain

<div class="gmail_default">
<div class="gmail_default">Ryan Goldberg is an award-winning journalist and author who has written for Texas Monthly, The Intercept, The New York Times, Popular Science, and ProPublica, among many other publications. Some of his best stories ran in the old Deadspin. He lives in Brooklyn, and leads regular walks for the Brooklyn Bird Club. You can find more of his work at <a href="http://ryangoldberg.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://ryangoldberg.net&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1758917926877000&amp;usg=AOvVaw04lh06uBoaa598nfG5ro-G">ryangoldberg.net</a>.</div>
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Ryan Goldberg

UNITED STATES - 2023/05/31: Close-up of a barred owl (Strix varia), also known as the northern barred owl, or striped owl, in a park in Kirkland, Washington State, United States. (Photo by Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Birdfector

The Owl Code Tearing Apart New York’s Birders