Pretty small selection of reads of the week but good ones nonetheless.

Kristen and I talked about The Night Of on our latest podcast and its star Riz Ahmed did a wonderful little interview with Vulture where he low key shook the table. Loved this bit:

Do you see a difference between U.S. and U.K. productions in their willingness to deal with race?
The irony to me is that cities like London are less segregated than American cities like Chicago or New York, because after World War II, we were all mixed together in housing projects. But it feels strange to me that the image the U.K. productions sell is a lily-white period drama. I see fewer mixed-race couples walking down the street in America, yet the image you sell is black and white characters fighting together side by side. It’s interesting to me that both societies are in denial of their reality.

I’m not even going to tell you what this link is just know it will make your spirit jump for joy.

I’ve always wondered how book covers get chosen, after all they are the most crucial thing to getting awareness for books, for better and worse. Powell had Ben Winters pen an essay on his thoughts as an author and they’re pretty illuminating.

In depressing, but engaging news, Nate Silver’s blog 538 has an interactive graph of all the gun related deaths in a year and the stats are illuminating.