Given its appearance on the Approval Matrix this week and these recommendations from Maud Newton and Sam Sifton, we will likely be picking up the reissue of Charles Willeford’sCockfighter quite soon.

• At Sound of the City, Seth Colter Walls takes a look at Jonny Greenwood’s compositions, and wonders why they’re not commercially available.

• Edward Champion chats with Tayari Jones, whose novel Silver Sparrow comes highly recommended.

• At the Portland Mercury, John Scalzi talks about “rebooting” someone else’s fictional universe.

• Roxane Gay looks at Amor Towles’s Rules of Civility: “The writing reflects the writer’s meticulous understanding of the tradition of writing preceding him, particularly the work of Fitzgerald and my beloved Edith Wharton.”