Lit Hub Daily: May 15, 2020 - Ballyhoo Magazine

TODAY: In 1890, Katherine Anne Porter is born.

We’re on round eight of our personalized quarantine book recommendations, and we’re not even tired (okay, we’re a little tired). | Lit Hub
“From today’s standpoint there was no financial incentive for Sesame Street’s founding duo to do what they did.” David Kamp on the radical creators of an iconic show. | Lit Hub TV
Pace Sontag, we actually do need metaphor to go through this global illness: David Farrier on the treacherous language of coronavirus. | Lit Hub
Why do some writers burn their work? Alex George investigates the impulse to torch it all. | Lit Hub
Meet the stone collector of Iceland’s eastern coast: A. Kendra Greene gathers the history of a life. | Lit Hub Travel
“Racists are a creative and prolific people.” Richard Lopez on the potency of single-syllable slurs. | Lit Hub
Five books you may have missed in April that you can still read in May—or any other month, you know, because books are shelf-stable. | Lit Hub
“This period will leave its marks on us—but what will those marks look like?” Eva Holland on the mystery of “after coronavirus.” | Lit Hub
Francine Matthews invites you to enjoy these cozy, salt-streaked mysteries from New England’s cape and islands. | CrimeReads
And Tango Makes Three, The Yellow House, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, and more rapid-fire book recs from 2020 Dylan Thomas Prize-winner Bryan Washington. | Book Marks
Lydia Millet’s A Children’s Bible, Richard Ford’s Sorry For Your Trouble, and Samantha Harvey’s The Shapeless Unease all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
“The kids who need queer books still need them. They probably need them actually more than they did before.” Nicole Dennis-Benn, Garth Greenwell, Naoise Dolan, and Akwaeke Emezi in conversation. | EW
In the work of Mary McCarthy, Margaret Foster, and other English and American writers, contraceptives have been used as symbols of class status, emotional and sexual development, and more. | The MIT Press Reader
Readers imagined how authors like Hilary Mantel, Sally Rooney, Raymond Chandler and others might write themselves into their own best-known works. | The Spectator
“From behind the counter, I learned that a supply chain isn’t an abstract concept; a real person forged each link.” Min Jin Lee on the labor of essential workers. | The New York Times
“I resist the notion that literature should have to teach us anything, that it must necessarily be of use.” The case against seeking comfort or consolation in books during the pandemic. | Los Angeles Times
African authors, frequently published by French presses, are leading a movement to keep their rights with African publishers. | The Guardian
Somehow, this deep dive on Normal People’s Marianne’s bangs fails to address whether the bangs have Marxist politics. | Vanity Fair