Lit Hub Weekly: May 18 – 22, 2020

TODAY: In 1906, Henrik Ibsen dies.

If you’re not already rereading your favorite books all the time, Natalie Jenner recommends it. | Lit Hub
Gabrielle Bellot on the disconcerting parallels between “The Machine Stops,” E.M. Forster’s only foray into sci-fi, and our current socially distanced reality. | Lit Hub
The only successful coup in the US began as a campaign to burb black voting rights: Lawrence Goldstone on the Wilmington insurrection of 1898. | Lit Hub
Laura Marsh on Curtis Sittenfeld’s imagined Hillary, Catherine Lacey on Kate Zambreno’s fantasy of a memoir, and more of the reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks
80+ crime novels, mysteries, thrillers, and true crime books for the long summer days and nights ahead. | CrimeReads
“Economic distress is nothing new to us, but this is something totally different.” On Oakland’s Marcus Books—the oldest black bookstore in the country—trying to survive during the pandemic. | The Guardian
“In these images we seem to be in our own world, alone together.” Beth Nguyen on family photographs. | The Paris Review
Why has Michel Houellebecq, “a favorite intellectual of right extremists,” also attracted so many fans on the left? | Boston Review
Autobiographies, medical histories philosophy, poetry, reportage: the race to publish books about the pandemic began earlier than you might think. | The New York Times
Historians respond to the question: How will we tell the story of the coronavirus pandemic? | Los Angeles Review of Books
Rants about bad grammar don’t accomplish much—other than spreading the false idea that there’s one “proper” way to speak English. | JSTOR Daily
“This is about finding the language that is worthy of the things we have seen in life.” Inside a creative writing group for essential workers. | The Baffler
“Do I want an emollient cream, a tightening gel, or perhaps a serum that promises everything at once?”: Daphne Merkin on women wearing make-up during lockdown. | New York Review of Books
“I have to say, really and truly, everything I know about writing about sex I learned from Judy Blume.” Curtis Sittenfeld and the Judy Blume talk the Clintons, bad reviews, and (of course) sex scenes. | Interview
Finally: how to find a book when you don’t know the title. | BoingBoing
Emily St. John Mandel opens up about the success of Station Eleven, privilege, and why she really couldn’t care less what Bernie Madoff thinks of her latest novel. | Rain Taxi
“Compassion, that supreme quality in a fiction writer, is a main source of Greenwell’s power.” Sigrid Nunez on Garth Greenwell’s beloved bibliography. | NYRB
As Los Angeles bookstores begin a partial reopening, booksellers are facing c oncerns about safety. | Los Angeles Times
“In this season of unimaginable death, especially black and brown death, these young people rose to the occasion.” On teaching African American literature during COVI D-19. | Boston Review
An epidemiologist makes a case for integrating the humanities in discussions of public health. | Inside Higher Ed

Also on Lit Hub:

Mike Davis on the inevitably of a pandemic • On Florence’s struggle to get Dante’s body back • Even in retirement, Philip Roth wrote thousands of pages • Olivia Gatwood on Edna St. Vincent Millay’s strength and progressivism • S.D. Chrostowska looks at the intersection of dreamlife and reality amid the pandemic • Even when they hate it, why can’t Americans seem to stop using Amazon? • Maggie Doherty on the creative communities that changed literature • On Daniel Defoe’s fictional account of the London plague • Meet the great Mabel Stark, a true tiger queen ahead of her time • Ben Ehrenreich on radical change in a time of pandemic • Flannery O’Connor: genius or sadist? Let’s ask the one-star Amazon reviews! • Emma Straub hereby abolishes all reading-related guilt • Hal Foster on what comes after Covid-19 • From Perón to Trump, revisionist histories have always been at the heart of fascist populism • Carter Sickels compiles a reading list of queer rural fiction • Porochista Khakpour on loving—and destroying—Barbie Dolls • Celebrate the weekend with round nine of our personalized quarantine book recommendations • Lauren Francis-Sharma on researching historical fiction as a writer of color • With the Olympics canceled, there’s plenty of extra time (sigh) to read up on heroic moments in sports

Best of Book Marks:

Loving Joan Didion, hating Infinite Jest, and more rapid-fire book recs from Stephanie Danler • A month of literary listening: AudioFile’s best audiobooks of May • Fire in Paradise authors Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano recommend five books that offer a master class in reported nonfiction, from Matthew Desmond’s Evicted to Sheri Fink’s Five Days at Memorial • Wuthering Heights, The Tempest, Wild, and more rapid-fire book recs from Rough Magic author Lara Prior-Palmer • Curtis Sittenfeld’s Rodham, Ivy Pochoda’s These Girls, and Jonathan Bate’s Radical Wordsworth all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week