TODAY: In 1883, William Carlos Williams is born.
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“If you were to read for 16 hours a day at 300 words per minute, you could keep up with a world containing an average population of 100,000 living Harper Lees.” Randall Munroe answers a pressing question: Was it ever possible for one person to read every book ever written (in English)? | Lit Hub History
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Elaine Fox explores the science of intuition. | Lit Hub Science
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“Even the writer/mother with the best-furnished ego has to stop from time to time to pick up Lego pieces from the floor.” Begoña Gómez Urzaiz on Muriel Spark and the competing demands of career and childcare. | Lit Hub Memoir
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Jhumpa Lahiri considers “the fruit of the union” between author and translator, as illustrated by Michael F. Moore’s translation of Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed. | Lit Hub On Translation
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Ian McEwan’s Lessons, Robert Harris’ Acts of Oblivion, Kate Beaton’s Ducks, and Ling Ma’s Bliss Montage all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
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How to get away with murder… in the Regency Era. | CrimeReads
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What can parents do when schools ban books in their child’s district? | The Washington Post
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“Through his many periods of innovation, Godard never forgot that in art, as in life, beauty persuades.” Blair McClendon on Jean-Luc Godard. | n+1
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“The impulse to create cheap thrills is timeless.” Laurence Senelik considers the art of Shakespearean death. | Lapham’s Quarterly
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“Queer and trans writers are among our most vital culture creators across every segment of the arts.” An interview with Samiya Bashir, Lambda Literary’s new executive director. | Publishers Weekly
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“We should be challenging each other.” Alex Breland talks about creating a book club and discussion space for Black men. | The Chicago Tribune
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“The deaths in these books are intoxicating because they are never final.” Leslie Jamison on the enduring appeal of Choose Your Own Adventure books. | The New Yorker
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Darren Byler, a translator of the Uyghur-language novel The Backstreets, reflects on his collaboration and friendship with his co-translator, who is presumed to be in a reeducation camp in Xinjiang. | Words Without Borders
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“The mysteries that capture your attention are always shifting, and while you’re not looking, they transform into something else altogether.” Dwyer Murphy on New York noir, cinematic influences, and humor in crime fiction. | LARB
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Writers including Abdulrazak Gurnah and Margaret Atwood will appear alongside Ukrainian authors at Lviv BookForum, streaming next month on a screen near you. | The Guardian
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“I feel the most ridiculous thing is certainty.” Yiyun Li talks to Alexandra Kleeman about dogma and grief. | The New York Times
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“She often represented people who illustrated the flip side … it’s a very classic ‘Ruthian,’ as I call it, approach.” Nina Totenberg on her friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. | NPR
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Bruna Dantas Lobato on Ling Ma’s Bliss Montage: “Chinese American women hope for a similar Happy Interlude, if not a happy ending.” | Astra Magazine
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“One needs to have heroes who live under similar societal constraints in order to know how to break free of them.” Heather O’Neill on the life and enduring work of Mavis Gallant. | The Walrus
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Heather Platt delves into what community cookbooks show about the history of Los Angeles. | Los Angeles Times
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Ibram X. Kendi talks about why kids need to read diverse stories and books about history. | Reader’s Digest
Also on Lit Hub:
The late Jim Harrison’s writing philosophy • Luke Mogelson on far-right militias • Ling Ma talks about the surreal and the sublime • Chinelo Okparanta considers the ethics of writing across racial identities • Elissa Bassist on treating her writers’ block by treating her OCD • Read Annette Dauphin Simon’s book spine poetry • The magic of creative constraints • The danger (and hope) of a first year in America • Writing the story of Saint Patrick’s Battalion • Sarah Kendzior on Trumpland’s criminal distortions of American reality • Matthew Zapruder on poems for dire times • 43 literary movies and TV shows to watch this fall • How a group of young writers revolutionized 18th-century literature • A lifetime of learning from Black history • Journalistic techniques for fiction writers • A plea for more language to talk about visual art (and artists) • What healing rituals across cultures tell us about the human condition • Kailyn McCord considers the myth of the Made Writer • Nine Black Diasporic voices imagine a better world • How Moll Cutpurse embraced gender nonconformity in the 1600s • On the first women spies in the CIA • How Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther led to a rare suicide cluster • Are smarter people more prone to irrational biases? • How The Rings of Power is reimagining important characters • 14 books to read for National Translation Month • How state welfare offices perpetuate a culture of blame • Growing up in “a family reluctant to tell stories” • Remembering two women who fought to save Jewish children in WWII-era Europe