TODAY: In 1996, Haruki Murakami completes his first ultramarathon.
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What’s in an epigraph, anyway? Thomas Swick in praise of that “ceremonial gate.” | Lit Hub
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“Medicine needs to become actively antiracist.” Elinor Cleghorn on healthcare’s insidious race and gender problem. | Lit Hub Health
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How is it that we’re capable of imitating consciousness, yet we don’t understand what consciousness is? Stephen Marche considers AI, machine learning, and “the labyrinth of another’s being.” | Lit Hub Tech
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Gaslighting in fiction: Jennifer Baker finds reflections in the psychological abuse captured in Clare Beams’ The Illness Lesson and Brandon Taylor’s Real Life. | Lit Hub Criticism
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“Through these fictional girls, I learned how much the church gave me, and not just how much it took.” Kelsey McKinney on writing about faith to reckon with the loss of her own. | Lit Hub Religion
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Jenny Lawson talks to John Scalzi about mental health, opening a bookstore during the pandemic, and her unofficial role as Den Mother of Misfits. | Lit Hub
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“Why is it so hard to think of main characters who grieve?” Nicci French examines the place of loss of thrillers. | CrimeReads
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Their Eyes Were Watching God, Tender Is the Night, The Sound and the Fury, and more rapid-fire book recs from Susan Minot. | Book Marks
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Bianca Stone on Emily Dickinson, strip clubs, and grieving over the loss of her grandmother. | Guernica
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Inside the weird, lost world of Depression-era travel guides. | The Atlantic
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“I wanted to write about a character having a mental health crisis from the inside and not as an observer watching a person go to pieces.” Brandon Taylor discusses depictions of mental health. | GQ
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In defense of messy bookshelves. | The Washington Post
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Parul Sehgal considers “the new hive of capacious thinking” provoked by notions of consent. | The New York Times
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“I often have to ’translate’ a second time when I explain to editors my decision to resist the white gaze.” Yilin Wang addresses bias in translation from East Asian languages. | Words Without Borders
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Learn how to decolonize your bookshelf. | Book Riot
Also on Lit Hub: Amy Sackville asks, what if procrastination is essential to the writing process? • Sports are sad: Emily Thomas Mani on winning and losing (i.e. living and dying) • Read from Joani Elliott’s debut novel, The Audacity of Sara Grayson