TODAY: In 1892, Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva is born.
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“Cheever drank. Roth womanized. My grandfather wrote quietly in his office for 60 years.” Alison Fairbrother on learning lessons—in writing and life—from her grandfather, E.L. Doctorow. | Lit Hub Memoir
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Stephen King pens an ode to Maine cuisine—plus, a recipe for Cujo-inspired French toast casserole. | Lit Hub Food
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Elizabeth McCracken rediscovers the first message she ever inscribed (in the first edition of her first book). | Lit Hub Memoir
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Douglas Dreishpoon on the artwork of Helen Frankenthaler, whose “vision of beauty reflected the depths of a human condition.” | Lit Hub Art
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Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts, Annie Ernaux’s Getting Lost, and Orhan Pamuk’s Nights of Plague all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
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Ten great novels with unreliable narrators, from Elizabeth Brooks. | CrimeReads
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From N. Scott Momaday to Joy Harjo, what to read in honor of Indigenous Peoples Day. | San Francisco Chronicle
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Sigrid Nunez considers Annie Ernaux’s diary of a sublime love affair. | NYRB
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“When you write something down you pretty well kill it. Leave it loose and knocking around up there and you never know—it might turn into something.” A look back at Cormac McCarthy’s early interviews. | The New York Times
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Kaitlyn Greenidge talks to Andrea Ritchie and Mariame Kaba about the police abolition movement and their new book, No More Police. | Harper’s Bazaar
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Jessica Winter revisits the work of E. Nesbit, the British Socialist and children’s book author. | The New Yorker
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Bill Carter asks: Do we need yet another “bombshell” book about the Trump administration? | CNN
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“Everything that’s in the book has its roots in something that’s happened.” Celeste Ng on her new novel and the power of art. | NPR
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What comes after #NameTheTranslator? | Words Without Borders
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Richard Joseph asks: “Where is Donna Tartt in our collective account of contemporary literature?” | Los Angeles Review of Books
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“No one book can account for what happened here.” Corinne Segal considers Feral City, gentrification, and the way we talk about our collective and individual experiences during the pandemic. | The Washington Post
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An investigation into the purposeful opacity of book sales data. | Public Books
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“Writing takes actual physical stamina. It is not some delicate thing that happens up in the mind and nowhere else.” Summer Brennan considers Deborah Levy’s thoughts on writing and wisdom. | A Writer’s Notebook
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“Writing truth offers justice to the oppressed.” Ten writers from around the world on the importance of literature in times of conflict. | The Guardian
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Molly Olmstead digs into why the apocalypse is dominating Christian bestseller lists. | Slate
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“The version of Cavafy that’s memorialized on Twitter seems drained of life yet curiously alive—curiously alive and curiously relatable in the age of the Very Online.” Aaron Timms on the digital afterlife of Cavafy. | The Baffler
Also on Lit Hub:
Nina Totenberg reflects on her long friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg • Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan reflect on co-writing a novel • Thea Lenarduzzi on fascism and illness in Italy’s national consciousness • How Amazon accelerated the commodification of literature • On phone sex, first writing jobs, and unexpected teachers • Why the left needs organized labor • An annotated bibliography of octopus videos • Falling in love with goalkeeping • How virologists in China worked to tell the world about COVID-19 • Ryan Lee Wong on living in a monastery during the pandemic • An illustrated (incomplete) list of New York City’s best bookstore storefronts • Why book festivals matter, even in a time of war • Elias Canetti on writing in a troubling world • Was 16th-century poet John Donne really a playboy? • Erin Keane muses on Woody Allen’s Manhattan and powerful men • Marking 100 years of Emily Post’s Etiquette • Javier Zamora tells the story of his childhood migration • Prince Shakur on coming of age as a queer Jamaican boy in America • The power and possibility of retelling classic stories • How Palestinians manage to cross occupation lines • Learning the many ways to cook a chicken as a young Parisian chef • Two cocktails for your next literary happy hour • A brief history of social media platforms, from LiveJournal to the January 6th insurrectionists