TODAY: In 1942, poet Sharon Olds is born.
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Aristotle loved a listicle: On one of humanity’s oldest writing systems. | Lit Hub
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“Should I stay or should I go? (And where?)” Jess deCourcy Hinds wonders what will become of Literary Twitter after Elon Musk’s takeover of the social network. | Lit Hub Tech
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Take a look inside Jason Reynolds’s (stunning) home: “Books are perhaps the only thing easier to find than works of art.” | Lit Hub Style
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Michelle Obama’s The Light We Carry, Steve Martin’s Number One Is Walking, and Meg Howrey’s They’re Going to Love You all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
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John Winn Miller with seven nautical thrillers set above, below, and around the seven seas. | CrimeReads
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“Passion doesn’t pay the bills.” Sophie Vershbow reports from the HarperCollins picket line. | Vulture
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“They’re easy to overlook even as they go about their quiet work of keeping American literature alive.” Margaret Renkl on the quiet, crucial work of university presses. | The New York Times
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Ryan Britt reads the first Star Wars novel, 46 years later. | Esquire
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What are the most banned books in America? | CBS News
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“I think that that’s the role of literature, that’s the role of reading, to move you, to shake you up and to make you someone new.” A conversation with Tracie D. Hall, the longtime librarian being honored at the National Book Awards. | NPR
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“Getting arrested is like death; it arrives suddenly, is unexpected.” Zia Nabavi reflects on the experience of political prisoners in Iran (translated by Poupeh Missaghi). | Words Without Borders
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Emily Zarevich on the 1971 manifesto of the 343 French women who declared they had had an illegal abortion. | JSTOR Daily
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“As publishers make deals with both TikTok and its creators, many BookTok users feel as if their ‘safe’ space is becoming too industry-led.” Ismene Ormonde questions the purity of BookTok. | The Guardian
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Jacques Berlinerblau and Terrence L. Johnson, the authors of Blacks and Jews, discuss Chappelle’s SNL appearance, Kanye’s tweets, and the “Black antisemitism” loop. | Salon
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“Davis could tell you, seemingly down to the county level or even the individual workplace, how any component part fit into the larger complex whole.” Gabriel Winant remembers Mike Davis. | n+1
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PEN America reports that nearly 300 books have been taken off school library shelves since August. | The Hill
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Michael Dirda makes the case for reading old books, both classic and undersung. | The Washington Post
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“Things are scarier inside fairy tales because there is no cushion between you and another person’s will, you and the will of the world. There is no room for mistakes.” Nan Z. Da on Yiyun Li’s The Book of Goose. | Public Books
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Edward Mendelson considers the modest claims and world-defining ambition of Mrs. Dalloway. | NYRB
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Rapid-fire book recs from Haruki Murakami. | The New York Times
Also on Lit Hub:
Sofia Coppola in praise of Undine Spragg, Edith Wharton’s beloved antiheroine • Dorothe Nors spends the shortest night of the year on Denmark’s North Sea coast • Patrick Radden Keefe considers the opioid crisis and the Sacklers • Why Nick Hornby doesn’t often give novels as gifts • How Kurt Vonnegut felt about polluters (hint: not kindly) • Without Chawton House, would we have lost Jane Austen? • “I never intended to become a poet. It’s just that I was addicted to feeling things strongly and then feeling nothing at all.” • How irony got its second meaning • Remembering Kenward Elmslie and Lucia Berlin through their postcards to each other • Confronting writer’s block in the early years of sobriety • How living in Naples changed Shirley Hazzard’s life • A brief excavation of King Tut’s tomb • Why verse novels are gay (and glorious) • Meg Howrey on narrating her own novel • The corrosive effect of the culture wars • Against calling nature “wild” • Examining the grueling working conditions of the home healthcare industry • How Walmart smothered unionizing attempts • Chuck Berry’s early literary influences • Jack O’Brien on the role(s) of a theater director • Is our work suffering without physical office space? • How medieval poets wrote about sex (organs) • Inside the small-brewer scene in 1950s San Francisco • Bad Religion’s Greg Graffin recalls punk’s early publicity problems • How disability pride has evolved in the three decades since the ADA became law