TODAY: In 1873, Colette is born.
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How Edith Wharton foresaw the 21st century: “The scandals documented in Wharton’s narratives serve as harbingers of the sensations that flash across our hand-held screens.” | Lit Hub Biography
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Helen Betya Rubinstein wonders if the power inherent in copyediting causes more harm than good. | Lit Hub
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When Georges Lemaître, physicist, mathematician, and Catholic priest, presented a “crackpot” theory: the expansion of the universe. | Lit Hub Science
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How silent film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks helped popularize fettuccini alfredo. | Lit Hub Food
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Paul Harding’s This Other Eden, Janet Malcolm’s Still Pictures, Bret Easton Ellis’s The Shards, and Colm Tóibín’s A Guest at the Feast all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Month. | Book Marks
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20 horror novels to look out for in 2023. | CrimeReads
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The Dial, an online monthly magazine dedicated to “long-form reporting, criticism and works of literature,” has launched with an issue dedicated to reproductive rights around the world. | The Dial
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Sarah Weinman considers Truman Capote’s complicated relationship with the truth. | The Atlantic
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“The women of Women Talking are determined to look ahead, not only to the immediate future but farther, both literally and figuratively, down the road.” Eliza Smith on Sarah Polley’s adaptation of Miriam Toews’s novel. | The Cut
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A literary guide to Shirley Jackson’s life and work. | Vol. 1 Brooklyn
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In the face of book bans and attacks on women’s and LGBTQ rights, feminist bookstores are having a resurgence. | Ms.
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“I meet the same words each time I open Ædnan, but as Ædnan’s reader, I am never the same. I started thinking of the book as a river.” Saskia Vogel on rereading and translation. | Words Without Borders
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“Tolkien’s characters remain largely static; it’s the world around them that changes.” Austin Gilkeson on the challenges of adapting Tolkien’s fiction for television. | The New York Review
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“Weighing in on ‘the way we live now’ entails new scrutiny on that ‘we.’” Molly Fischer profiles Pamela Paul, “a provocateur temperamentally averse to provocation.” | The New Yorker
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A history of the FBI spying on people’s library activity. | The Washington Post
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“There was no land in sight that morning or the next. It was overwhelming and terrifying. The world is small, but the planet is vast and unknowable.” Roxane Gay and Debbie Millman document a trip to Antarctica. | AFAR
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The perennial allure of The Virgin Suicides, 30 years on. | The Guardian
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“Although Riker has little interest in the formulaic or didactic, he considers literature a conversation above all else.” Lynn Steger Strong profiles publisher-author Martin Riker. | Los Angeles Times
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Seven decades after Simone de Beauvoir published The Second Sex, a new book by Richard V. Reeves argues that gender equality now requires a focus on male deficits. | The New Yorker
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“Maybe nations go through a time when they just can’t hear certain kinds of voices.” Anderson Tepper considers Ben Okri’s newfound resonance with American readers. | The New York Times
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Revisiting Edna Ferber’s “deft, affectionate” novel The Girls. | JSTOR Daily
Also on Lit Hub:
Sahar Delijani on watching from a distance as women fight for freedom in Iran • Revisiting the brilliance and influence of Katherine Mansfield • Jamila Minnicks on writing fiction about Black triumph • Alan Mikhail on gaining permission to narrate Egypt’s past • Peggy Orenstein delves into the endangered, male-dominated vocation of sheep-shearing • Inside the picture perfect—and highly lucrative—world of book styling • The case for Gothic nonsense in children’s literature • Introducing a new indie press, Great Place Books • How a group of Black activists inspired change in segregated Mississippi • Kathryn Ma on growing up a librarian’s daughter • How Thoreau reckoned with the loss of his brother • The problem at the heart of women’s sports culture • Sheila Liming on the uncanniness of hanging out on reality TV