TODAY: In 1936, John Steinbeck’s dog, Toby, eats (half of) the first draft of Of Mice and Men.
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Susanna Kaysen revisits Girl, Interrupted 30 years later: “Back then, this was not a topic for discussion, rather something to be kept secret.” | Lit Hub Memoir
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“What my grandmothers gave me, I now offer to you.” Kwame Alexander considers the legacies of love passed down through food… and shares a family recipe for 7 Up Pound Cake. | Lit Hub Food
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Brooke Kroeger traces the rise of journalism’s star female reporters, from Molly Ivins to Joan Didion. | Lit Hub History
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“Who am I going to laugh with now?” Hannah Lillith Assadi on Brian Cox, Logan Roy, and her father. | Lit Hub Memoir
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Javier Marías’s Tomás Nevinson, Brandon Taylor’s The Late Americans, and Rachel Louise Snyder’s Women We Buried, Women We Burned all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
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The most anticipated crime fiction of the summer. | CrimeReads
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Dwight Garner on the late Martin Amis. | New York Times
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A close reading of John Berryman’s “Dream Song 29” to predict the end of Succession. | Vanity Fair
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Salman Rushdie at the PEN America gala: “Violence must not deter us.” | The Guardian
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Rachel Aviv writes about the tortured bond between Alice Sebold and Anthony Broadwater, the man wrongfully imprisoned for her rape. | The New Yorker
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Jacki Lyden on the beauty and heartbreak of public radio. | Arrowsmith Press
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On Henry James’s only political novel, 1886’s The Princess Casamassima—and the warning it holds for contemporary America. | The Atlantic
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The majority of book challenges filed across the United States in 2021 and 2022 were done so by just 11 people, who seem to have a problem with “sex” and LGBTQ people. | Washington Post
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“T(Sakakawea)ish was not a Shoshoni. She was a Hidatsa.” What white history got wrong about Sacagawea. | New York Review of Books
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Are these the 100 greatest children’s books of all time? | BBC
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Rapid-fire book recs from Brandon Taylor. | ELLE
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Carmen Maria Machado on why Hollywood can’t get enough of cannibalism stories. | Bon Appetit
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2023 is a big year for new short story collections from Asian and Asian diaspora writers. | Book Riot
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UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak likes sexy horse books and there’s nothing wrong with that. | The Hub
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Today’s literary mystery: Who was behind the classic 1976 cover for Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time? | Tor
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On the historical claim that there were actually two American Constitutions, one pro-slavery, the other abolitionist. | NY Review of Books
Also on Lit Hub:
28 novels and 25 nonfiction books we think you should read this summer • Recounting the crash of the British Airship R101, one of the world’s largest flying machines • A critic’s advice for writing a great book • On perfume production in Central America • Thomas Melle remembers experiencing psychosis for the first time • Why do we cling to a version of Western history we know to be untrue? • Rachel Snyder remembers the beginning of the end of her family • On the need for more stories about ordinary female scientists • Avery Carpenter Forrey on social media and memory • Exploring the lives of Roman and Mesoamerican dynasties • Chun Han Wong on Xi Jingping’s purges • The lovable unlikability of Jane Austen’s Emma Woodhouse • How a fabulist painting showed Jenny Fran Davis the cover of Dykette • Kate Lebo on the recipe writer’s dilemma • How Sardinia became Italy’s island of poets • Carlos Fonseca considers the novel as a haven for eccentrics • What Daniel Wallace learned about writing from his father’s extended stays on the toilet • Why suicide isn’t a plot point