Lit Hub Weekly: October 14 – 18, 2024
TODAY: In 1745, Jonathan Swift dies.
Cundill Prize Finalist Kathleen DuVal recommends essential books for understanding Native American history by David Treuer, Ned Blackhawk, Brenda J. Child, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
“Americans are never shown what it actually looks like when a US drone strike hits a wedding party, or a child is crushed by a US tank.” Noam Chomsky on the horrors America hides as it wages war. | Lit Hub Politics
What does growing old mean when you consider looking back? Julie Sedivy asks us to reconsider our ideas about aging and memory. | Lit Hub Memoir
Daniel M. Lavery looks back at the rise and fall of women’s hotels in American cities: “To disappear in a large city is no especially difficult task, but to disappear without ever exciting remark requires careful accounting and economy of movement.” | Lit Hub History
Abbie Kiefer on grief, history in poetry, and pop culture nostalgia. | Poets.org
Andrea Long Chu on the role of a literary critic during times of genocide. | Vulture
Mohammed R. Mhawish remembers his friend Refaat Alareer. | The Nation
Javier Cercas remembers a short but intense friendship with Roberto Bolaño. | The Paris Review
“Giving names to the nameless and, likewise, voices to the voiceless is something Han does consistently.” Yung In Chae on the significance of Han Kang’s Nobel. | The Yale Review
“The only thing we should fear is that we will surrender our homeland to be plundered by a gang of liars, thieves, and hypocrites.” Read from Alexei Navalny’s prison diaries. | The New Yorker
“Bookstores are places that can interrupt the flow of publishing’s culture industry by showcasing books that customers might not otherwise see.” Dan Sinykin considers Evan Friss’ new history of American bookstores. | The Baffler
“This place that I returned to throughout my adult life as often as I was driven away.” Wiam El-Tamami recalls lives lived in Egypt, Palestine, and Berlin. | AGNI
Justina Elias, a former employee at Munro’s Books, grapples with the fairytale, and the reality, of Alice Munro’s legacy. | The Walrus
On reconciling the aesthetics of Ralph Ellison’s photographs with his writing. | New York Review of Books
“As had been the case for Baldwin with his father, so I began to realize that everything my father had been … had been shaped by the violence of the social world.” Didier Eribon considers James Baldwin’s relationship with his father alongside his own. | MIT Press Reader
Eric Lach on the 119-year-old book that explains New York City mayor Eric Adams. | The New Yorker
Garth Risk Hallberg on the abduction of writing fiction. | Granta
Also on Lit Hub:
The importance of labor movements to Americans • Joyce Carol Oates on writing her nostalgic novel, Broke Heart Blues • History’s most unexpectedly (in)famous cook, Typhoid Mary • On losing a sister to forced separation • Mosab Abu Toha’s reading list • Why “at its core, science is about playing with stuff…” • How the safety of a public library helped Brittany Rogers embrace queerness • The importance and responsibility of writing “the other” • Kate Hamilton recommends books about complicated desire • Are you the asshole if you’re annoyed by a writer friend who doesn’t write? • Elandria Williams in Knoxville, Tennessee on queer Appalachian life • What the story of Richard II and Henry IV can teach us about power • How queer fiction was shaped by a research trip to South Dakota • Bruna Dantas Lobato recommends books about making a home in a new country • The unique challenges of writing biographies of women • The failings of the American healthcare system • On The Lit Hub Podcast, the gang gets into spooky season reads • How to pop the question with hot chocolate and pink champagne marshmallows • Emily J. Orlando considers the interior designs of Edith Wharton • Towards a new poetics of illness and healing • 5 book reviews you need to read this week • Rebecca Nagle on the link between writing and fiber arts • How the “grand tour” shaped generations of 19th-century elites • Gary J. Bass recommends books on the Asian experience of World War II • The best reviewed books of the week