Lit Hub Daily: April 13, 2020

• Fairy tales and facts: Siri Hustvedt on how we read in a pandemic. | Lit Hub
• “On the page, Berlin struck me as very much alive, as though I were listening to a close friend speak to me about her life.” What Alexandra Chang on learning from Lucia Berlin. | Lit Hub
• “The Lemons.” A poem by Eugenio Montale, translated by Jonathan Galassi. | Lit Hub
• Cartoonist Tom Gauld refuses to take science seriously. | Lit Hub
• “Plants helped to rid her of desire altogether; helped her to become less starved and more contemplative.” Damon Young on Colette’s life in the garden. | Lit Hub History
• Jenny Odell and Wendy Liu discuss the radical power of liberating ourselves from usefulness. | Lit Hub Tech
• José Saramago’s Blindness, Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and more rapid-fire book recs from Max Porter. | Book Marks
• Donna Leon honors the generosity of Italians, in ordinary and extraordinary times. | CrimeReads
• “We were not as healthy as we thought we were.” Viet Thanh Nguyen on Covid-19 and the myth of American greatness. | The New York Times
• Sound artist Alan Nakagawa’s “Social Distancing, Haiku and You” project is inviting people to write and record haikus for a collaborative project with one California art museum. | Smithsonian Magazine
• Why are some readers turning to Mrs. Dalloway as a quarantine read? | The New Yorker
• “I can solve nothing, I can save no one, but dammit, I can mail Patrick a copy of The Night Watchman.” Ann Patchett on running Parnassus Books in lockdown. | The Guardian
• Escape your self-isolation by exploring these maps of fictional, fantastical places. | Atlas Obscura
• Silent Book Club gatherings have taken on a new meaning during quarantine. | Los Angeles Times
• Eight female novelists on what books are reassuring them right now. | Vogue

Also on Lit Hub: Kay Ryan on the preposterous beauty of Gerard Manley Hopkins • J.M.G. Le Clézio on the common good (and other people’s books) • Read an excerpt from Kawai Strong Washburn’s debut novel Sharks in the Time of Saviors.