Lit Hub Daily: April 17, 2023

TODAY: In 1397, Geoffrey Chaucer tells The Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II.   

• “Pugilistic metaphors and hard-drinking aphorisms … a brittle misogyny and a vainglorious narcissism. And then there are all the dead animals.” David Barnes considers the baggage of Ernest Hemingway, 100 years after his first published work. | Lit Hub Criticism

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• Welcome to the Shakespeare Funhouse: Lee Durkee considers the many painted portrayals of the Bard, each one prettier than the last. | Lit Hub Biography

• “Let’s raise our hands if we masturbate, everybody.” In Judy Blume Forever, Blume’s refreshing candor applies to herself. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• Toyin Falola recommends books that capture the contexts and experiences of the African diaspora. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• Contacting the spirit of brilliant, divisive Australian novelist Henry Handel Richardson. | Lit Hub Criticism

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• Christian Lorentzen revisits George Trow’s epic 1980 essay “Within the Context of No Context,” an essay that took up almost an entire issue of the New Yorker in 1980. | The Point

• Why the Baby-Sitters Club books are still resonating with young readers, three decades later. | The Globe and Mail

• Colson Whitehead on the books that have shaped his life: “In seventh grade English class we read the first chapter of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and I thought: here’s a Black weirdo who writes; maybe there’s room for a Black weirdo like me.” | The Guardian

• Indie booksellers recommend 13 books for 2023. | Electric Lit

Also on Lit Hub: A conversation with Gabrielle Octavia Rucker • Blair Hurley on life between writer and daughter • Read from Cat Shook’s debut novel, If We’re Being Honest

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