Lit Hub Daily: April 17, 2026
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
TODAY: In 1397, Chaucer tells the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II.
- Four films remain in our Best Literary Adaptations bracket! Want to push your favorites to the finals? Get voting. | Lit Hub
- Was Rasputin a fraud? A mystic? A womanizer? A prophet. Whatever he was, he changed history. | Lit Hub History
- Luke Goebel reflects on marriage, L.A., and writing dangerously. | Lit Hub Memoir
- “Many lay Catholics were very interested in contraception, and many parish priests—and even some high-level theologians—supported their desires.” On the Catholic father of oral contraception. | Lit Hub Religion
- Maria Semple’s Go Gentle, Gwendoline Riley’s The Palm House, and Lena Dunham’s Famesick all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks
- Rachel Khong’s TBR includes books by Anne Truitt, Simon Critchley, James Hillman, and more. | Lit Hub Criticism
- Leise Hook on what her American and Chinese names reveal about herself. | Lit Hub Memoir
- Ramona Ausubel recommends an exercise for getting unstuck and considers the power of “what if.” | Lit Hub Craft
- For the next installment of our National Poetry Month series, we recommend reading Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays.” | Lit Hub Poetry
- “Therapy changed me as a writer. I began noticing patterns in Lewis’s thinking, probably because once a week I was noticing different patterns in my own.” Craig Fehrman on looking for the human side of history. | Defector
- Oliver Whang considers the problem with AI’s opacity. | The New York Times Magazine
- Why is a right-wing press reissuing The Hardy Boys? | NYRB
- “By embracing experimental language and exploring taboo subjects, she had posed a challenge to literary conventions in Turkey, one that still feels urgent and contemporary.” Kaya Genç on learning to write like Leylâ Erbil. | The Point
- How Larry McMurtry offered an alternative legend to the myth of the cowboy. | The Nation
- Was Nietzsche actually…a mystic? | Aeon
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