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“I will get my second vaccination in a few weeks and today I wondered if I should practice wearing shoes with heels again.” Ada Limón on preparing the body for a reopened world. | Lit Hub
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Why does walking help us think? Jeremy DeSilva looks to great writers, from Charles Darwin to Toni Morrison, for answers. | Lit Hub
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“It is not enough to eat food: I need to wallow in the whole process.” Nigella Lawson on the sublime act of eating. | Lit Hub Food
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The cartography of wolves: Tony Hiss on Pluie the lone wolf and her lessons on landscape. | Lit Hub Nature
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Reginald Dwane Betts on Richard Wright’s recovered novel, Jill Bialosky on Moby-Dick, Daphne Merkin on Jenny Diski’s essays, and more of the Reviews You Need To Read This Week. | Book Marks
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How do you keep a long-running series fresh? For C.S. Harris, the secret is character. | CrimeReads
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“This is the gift that Wesley Brown gives to his readers: a new way to speak, a language that we have to excavate and rescue from murky depths.” Rereading Wesley Brown’s Tragic Magic. | The New Yorker
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What forces go into determining the length of a novel? (Sadly, it’s not just the will of The Muse.) | Countercraft
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Judy Blume’s books defined an era, but how do they read today? | The Washington Post
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Nadya Agrawal discusses the legacy of Bend It Like Beckham and the scarcity of representation. | Catapult
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“Black and brown people are told in endless ways by fraternal orders of police and their powerful enablers: Comply and survive.” Ibram X. Kendi on police brutality and the false promise of compliance. | The Atlantic
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Michael Seidlinger breaks down how “bookishness” in digital culture affects the publishing industry. | Publishers Weekly
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There’s no shortage of writing about Patricia Highsmith’s fascinating, complicated life—but what was she really like? | T Magazine
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“[The work] is not something that I’m trying to do as a rebuttal of the white gaze—it’s honestly something I don’t give a shit about.” Camonghne Felix talks to Barry Jenkins about adapting The Underground Railroad. | Vanity Fair
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The country has mourned more than half a million COVID casualties largely in private. Zoé Samudzi wonders if “an unobstructed engagement with death [would] make these deaths less unfathomable.” | Ssense
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Critic J. R. Ramakrishnan examines how comps aid a translator’s pitch. | Words Without Borders
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Cynthia Ozick muses on why “we are all in thrall to plot, the unexpected and often exciting turnings of events that call out from every source of life.” | LARB
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Alexander Chee offers advice for listening to your inner writer’s voice (because chances are, it’s there). | Medium
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From “brogurt” to Guy Fieri: Emily J. H. Contois considers consumer culture and how food is marketed to men. | Bitch Media
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If you miss small talk, you’re not the only one. | The Walrus
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On Giacomo da Lentini—the “engineer of the modern sonnet”—and the poetic possibilities of heresy. | JSTOR Daily
Also on Lit Hub:
Will Self: Why do we read, anyway? • Check out a 1964 collaboration between Frank O’Hara and Italian painter Mario Schifano • Isabel Wohl considers the possibilities and constraints of place in fiction • Alia Volz on growing up in a cannabis bakery • How a queer couple masterminded a Nazi resistance campaign • Khalisa Rae on what it means to write poetry in the “Southern tradition” • Martha Cooley considers cats (and cat deaths) in literature • Kyra Wilder on motherhood and madness in Victorian literature • Lynn Berger has some thoughts on raising a second child • Maryanne O’Hara reflects on turning to nonfiction after the death of her daughter • How a Catholic priest changed Einstein’s mind about the universe • Tyler Gillespie traces the rise and fall of the Florida Man meme • KT Sparks recommends literary characters who make graceless exits • How Lying George Carmack set off the Klondike Gold Rush • J. Robert Lennon on spending his pandemic year inside a video game • Drew Johnson recommends treating yourself to a Hot Balzac Summer • A photo essay on living in exile • Rereading The Phantom Tollbooth during pandemic doldrums • Madeleine Watts talks about coming of age amidst climate catastrophe • Emmanuel Mbolela on the plight of migrants • 19th-century socialites threw parties that would put Gatsby to shame • Audrey Clare Farley on the eugenicists who weaponized biology • Fatima Bhutto on channeling the fearlessness of Malcolm X • Kate Aronoff draws a line from the Green New Deal back to FDR’s New Deal • How the ICU influenced Paul Griner’s novel • Lilly Dancyger on the many costs of an Ivy League grad degree • Pike on the fine line between a signifier and a trope • Cassandra Lane on conception stories and the weight of memory • Throwing a rave in Chernobyl’s exclusion zone
The Best of Book Marks:
To celebrate Earth Day, Olivia Rutigliano recommends 50 of the best new nonfiction books about the natural world • From climate change to car crash sex: a look back at five classic J. G. Ballard novels • “Here is the master technician once more at the top of his form”: a 1952 review of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea • “He writes with impassioned control, out of a maniacal serenity”: Thomas Pynchon’s 1988 review of Love in the Time of Cholera • New titles by Richard Wright, Jenny Diski, and Anthony Bourdain all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week
More from CrimeReads:
Crime and delves into noir in Italy’s capital of style • Mark Aldridge on Hercule Poirot’s first appearances on radio and television • April’s best debut crime and mystery fiction • Amy Suiter Clarke wants crime writers to reimagine public safety without police • From Hitchcock to heists, a host of new crime nonfiction out this April • Audrey Clare Farley on the sensational trial that uncovered a secret world of medical atrocities • Sabina Stent gives a close reading of The Thomas Crown Affair as a masterpiece of surrealism • Mindy McGinnis on resurrecting Edgar Allan Poe while continually disappointing her mother • Zhanna Slor with seven suspenseful novels that examine immigrant identity • A look at the nominations for the 2021 ITW Thriller Awards
