Lit Hub Daily: August 10, 2021

TODAY: In 1823, Gonçalves Dias, a Brazilian Romantic poet and playwright now considered the national poet of Brazil, is born.   

• “It’s too much to believe that our heroine would be picking up her diary every few minutes in the middle of a spiraling evening to write down “Shit, shit, shit.” She might be tweeting it, though.” Emily Temple on the proto-Internet Novel Bridget Jones’s Diary. | Lit Hub Criticism

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• Virginia Feito considers the horror of doppelgängers and identity crises, from Shirley Jackson to Alfred Hitchcock and beyond. | Lit Hub

• Follow the siren call of New Books Tuesday (20 new titles!). | The Hub

• How did an 18th-century Quaker farmboy lay the groundwork for the most powerful idea in science? | Lit Hub Science

• White terror: Spencer Ackerman on Christian nationalism’s influence over American terrorist Timothy McVeigh. | Lit Hub Politics

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• This month’s 5 Authors, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers features Alexandra Kleeman, JoAnna Novak, Andrew Palmer, Rafia Zakaria, and Hannah Zeavin. | Lit Hub Questionnaire

• “While my bursts of attitude are perhaps more Diary of a Wimpy Kid than they are Rebel Without a Cause, I maintain that it’s still an important part of growing up.” Via Bleidner on coming-of-age in Calabasas. | Lit Hub Memoir

• Sabina Murray talks to Jane Ciabattari about the limits of journalism, humor in Filipino culture, and her new novel, The Human Zoo. | Lit Hub

• “An exquisitely bleak incantation—pure poetic brimstone.” Read the first reviews of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. | Book Marks

• Ashley Winstead on the new wave of crime novels exploring collective guilt and individual complicity. | CrimeReads

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• “Grave psychotic illness has one refuge.” Donald Antrim on a journey to recovery through electroconvulsive therapy. | The New Yorker

• Vauhini Vara enlists the help of AI to write about her sister’s death. | The Believer

• Athena Dixon shares books for growing up and finding your voice. | Shepherd

• “I’ve never been stimulated by anything he’s written: his prose just strikes me as incredibly inert.” Martin Amis on JM Coetzee, contemporary fiction, and his formative reading experiences. | The Guardian

• Michell Chresfield and Josie Gill discuss race and antiracism in science and the humanities. | Los Angeles Review of Books

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• Melissa Baron chronicles the literary landmarks along I-70, from Maryland to Utah. | Book Riot

• Sarah Manavis points out how books on productivity obscure larger-picture issues with work and the economy. | New Statesman

Also on Lit Hub: Encountering one of the most toxic trees in the world • Justin Akers Chacón unpacks the case for opening national borders • Read from Leila Slimani’s latest novel, In the Country of Others

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