Lit Hub Daily: August 21, 2019

• FALL 2019 NONFICTION PREVIEW: All this week we’ll be highlighting our most anticipated books on a variety of subjects, from science and tech to memoir and essay collections, and more. On deck today: politics and social science. | Lit Hub
• “There is a truthfulness in fiction that is simply unavailable to the academic biographer.” Jay Parini on the golden age of reinventing real life. | Lit Hub
• From literary ambition to awkward sensitivity, Hans Christian Andersen, original softboi, had it all. | Lit Hub
• “The older I grow the more I realize how terribly difficult it is for people to understand each other.” Wittgenstein, making sense of nonsense, from Bertrand Russell to the existentialists. | Lit Hub
• Marcia Douglas at the crossroads of Jamaica’s history and fictions. | Lit Hub
• The Book Marks Questionnaire: 14 rapid-fire book recs from rapper, singer, and writer, Dessa. | Book Marks
• “Waiting for a verdict is the essence of suspense: there are only two outcomes. Either is devastating for someone.” Hank Phillippi Ryan rounds up seven of the most suspenseful jury verdicts in fiction and film. | CrimeReads
• “One writes things as fiction and suddenly they become nonfiction.” Amitav Ghosh on climate change and the creative process. | The Creative Independent
• Why the ancient poetry of Sappho is much more . . . stimulating than modern pornography. | Aeon
• Since Toni Morrison’s death, demand for her books has skyrocketed; in response, Knopf is revving up the printing press. | Publishers Weekly
• Next time you have to call in sick, just blame books! In the 17th century, reading was “faulted for a range of physical ailments that included vertigo, gout and indigestion.” | The New York Times
• “We’re obsessed with the idea that somehow there’s a message that we’re not quite getting, and that it’s a message we need to hear.” Rachel Monroe on true crime, Columbine, and victimhood. | The Believer
• Musician autobiographies, lyric compilations, multigenerational sagas and more: a case for 22 great books about rock’n’roll. | Louder Sound
• Afro-Brazilian author Carolina Maria de Jesus made a name for herself in the 1960s after writing a memoir about life in São Paulo. What happened to her reputation outside of Brazil in the time since? | Longreads

Also on Lit Hub: On Otherppl, Shane Jones talks throwing away 40,000 words • Reading Women discuss books on mental and physical illness by Abby Norman and Esmé Weijun Wang • The political chaos and unexpected activism of the post-Civil War era • On Victor Hugo’s posthumous career as a religious prophet • Read an excerpt from Yoko Ogawa’s Memory Police (trans. Stephen Snyder).