Lit Hub Daily: August 4, 2020

• “We are in a nightmare, and have been for a long time. But nightmares, like pandemics, eventually end.” Dr. Terrence Holt on information overload (and distortion). | Lit Hub Politics
• Cold, fire, and mosquitoes in one of the most beautiful places on earth: Sophy Roberts offers some advice on packing for Siberia. | Lit Hub Travel
• “A sophisticated bullshitter needs a theory of mind.” On deceptive ravens, bluffing shrimp, and other bullshit artists of the natural world. | Lit Hub Science
• “We’d always been aware of our vulnerability to the weather, attuned to the possibility of disaster.” Ligaya Mishan on the view of the climate crisis from Hawai’i. | Lit Hub Climate Change
• Maya Alexandri on navigating the dual nightmare of an opioid epidemic and a global pandemic as an EMT. | Lit Hub
• How white supremacists used Mardi Gras to enforce racial division in Reconstruction-era New Orleans. | Lit Hub History
• Caroline Leavitt recommends five books about love—and fame—interrupted, from The World According to Garp to An American Marriage. | Book Marks
• Lisa Morton and Leslie Klinger introduce us to the weird women of 19th century horror and their cutting-edge tales of terror. | CrimeReads
• “I’ve come to think my mother liked horror because she was a civil rights activist. There was something about it that was therapeutic.” On the new wave of Black horror storytellers. | Vanity Fair
• “This is no time for clichés, and this is absolutely the time for clichés. Indeed, now more than ever.” Hermione Hoby on the language of crisis. | The Paris Review
• What do the Trump tell-all memoirs have in common? A depiction of the president as “supremely untrustworthy.” | The New York Times
• “Violence is more than just a word or even an attack. Violence is atmospheric.” Brad Evans and Fatima Bhutto in conversation. | LARB
• Time to vote for the Not the Booker Prize shortlist. | The Guardian
• “I’m really not interested in a lot of reality. But I am interested in finding the way reality touches the gibberish a bit.” Blake Butler on language, consumerism, and giving up on musical prose. | The Creative Independent
• While in-person rare book exhibitions remain out of reach, here’s a collection of historic UK books you can explore online. | Fine Books Magazine

Also on Lit Hub: Postcards from a quarantined paradise: Craig Santos Perez’s letter from Hawaiʻi • Read from Edmund White’s novel A Saint from Texas.