Lit Hub Daily: August 4, 2022

TODAY: In 1913, Robert Hayden, the first African American to be appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (today known as US Poet Laureate), is born.  

• In part two of a new series, 13 Ways of Looking, Joseph Osmundson considers the visual side of virology. | Lit Hub Science

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• Let us not repeat the mistakes of The Gilded Age: How to adapt Edith Wharton like the great Terence Davies. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• Lulu Miller in praise of “the uncrushable beetle.” | Lit Hub Nature

• How Kiki de Montparnasse, a muse with a mind of her own, “essentially invented the idea of making an art out of being yourself.” | Lit Hub Biography

• “I cannot forbear in this place giving you some description of the fashions here, which are more monstrous and contrary to all common sense and reason, than ’tis possible for you to imagine.” 18th-century Vienna through the eyes of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. | Lit Hub History

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• Nina Nesseth explains what happens to the human brain while consuming horror. | CrimeReads

• “The sex improves; the prose does not.” Here are the 5 book reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks

• “The first time I saw the world end I was eight years old.” Alyssa Harad reckons with life in the middle of a climate crisis. | Kenyon Review

• Christian Burno explores some of the best books to bring to the beach. | WBUR

• Moira Donegan on reading Susan Faludi’s Backlash in a post-Roe world. | Men Yell at Me

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• Elia Cugini explores BookTok trends, literary sentimentality, and the “Good Little Pig” device. | Gawker

• Christine Berberich on the books that bring Naples to life. | The Conversation

• “Her oeuvre asks a single question, over and over and over: do you love me?” Dan Sinykin considers the career of Danielle Steel. | Los Angeles Review of Books

• Sheila Liming considers the way HBO’s The Gilded Age fails Edith Wharton: “Appearing in 2022, amid the rampant inequality of a new gilded age, the show asks its viewers to pity those who least deserve it.” | NYRB

Also on Lit Hub: Samuel Amadon on self-reinvention and trusting your own style • Adam Langer on high school rumors and storytelling • Read from Tess Gunty’s debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch

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