TODAY: In 1632, Ferdinando II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, the dedicatee, receives the first printed copy of Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.
- “Fiction should be life-changing, life-shattering. It isn’t just characters and stories.” Brian Castleberry profiles Nicola Barker, post-punk UK novelist. | Lit Hub
- Steffan Triplett on Megan Giddings’ Lakewood, “required reading in the conversation about Black horror.” | Lit Hub Criticism
- For a mere $4,200, you can own a rare set of Bonibooks, a pre-Penguin paperback series that attempted the “profane” act of marketing literature to the people. | Lit Hub
- Yaba Blay on the history of race in New Orleans, where “Creoles functioned as a buffer class that helped Whites to maintain their dominant status and keep unmixed Blacks in their place.” | Lit Hub History
- Michael J. Stephen on how we came to understand the “vital and transcendent” act of breathing (and why we hover over our sleeping newborns). | Lit Hub Science
- Station Eleven, LaRose, How to Be Both, and more rapid-fire book recs from K Chess. | Book Marks
- “Only one firefly was observed alighting on a conference attendee, and that attendee was Hiranuma’s widow, Asako.” Dreux Richard attends the Japan Firefly Society’s national conference and pays tribute to the man who brought fireflies back to Wakkanai. | Lit Hub
- Ever wondered which academic press best represents your core being? Take this quiz and find out! | Public Books
- “In Strayed’s hands, the advice column was a radical therapeutic experience, less like ‘Hints from Heloise’ and more like downing a cup of ayahuasca.” Looking for answers in the age of peak advice. | The New Yorker
- Reading this year’s NBCC Awards finalists: Jacob M. Appel on Riva Lehrer’s Golem Girl. | Lit Hub
- “I don’t have the emotional and intellectual energy to give to these shadowy people to bring them out of the shadows.” On how the lockdown is stifling the creativity of writers. | The Guardian
- How literary titan Toni Morrison transformed book publishing forever and nurtured the talents of Black authors. | ZORA
- Remembering Bay Area author Anthony Veasna So, and the variety of lives he changed. | n+1
- “What does it mean to use, as Hazzard does, the individual moments in one woman’s life as a way to discuss the end of an empire?” Unpacking the novels of Shirley Hazzard. | New Republic
- These books show the state of environmental racism in the US—and efforts to address it. | EcoWatch
Also on Lit Hub: Your week in virtual book events, featuring Shayla Lawson, Lauren Oyler, Jason Reynolds, and more • Sushma Subramanian on the paradox of solitude and intimacy • Read from Andromeda Romano-Lax’s latest novel, Annie and the Wolves
