Lit Hub Daily: February 8, 2018

TODAY: In 1828, Jules Verne is born in Nantes, France. 

• Appalachia isn’t the reason we’re living in Trump Country: Elizabeth Catte on the myths shaping the region, and who profits from them. | Literary Hub
• Find your gateway book: the shortest novels written by 20 very famous authors you should’ve read by now. | Literary Hub
• Dystopia for sale: how a commercialized genre lost its teeth. | Literary Hub
• Classic essay: Martin Amis on the genius of Jane Austen, and what the endless adaptations never get right. | Literary Hub
• Zadie Smith’s “bracing pluralism,” Rose McGowan’s “visceral” memoir, and more: The 5 book reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks
• Edna O’Brien has been awarded the PEN/Nabokov award for lifetime achievement in international literature. | The Guardian
• “I kept looking for stories like the one I was telling, but I couldn’t find them, and that terrified me.” Akwaeke Emezi on writing work that doesn’t look like anyone else’s, finding Nabokov, and creating a new kind of canon. | BuzzFeed Reader
• Jesmyn Ward will soon bless us with two more books—one for adults, and one for middle-grade readers. | Publishers Weekly
• “I remember in my head being like, ‘You’re so stupid and wrong. Every day that I have not completed a great work of American fiction is an abject failure!’” An interview with poet, author, and sociologist Eve Ewing. | The Creative Independent
• “It’s not just an exercise in nostalgia, a rediscovery of cherished old codes and secrets, a daydream about pin-rolled jeans. It’s about a different experience of time.” Hua Hsu on The Face and the pleasures of reading old magazines. | The New Yorker
• This would remain a book about her life, not her illness: Mira T. Lee on writing a character who struggles with a mental illness. | Tin House
• “It feels human to root for the underdog in the fine-dining heat map that is New York; visiting regularly is a choice both honorable and sad.” An ode to Planet Hollywood. | The Paris Review

Also on Literary Hub: Fiction/Non/Fiction: On the new authoritarian playbook • The power of the editor: Part two of our women’s round table on power and sexism in the literary world • From Tayari Jones’s new novel: read from an American Marriage.

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