TODAY: In 1932, Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, cultural critic, political and social commentator, and novelist Umberto Eco is born.
- Has the Parent Plot supplanted the Marriage Plot? Peter Ho Davies reflects on the new coming-of-age moment. | Lit Hub
- Daniel Simpson goes deep into the chakras, an oft-misunderstood aspect of yoga. | Lit Hub
- “We are not, I have to admit, necessarily raising this magpie in the most natural way.” On teaching a bird to fly. | Lit Hub
- Demanding poltergeists, foul-mouthed Ouija boards, and more tales of the 19th century American Spiritualist boom. | Lit Hub
- A Little Life, The Second Sex, 10:04, and more rapid-fire book recs from Follow Me to Ground author Sue Rainsford. | Book Marks
- Zach Vasquez looks at nine crime novels that explore the narrative of racial passing. | CrimeReads
- Camilla Parker Bowles is starting a book club. Okay! | Vanity Fair
- “What Love & Basketball gets right is the truth of competitive basketball as an act of physical intimacy.” Read the first installment of Hanif Abdurraqib’s new column about the golden age of basketball movies. | The Paris Review
- “Could a world full of scientists do all kinds of reckless recombinant things with viral diseases for many years and successfully avoid a serious outbreak?” Nicholson Baker dives deep into the lab-leak hypothesis of Covid. | New York Magazine
- Was your New Year’s Resolution to learn how to make your own books? If so, explain yourself, and also, you may enjoy one of these cool bookbinding kits. | My Modern Met
- Even now, Sherlock Holmes’ intelligence “is still understood through his toxic masculinity.” | Salon
- In recent years, a growing African digital literary culture has “fundamentally altered literary culture as we know it.” | Los Angeles Review of Books
- A latter-day pandemic reading recommendation: Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, which “dumps a bucket of ice water over those who dare to hang on to hope.” | Electric Literature
Also on Lit Hub: Nuala O’Connor considers the interior life of Nora Joyce • Read from Ashley Audrain’s debut novel The Push.
