Lit Hub Daily: July 12, 2019

• “Imagine a story of desire where desire wasn’t ruinous.” Saskia Vogel on Three Women and the reportage of desire. | Lit Hub
• How America came heartbreakingly close to universal healthcare (but opted for profit instead). | Lit Hub
• “Hans Christian Andersen, lonely and lugubrious, seems strikingly like his unnamed mermaid.” Gabrielle Bellot on the queer allegory of The Little Mermaid. | Lit Hub
• “A shared language allows you to extend a hand for holding.” Courtney Maum on finding friendship with her online Spanish teacher. | Lit Hub
• Daniela Petrova’s love letter to the library: “One place where I always feel at home.” | Lit Hub
• Old world Puritanism weaponized for the New World: on the Brides of Jamestown and the relentless campaign against unmarried women in 16th and 17th century England. | Lit Hub
• New titles from Chuck Wendig, Svetlana Alexievich, Karl Marlantes, and Lisa Taddeo feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
• The theatrical adaptation of Joan Didion’s National Book Award-winning memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, about the untimely deaths of her husband and daughter, is returning to stage in a Seattle run. | Seattle Times
• “Above all, he is a poet of intersections and crossings”: Read a profile of Akhil Katyal, a Delhi-based poet whose work navigates experiences of queerness, bilingualism, and economic privilege in India. | GQ India
• A Christian college has revoked an offer of an assistant professorship to a writer due to the contents of his novel, including a lesbian character, swear words, and a scene in which a character “decides to hope instead of pray.” | The Hub
• Meet the man who is writing 365 children’s books in 365 days as a gift to his daughter. Yes, he also has a day job. | The New York Times
• Jack the (Book) Ripper? Well, someone is systematically ripping used books in half in the seaside town of Herne Bay. | The Guardian
• “Both [math and stories] exist in the imagination, and both can remain safely hidden in your mind until you’re willing to share.” Catherine Chung and Steph Cha in conversation. | Guernica
• At the risk of being too meta . . . are we at peak newsletter? (And is that actually kind of a good thing?) | Vanity Fair

Also on Lit Hub: On The Literary Life, Mary Beth Keane on the moment she realized she was writing a book • Marian Ryan in Berlin, reading Han Kang • Lit Hub Recommends • Read from Teru Miyamoto’s novel Inhabitation.