Lit Hub Daily: July 13, 2020

• “History is not written just by acts of war and feats of conquest, nor should it be commemorated only in the monuments erected by its victors.” Sofia Perez travels through Spain as it grapples with its Fascist past. | Lit Hub Travel
• Estelle Laure reminds us what it’s like to be a young reader attracted to the darkest possible stories. | Lit Hub
• Of subjugation and ownership: Joshua Bennett on the use of animals in the work of Black writers. | Lit Hub Criticism
• “There would be no skipping allowed and no rereading of old favorites permitted.” Angelica Baker reads her way through her bookshelf during the pandemic. | Lit Hub
• Franz Wright talks to Sarah Messer about love, poetry, and the failures of language. | Lit Hub
• “Creating a garden can be as much a re-creation as a creation; an idea of paradise.” Sue Stuart-Smith on gardening as world-building. | Lit Hub
• Leila Slimani on sex and an ethics of women’s liberation in Morocco. | Lit Hub Politics
• Alane Mason remembers the quiet genius of her friend, Brad Watson, who died Wednesday at 64. | Lit Hub
• Renata Adler’s Speedboat, Mary Gaitskill’s The Mare, C. E. Morgan’s The Sport of Kings, and more rapid-fire book recs from Costalegre author Courtney Maum. | Book Marks
• Baynard Woods and Brandon Soderberg on the rise and fall of the most corrupt police squad in America. | CrimeReads
• “Is the novel dead, or is the kind of novel that you like simply not getting the attention it once did?“ On yet another round of hand wringing about the State of Literature and identity politics. | The Guardian
• If you’re running out of books, perhaps you should consider dipping into your spouse’s library? | The Washington Post
• “This book also exists as a chapter in what Mitchell calls his ‘strange, ongoing übernovel.’” Read a profile of David Mitchell. | TIME
• Did you know thatAmerica’s first Black-owned bookstore was opened in New York City in 1834 by David Ruggles, the abolitionist founder of an anti-slavery newspaper, and one of the early organizers of the Underground Railroad? | JSTOR Daily
• In Pottstown, Pennsylvania, seasoned lone reporter Evan Brandt works to tell his community’s stories. | The New York Times
• Kent Russell on the “ruse” Walt Disney sold to the people of Florida. | The Paris Review

Also on Lit Hub: What it’s like to run the first American diner in Paris • Santino Fontina on becoming an audiobook narrator • Read from Robin Wasserman’s new novel Mother Daughter Widow Wife.