Lit Hub Daily: July 22, 2019

• “I wanted to express my anxieties and relieve me of them, though perhaps that’s not fair, because now I’ve passed them on to the reader.” Helen Phillips on grief, anxiety, and crafting a terrifying literary thriller. | Lit Hub
• On George Orwell and the borderlands of life and death: Andrew Ervin talks to Robert Macfarlane and Emily Wilson about the world’s “thin places.” | Lit Hub
• Are you an adult who loves Veronica Mars? Scratch your itches for small-town California noir, private detective hijinks, and witty repartee for days with these 11 books. | Lit Hub
• “I challenge anyone visiting the Philippines, now or then, to try to last a day without hearing a Carpenters song.” Karen Tongson on her namesake, Karen Carpenter. | Lit Hub
• “Both require a level of isolation, of quiet solitude. Both ask you to reach deep inside, to look inward.” On the connection between writing and cruising. | Lit Hub
• Was The Odyssey the first Greek novel? Robert Graves’ Homer’s Daughter explores myth and authorship. | Lit Hub
• What is an “airport thriller,” anyway? David Bell considers the nature of the airport novel, and recommends 6 crime books perfect for a long flight. | CrimeReads
• “Is woman crowding out man in the field of fiction?”: Going backwards in time 112 years, when The New York Times asked whether there would ever be a woman who wrote a bestseller. | The New York Times
• The CW’s upcoming Nancy Drew series isn’t your grandma’s detective story—it may be better suited for fans of Riverdale and Twin Peaks. | Vulture
• “The father was tired, and the mother was tired.” If Ernest Hemingway were a parenting blogger. | McSweeney’s
• Considering all the people who work on them, from author to agent to editor to publicist to production manager, should books include movie-style credits? | The Guardian
• Need to unwind? J. Ryan Stradahl, author of The Lager Queen of Minnesota, tells you what to drink while reading Alice Munro, Paul Beatty, and more. | Electric Literature
• There’s a standoff between New Hampshire’s governor and the state’s Poetry Society over the new poet laureate. Will it be the decorated literary writer, or the guy who wrote about wanting to have sex with Condoleeza Rice in a bathroom? | Slate
• This weekend was the 39th annual Hemingway Look-Alike Contest in Key West. Good beards, everyone. | WPTV

Also on Lit Hub: Walt Odets on the first years of the AIDS epidemic and the stigmatization of gay men • Pier Paolo Pasolini: sketches of Rome • Read the eponymous story from Chris Dennis’ new collection.