Lit Hub Daily: July 22, 2022

• Get in fast, get out faster, and make every word pop: Gary Lippman’s brief survey of even briefer fiction. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

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• “How had an Ivy League undergrad, someone on the same academic path as mine, wound up in state prison for more than a decade?” Jen Maxfield examines how unjust drug policy and systemic racism created a class of innocent felons. | Lit Hub Politics

• Verlyn Klinkenborg’s advice for writing more clearly. | Lit Hub Craft

• The John Wick filmmakers explain why killing the character’s dog was more than enough to justify his bloody revenge quest. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Isaac Fitzgerald’s Dirtbag, Massachusetts, and  all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

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• Nat Cassidy with 8 unconventional coming-of-age novels. | CrimeReads

• “I don’t wish fame on anyone.” Ottessa Moshfegh on Lapvona, haters, and TikTok literary branding. | NPR

• Henry Louis Gates Jr. is spearheading the Oxford Dictionary of African American English: “You wouldn’t normally think of a dictionary as a way of telling the story of the evolution of the African American people, but it is.” | The New York Times

• Library workers in Oklahoma have been warned not to help patrons find abortion-related information. | Vice

• “Is it impossible to touch somebody you’ve lost? Is the light that’s lost really lost forever?” Mieko Kawakami considers the nature of memory. | Astra

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• Elle Griffin on the effect crypto could have on the publishing industry. | Esquire

• Kali Fajardo-Anstine lists six books that “provide a sharper rendering of Western stories and a broader view of the region that has captured the world’s imagination for centuries.” | The Atlantic

• Visit Recycled Reading of Vermont Books and Instruments, a unique bookstore that combines a love of reading with music. | Addison County Independent

• Casey Cep talks to Richard Howorth, the owner of Square Books, the bookstore that helped transform Oxford, MS. | The New Yorker

Also on Lit Hub: A reading list for lovers, love-seekers and the loved • Reckoning with the memory of Jonas Mekas, godfather of avant-garde cinema • Read from Nell Stevens’s latest novel, Briefly, a Delicious Life