Lit Hub Daily: July 23, 2020

• “For decades I joked that home was somewhere around 33,000 feet. No more.” Samiya Bashir returns from Rome to an uncertain America. | Lit Hub Politics
• “I just don’t think that ideas or ideologies can stretch to encompass the complexity of the world.” Catherine Lacey talks to Kristin Iversen about religion, alienation, and more. | Lit Hub
• Lucie Britsch on learning her most important writing lesson from… Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. | Lit Hub
• What 100 writers have been reading in quarantine, from Anita Brookner to Kierkegaard. | Lit Hub
• “At the intersection of publisher and friend is the real, the conditions we choose not to ignore.” Rebecca Wolff on working with dear friend, the poet Catherine Wagner. | Lit Hub
• Adrian Tomine confronts shame, failure, and jerks in cartooning: Emily Gould on The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist. | Lit Hub
• Aya Gruber examines the complicated history of feminism’s impact on incarceration. | Lit Hub History
• Duende Books’ Angela Maria Spring on the institutional racism of the bookselling industry. | Lit Hub Politics
• ON THE VBC: On the Antibody, Mary South, Elisabeth Thomas, and Kristen Millares Young read and answer questions • New fiction by Blake Butler, Tracy O’Neill, Maisy Card, and Ashleigh Bryant Phillips on the Franklin Park Reading Series. | Lit Hub
• Parul Sehgal on Alex Trebek’s memoir, Helen Macdonald on a quest for the world’s most elusive owl, Masha Gessen on post-election nightmares, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• “No one has had time to truly refine their ideas about personal life in a state of widespread isolation and existential dread, and literature, even when political, is a fundamentally personal realm.” Lily Meyer on “the nascent literature of the coronavirus pandemic.” | The Atlantic
• “In books, as in most things, Wharton looked askance at the ‘new.’” On the lessons of Edith Wharton’s library. | Lapham’s Quarterly
• “How do you integrate the self again, when something has divided you?” How Natasha Trethewey wrote the story of her mother’s life and death. | Los Angeles Times
• An extensive database of cartoonists of color is a testament to the diversity of creators. | The OC Register
• Men? Reading romance novels? This “bromance book club” proves it’s more than just a convincing theoretical premise for a 2006 buddy comedy. | Men’s Health
• After being accused of divulging private information in two of his novels without consent, South Korean author Kim Bong-gon was stripped of a literary prize and the books are being recalled. | Korea Times
• The best way to sell books in a big-box store during a pandemic? Put them next to the items people need most. |  The New York Times

Also on Lit Hub: On Charlotte Cushman, the 19th-century actress who transformed gender dynamics in American theater • Arthur C. Clarke’s scientific romances eschew spectacle for wonder • Read an excerpt from Diane Zinna’s novel The All-Night Sun.