Lit Hub Daily: June 20, 2024
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
TODAY: In 1890, The Picture of Dorian Gray is published.
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- “It is contrary, it cuts against the grain, including the grain of Olmstead’s own work.” Brock Clarke on Robert Olmstead’s Stay Here with Me. | Lit Hub Criticism
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Tracy Chevalier on writing, bookshelf organization, and alternative career paths: “Sometimes I see photos of houses where books are organized by color and I think two things: 1. Ridiculous; not readers. 2. God, that would be so much easier!” | Lit Hub In Conversation
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- “The mainstream conversation on the racial wealth gap is nearly devoid of how much money was amassed, passed down, and repurposed through land theft and hoarding.” Brea Baker on Black land ownership and historical injustice. | Lit Hub
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“We come away troubled, unsettled—and in some subtle way changed.” 5 book reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks
- How do babies learn to understand language? Steven Mithen on the science of language acquisition in early childhood. | Lit Hub Science
- Read “My Atmosphere,” a poem by Alan Felsenthal: “From the green axil of the velvetleaf / angled to the sun and its splintered light / a yellow flower that dulls the green.” | Lit Hub Poetry
- Worried about the out of pocket costs of promoting your own book? According to Maris Kreizman, not all hope is lost. | Lit Hub
- “The daughters filled out their paperwork, renewed their passports, reserved their tickets, packed their suitcases, and flew halfway around the world to their parents’ apartment in northern Tehran.” Read from Suzi Ehtesham-Zadeh’s story collection, Zan. | Lit Hub Fiction
- “Over eight years have passed since Lahiri announced her intention to leave behind the terrain of English letters and write only in Italian.” On Jhumpa Lahiri and choosing language. | Public Books
- Liza Katz Duncan talks to Cynthia Marie Hoffman about OCD, stigma, and craft. | Full Stop
- Grace Byron revisits “Hapworth 16, 1924,” Salinger’s final story: “Salinger’s characters treat their lives like uninteresting toys, things to be thrown around—and this bourgeois literary style has infused contemporary fiction with vicious glee.” | Los Angeles Review of Books
- Laura Kipnis takes you inside an AI reading companion that might push the limits of the uncanny valley. | Wired
- “It had come to resemble what I understood of Le Guin: pioneering, inventive, and rapidly fading.” Meghna Rao revisits Ursula K. Le Guin’s early-internet blog. | Dirt
- Bob Eckstein talks about his new illustrated guide to museums, and the project of making cultural centers as sexy and exciting as possible. | The New York Times
