Lit Hub Daily: June 23, 2022

TODAY: In 1868, Christopher Latham Sholes receives a patent for an invention he calls the “Type-Writer.”  

• Naomi Kanakia asks how the “money-less, class-less, occupation-less fantasy-land” became the go-to setting for most literary writers. | Lit Hub Criticism

• In today’s cute animal news, how birds learn to sing. | Lit Hub Nature

• “Repetition ruins a narrative,” writes Rosalie Knecht, so how can we create amid the brutal repetition of an endless pandemic? | Lit Hub Life in a Pandemic

• Sorry, Gen Xers: the 1970s are historical fiction now. Here are six books that capture the era. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• “Growing up as a girl in the church, I felt like my position on earth was to serve men.” Jessica Campbell and Nicole Georges talk comics and religion. | Lit Hub

• Go ahead, get angry—it might help your writing. | Lit Hub Craft

• How a town becomes a “poverty trap.” | Lit Hub Politics

• “My mom may have lived through my wedding, but the first time she skips a book launch because she’s dead, you better believe I’m going to be pissed.” Alex Kiester on obsessing over her mother’s (eventual) death. | Lit Hub

• David Grossman remembers his friend, the novelist A.B. Yehoshua. | Lit Hub

• Michael Gonzales on growing up in gun-crazy America. | CrimeReads

• “The novelist continues to write as if her readers are fundamentally beneath her.” Andrea Long Chu on Ottessa Moshfegh, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks

• “Here is a Philip Larkin poem about cryptocurrency.” Simon Rich explores the world of AI poetry. | The New Yorker

• In praise of Gertrude Stein’s experiments in the pulp genre. | JSTOR Daily

• Patrick Radden Keefe discusses the art of pulling people into unfamiliar topics with “the sheer human drama.” | Los Angeles Times

• Which W.G. Sebald novel should you start with? Glad you asked. | The Guardian

• Sarah Todd reports on the ways readers discriminate—and don’t—while choosing which books to read. | Quartz

• Elisa Shoenberger explores books about the comics industry. | Book Riot

• Julie Otsuka’s 2002 novel about a Japanese internment camp is being contested in a Wisconsin school district for being “too diverse” and “too sad.” | The Hub

Also on Lit Hub: The best books about underdogs • A new poem by Robert Wrigley • Read from Ottessa Moshfegh’s latest novel, Lapvona

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