Lit Hub Daily: March 2, 2020

TODAY: In 1904, Theodor Seuss Geisel (AKA Dr. Seuss) is born.

• Lorrie Moore talks “getting morning coffee on the page,” the voiceover on Frontline, and ignoring writer’s block. | Lit Hub
• From Anon to alt-right: on the dangerous tricksters of 4chan and the evolution of online toxicity. | Lit Hub Tech
• On the magic sentences of Lauren Groff, creating action without verbs. | Lit Hub Criticism
• Look to the stars for your March reading suggestions with the (uncannily accurate) Astrology Book Club. | Lit Hub
• “Travel was and will always be about exclusion.” Intan Paramaditha on the challenge of telling honest stories about the places we go. | Lit Hub Travel
• “The Names.” A poem from Rick Barot’s collection, The Galleons. | Lit Hub
• “Toni Morrison’s Catholicism was one of the Passion: of scarred bodies, public execution, and private penance.” Nick Ripatrazone on the faith of an American icon. | Lit Hub Criticism
• “It’s one thing to read Ellmann’s 1,030-page novel; it’s another to read it aloud.” On recording (and listening to) the 45-hour audiobook edition of Ducks, Newburyport. | The Guardian
• If You Give a Mouse a Cookie is not a parable of the welfare state (but the Choose Your Own Adventure series is “Milton Friedman for kids”). | Slate
• How do we know that people actually memorized epic poems like The Iliad and The Odyssey? | JSTOR
• “Maybe once I figure out what poetry really is, I’ll stop.” Jeffrey Yang on writing and asking questions. | The Paris Review
• Even in the face of Amazon’s “retail wizardry,” indie booksellers aren’t going down without a fight. | The Bookseller
• A bill introduced in Missouri would subject librarians to misdemeanor charges and a possible jail sentence for buying or lending books deemed “inappropriate” for children. | The Hour
• Looking to rent a studio apartment in San Francisco for under $2,000 (yes, that’s a “reasonable” amount)? Try the place Dashiell Hammett lived in for three years in the 1920s. | Curbed San Francisco

Also on Lit Hub: Tim Bakken on the self-deluded hubris at the heart of the American military • 10 books you should read in March, according to Lit Hub staff and contributors • Read an excerpt from Maisy Card’s debut novel These Ghosts Are Family.

 

---