Lit Hub Daily: March 22, 2022

• OSCARS WEEK: In part two of our literary look at this year’s Best Picture Nominees, we recommend what to read (and watch) if you liked Belfast and Dune. | Lit Hub Oscars

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• In a book slump? Here are 14 new releases to revive your reading life. | The Hub

• Ridicule and redemption: What Hopi traditions of the “shame clown” can teach us about healthy uses of shame. | Lit Hub

• How do we mourn without funerals? Olivia Clare Friedman considers grief without ritual. | Lit Hub

• “Just as a matter of principle, I don’t believe people who kill presidents are more interesting than people who don’t.” Karen Joy Fowler talks about decentering John Wilkes Booth in her new novel, Booth. | Lit Hub

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• Alejandro Varela on the problem of conflating marginalized novelists with their protagonists. | Lit Hub

• On the rise of Octavian, Julius Caesar’s successor, in “the age of traitors and turncoats, defectors and double agents.” | Lit Hub History

• Marion Deeds has a simple answer for why we love heists: competency porn. | CrimeReads

• “To visit a place is to visit all the times you’ve been in that place. Spaces hold stories.” Read a profile of Jennifer Egan. | Vogue

• Why should we read fiction in a burning world? (No, the answer has nothing to do with empathy.) | Gawker

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• “Everything I’ve ever done is about using humor as a weapon.” John Waters talks defending pariahs, looking for artistic trouble, and writing a hard book. | The New York Times Magazine

• A public library in Atánquez, Colombia is connecting young people with their ancestral histories. | The Guardian

• Here’s how suburban parents are fighting recent calls to ban certain books from school libraries. | NPR

• What are the best science fiction books of all time? | Esquire

• Take a look inside the Radical Hood Library, headquarters of the Noname Book Club. | Teen Vogue

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Also on Lit Hub: Polly Barton on communicating across cultures… in the bedroom • What it means to “become” American • Read from Anne Tyler’s latest novel, French Braid