Lit Hub Daily: March 23, 2023

TODAY: In 1950, Ahdaf Soueif, Egyptian novelist and political commentator, is born.  

• Just an innocent little list that will make no one mad: The Lit Hub staff argues for 13 adaptations better than the books they’re based on. | Lit Hub Film & TV

  Article continues after advertisement
  Remove Ads

• “She is helping them to see their mother as a person, as opposed to a food-production machine.” Rosalynn Tyo on Semiotics of the Kitchen, Lessons in Chemistry, and resentfully cooking. | Lit Hub Food

• In Nature is Cool news, your pedicure pumice stone was once a foaming mass of gas and lava. | Lit Hub Science

• James Davis May on the catch-22 of writing about depression: “Writing these poems felt both healthy and unhealthy, like I was indulging my depression but also controlling it by describing it.” | Lit Hub Poetry

• Dasha Kiper considers Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” through the lens of dementia and caregiving. | Lit Hub Criticism

  Article continues after advertisement
  Remove Ads

• “A kind of writing so rare and accomplished that it seems to erase the very nuts and bolts of its own construction.” 5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks

• CrimeReads looks back at the 50th anniversary of a groundbreaking time in crime cinema: 1973. Here, Andrew Nette asks why Sidney Lumet made two movies about police corruption that year, and why we only seem to remember Serpico. | CrimeReads

• Donna Cameron on trying to learn about sex through… Steinbeck, and other essays about libido from the new issue of Dorothy Parker’s Ashes. | Dorothy Parker’s Ashes

• The Marshall Project shares five things they’ve learned about prison book ban policies across the country. | The Marshall Project

• An Oklahoma school teacher may have her teaching license revoked over suggesting students visit the Brooklyn Public Library website. No, this is not satire. | Tahlequah Daily Press

  Article continues after advertisement
  Remove Ads

• “I hope to continue to write until my life ends, and hope that each book is a bigger leap than the last.” Dani Shapiro reflects on turning 60. | Oldster

• “Close reading may be easy to measure, but it’s not the way to get kids to fall in love with storytelling.” Katherine Marsh examines why a generation of readers resents reading. | The Atlantic

Also on Lit Hub: Catherine Lacey on playing the long game • Authenticity and fantasy in Daisy Jones & the Six • Read from Sabina Murray’s new collection, Muckross Abbey and Other Stories

---