Lit Hub Daily: March 29, 2022

• A look at Anton Chekhov’s beloved summer home in Ukraine, a “repository of hope” under threat amid Putin’s invasion. | Lit Hub

  Article continues after advertisement

• “If fiction writing is the big game, journaling is lifting weights and running laps, or whatever it is athletes do.” Kate Folk describes how journaling has become a “shadow side” of her writing practice. | Lit Hub

• 15 new books to help you recharge this week. | The Hub

• How does words evolve over time? | Lit Hub Language

• “Even my dearest friend saw me, on some level, as a pig rolling in a shit pile of free time.” Aimée Lutkin on the tensions between friends with kids and friends without. | Lit Hub

  Article continues after advertisement

• Bored by your own memoir? Take Maude Newton’s advice for following the flame of your interest. | Lit Hub Craft

• New titles from Emily St. John Mandel, Rebecca Roanhorse, and Janelle Monáe all feature among April’s best sci-fi and fantasy books. | Book Marks

• The best new nonfiction crime titles of February and March. | CrimeReads

• A lesson from book bans past: When the Kern County, CA Board of Supervisors banned The Grapes of Wrath. | JSTOR Daily

• “The secret of the Western is that its mythology nurtures a queer fantasy, hiding in plain sight.” Damon Ross Young on the toxic masculinity and spectral homosexuality of the Western. | Public Books

  Article continues after advertisement

• Margaret Atwood talks to Ezra Klein about storytelling, the Bible, and The Handmaid’s Tale. | The New York Times

• “Amazon will never be the same as sitting on the carpet in some under-trafficked aisle and reading your first Sweet Valley High.” Alexandra Lange digs into the great mall bookstore renaissance. | Bloomberg CityLab

• Masha Rumer connects with ex-Soviet immigrants who are “watching their fraught histories replay before their eyes” in Ukraine. | LARB

• “I believe that writing books about our experiences can save lives.” Corinne Segal talks to Sara Henning about poetry, trauma, and the language of grief. | Poetry Foundation

• What are the best audiobook subscription services? | Book Riot

  Article continues after advertisement

Also on Lit Hub: The 12 best book covers of March • On the tumultuous marriage of Miriam Leslie and Willie Wilde • Read from Irene Solà’s newly translated novel, When I Sing, Mountains Dance (tr. Mara Faye Lethem)