Lit Hub Daily: March 31, 2022

TODAY: In 1836, the first installment of The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens’s first novel, is published.   

• Robert Tuesday Anderson considers Jane Austen’s obsession with food in her novels, and shares a recipe for “Chawton Cottage Plum Pudding.” | Lit Hub Food

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• A flop, a war, and a “secret” wedding: On the nuptials of infamous Hollywood couple Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier. | Lit Hub Film

• Neal Thompson on the joys of digging through archives from home (and why so many genealogical records lead back to the Mormon Church). | Lit Hub

• We shouldn’t be relieved by near misses with disaster, writes Juliette Kayyem, but grateful we have time to prepare for the next one. | Lit Hub

• What’s the real story behind America’s national parks? Rolf Diamant and Ethan Carr recommend books that go beyond the myths. | Lit Hub Nature

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• The month in literary listening: AudioFile’s best audiobooks of March. | Book Marks

• On the legacy of Making Space, a pioneering 1984 book that analyzed gender segregation in cities and the gendered violence of public space. | Lit Hub

• CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief Dwyer Murphy on the many excellent crime shows dropping in April. | CrimeReads

• Laird Hunt on Emily St. John Mandel, Megan Milks on Melissa Febos, and more of the reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks

• “It goes without saying that this tragedy has joined us together for a lifetime.” Why Kate Tsurkan chooses to stay in Ukraine. | The New Yorker

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• “My mother taught me how to make everything legible when language was not.” Ocean Vuong on writing and grieving. | TIME

• Deb Olin Unferth tells the story of her pandemic-inspired friendship with a goose. | The Paris Review

• “Customers will come in and say, ‘I just want something that’s gay and happy.’” Elizabeth A. Harris on the rise of LGBTQ+ romance. | The New York Times

• “There is always room to broaden our sense of what books we think readers want.” Etelka Lehoczky talks to Mariko Tamaki, who creates LGBTQ-focused graphic novels. | NPR

• Ryan Boyd and John Warner discuss college writing, academic institutions, and teaching in 2022. | Public Books

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• Esmé Weijun Wang’s life in banquets. | Bon Appetit

Also on Lit Hub: Megan Mayhew Bergman shares her great-grandmother’s cake recipe • Daisy Pitkin recommends books about collective power • Read from Missouri Williams’s debut novel, The Doloriad

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