Lit Hub Daily: May 1, 2023

• “What passes between a mother and a son is not defined by her love in the moment, but later by the echoes of her motherhood.” Terry McDonell remembers his mother, Irma. | Lit Hub Memoir

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• “Left to express our agonies in a prefabricated, toothless font, we feel our personalities being held back.” Lamenting the lost art of penmanship. | Lit Hub

• Here are 25 new paperbacks to enjoy outside. | The Hub

• Lucy Scholes reads the “novel of hauntings” Ladivine by Marie NDiaye, whose writing career launched at the tender age of 17. | Lit Hub Criticism

• Natalie Zutter rounds up May’s best sci-fi and fantasy books. | Lit Hub

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• Annaliese Gerlick considers Storming Caesars Palace 18 years later, and the progress won by Black mothers since George W. Bush. | Lit Hub Politics

• Apparently, people are now decorating their homes with fake books. Perhaps they need some suggestions for real ones? | The New York Times

• A new play explores the nature of goodness during The Third Reich. | NY Review of Books

• “Mr Madi and Ms Lawton refused to show prospective buyers around or have the extravagant rooms and grounds photographed for the auction brochure.” The squatting of Evelyn Waugh’s house continues apace. | The Daily Mail

• How Jorie Graham wrote one of her most powerful works while exiled, in grief, and battling cancer. | Vulture

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• Seven novels that reclaim and unabashedly celebrate pop music. | Electric Lit

Also on Lit Hub: Seven must-read poetry books out this month • Ava Chin on growing up without knowing half your family • Read from Mieko Kanai’s newly translated novel, Mild Vertigo (tr. Polly Barton)