Lit Hub Daily: May 11, 2022

TODAY: In 868 AD, Wang Jie commissions a block printer to create a 17-and-a-half-foot-long scroll of the sacred Buddhist text The Diamond Sutra, making it the oldest dated printed book in existence.  

• Unpacking the literary destruction of the Ukrainian language. | Lit Hub Ukraine

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• Why will people risk going unvaccinated but hesitate to live next to a nuclear power plant? Vaclav Smil investigates the psychology of hazard. | Lit Hub

• Reema Patel considers how the South Asian diaspora trope known as “the return of the native” applies to her life and debut novel. | Lit Hub

• Behind the scenes of making a very important prop for National Treasure: Book of Secrets. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• “He’d pictured an old age lolling by the pond at the foot of his backyard. He told us so in 2008, as he distributed copies of his do-not-resuscitate form.” Tad Friend talks to his father. | Lit Hub Memoir

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• Shoshana Olidort considers middle age, Erika Meitner’s Useful Junk, and the poetics of aging. | Lit Hub Poetry

• “I hope that someday trafficking is seen as the slavery it actually it is.” Sara Kruzan, the inspiration behind Sara’s Law, tells her story. | Lit Hub Memoir

• Chris Holm with eight biological horror movies guaranteed to make your skin crawl. | CrimeReads

• Kristen Arnett, Keah Brown, and more queer contributors to the new anthology Sex and the Single Woman reflect on writing their essays. | Autostraddle

• What makes a great—or terrible—audiobook performance? | Vulture

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• Not content with just banning books, Republicans in several states are trying to restrict school library databases. | The Washington Post

• “When survival is on the line, books can drill into the core human question of how we take care of one another and ourselves.” How climate anxiety is seeping into all kinds of fiction. | The Atlantic

• Steph Auteri delves into the books that explore the flaws of the true crime approach to storytelling. | Book Riot

• “Speeches are the first draft of history, and the ones that are undelivered are effectively a first draft of an alternative history that didn’t happen.” Jeff Nussbaum on the speeches that were never delivered. | Esquire

• “History is a permanent negotiation with the past, a contractual relationship with truth that needs to be constantly renewed.” Hernan Diaz talks about writing stories set in the past. | Los Angeles Review of Books

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Also on Lit Hub: When Murdoch met Sartre • Poetry by Maria Laina (tr. Karen Van Dyck) • Read from Jokha Alharthi’s newly translated novel, Bitter Orange Tree (tr. Marilyn Booth)

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