Lit Hub Weekly: May 17 - 21, 2021

• Grieving with Seneca: Nancy Sherman on what the stoics can teach us about grief. | Lit Hub Philosophy

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• Armchair catastrophist Jim Shepard reflects on the uncomfortable déjà vu of writing a pandemic novel pre-COVID-19. | Lit Hub

• “Why can’t I go a week without wondering what she might have made of the person I’ve become?” Barrett Swanson encounters God and ghosts at the Wisconsin State Fair. | Lit Hub

• Katy Waldman on Olivia Laing’s Everybody, Noah Kulwin on Malcolm Gladwell’s The Bomber Mafia, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks

• A look at 22 new and upcoming books by Asian American and Pacific Islander authors perfect for mystery readers. | CrimeReads

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• “Did I need to train like a superhero just to be a person in America? Maybe.” Alexander Chee recalls his father’s lessons in self-defense. | GQ

• Colson Whitehead and Margaret Atwood discuss the challenges and possibilities of adaptation. | Time

• When Laurin Mayeno’s children’s book about gender diversity was banned in her area, she began an initiative to get it to as many kids as possible. | HuffPost

• “Younger maintains all of the starry eyed glamour of the book world, and very little of its heartache.” Maris Kreizman on Younger as publishing world fan fiction. | Town & Country

• “I don’t think there is any greater loneliness than looking directly at the untamable fury of our world.” Kristen Radtke on listening to loneliness. | New York Times

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• In the midst of ongoing public reckonings, “book publishing is having an existential crisis.” | Vox

• “What was alternative without bitterness, pasty complexions, hatred of the contemporary, feelings of ostracization, moping?” Jeremy Atherton Lin on Morrissey and the cult of the wounded white male. | The Yale Review

• Mary Beard talks to Katy Waldman about feminist translations, the fluidity of canons, and engaging with trolls. | The New Yorker 

• A conversation on “guilty pleasures” in academia, from “the iconic texts of bad heterosexuality” to “rich white people fictions.” | LARB

• How Lois Lew mastered IBM’s 5,400-character(!) typewriter. | Fast Company

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• Eve Ewing talks about finding her writing community, the pathways to art, and Black girls in STEM. | Catapult

• “The Israeli soldiers will ask the child not, Did you throw stones, but, Why did you throw stones.” Read Rachel Kushner’s 2016 account of her time in the West Bank. | n+1

• “It is the fanciest hotel I have ever stayed in, and I am here only because I might die.” Alex McElroy reflects on their eight-day stay at a New York City quarantine hotel. | Esquire

• Are unions the way to diversify the publishing industry’s overwhelmingly white workforce? | Workday Minnesota 

• Devoney Looser explores the Austen family’s “complex entanglements” with colonial slavery, from known complicity to anti-slavery activism. | Times Literary Supplement

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Also on Lit Hub:

Nuclear War: What’s in it for You? and 76 other wild book titles • Nora Caplan-Bricker considers the twisted dream of home ownership in Tana French’s novels • Edward St. Aubyn in conversation with Merlin Sheldrake • Brenda Peynado makes a case for fabulism as the new sincerity • Jen Silverman on learning to make a scene • How to write a joint memoir without getting divorced • A bet between two astronauts to see who gets to space first • Dr. Robert Pearl on racial bias and inequity in healthcare • Alex McElory on trans self-acceptance narratives • Brian Broome considers the one-two punch of gender and racial identity • Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper on Hasidic fear of gentrification in Williamsburg • Virginie Despentes on continuing the feminist revolution • Erica Jenks Henry on the agony (and ecstasy) of publishing your work online • Nancy Jo Sales on the gamification of dating apps • What we can learn about care work from the characters of Lorrie Moore and Ottessa Moshfegh • Bridget Collins against the myth of the tormented artist • When James Grady watched a Public Macho Standoff between Norman Mailer and G. Gordon Liddy • On the origins of white Europeans’ bigoted fascination with race • Suchitra Vijayan on the human casualties of arbitrary borders • How does a book get adapted for TV and film? • Becoming a writer after a decade of performing lung transplants • Claire Cox reflects on launching her debut novel after a year of loss • Phoebe Wynne considers how ancient tales became a rallying cry for modern women • Samantha Silva gets some unconventional writing help from an astrologer • Nick Ripatrazone on W.S. Merwin and the New Jersey wilderness he loved • Rafe Posey advises on how to avoid bottomless research holes • Saikat Majumdar considers class and caste in India’s Covid crisis • Alex Bezzerides on the first humans to start cooking meat • Dave Seminara gets mixed up in the subculture of extreme travelers • Does a color exist if we don’t have a name for it?

The Best of Book Marks:

Twelfth Night, Paradise, War and Peace, and more rapid-fire book recs from Alice Miller • Slaughterhouse-Five and the 20th-Century Apocalypse: a 1969 review of Kurt Vonnegut’s iconic anti-war novel • Anna Karenina, The Vanishing Half, Where the Wild Things Are, and more rapid-fire book recs from Hamnet author Maggie O’Farrell • New titles by Francis Spufford, Claire Fuller, Sarah Schulman, and Aminatta Forna all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week

More from CrimeReads:

Crawford Smith with a tale of witchcraft and murder in Jazz Age America • Audrey Blake recommends 6 medical nonfiction books that read like thrillers • Jeff Guinn on Pancho Villa, Revolutionary Movie Star • Morgan Cry on the hey-day of Spain’s Costa del Crime • Shop Talk: a look at Megan Abbott’s work routine, featuring diet coke and plenty of tchotchkes • Elizabeth Brundage on the challenges and rewards of writing character-driven thrillers • Claire Fuller with a list of novels that are not mysteries but are nonetheless full of suspense • Daniel Barbarisi takes us inside the hunt for Forrest Fenn’s hidden treasure • Olivia Rutigliano with a love letter to the late, great Charles Grodin • Daryl Gregory on murder, metafiction, and mash-ups