Lit Hub Daily: May 20, 2019

• Jeremy Klemin looks for meaning in Bruce Chatwin’s unpublished magnum opus, and finds “the muddy, ephemeral beauty that lies in unadulterated failure.” | Lit Hub
• Game of Thrones is over, so you’ll need to find another way to slake your dragonthirst. We suggest these six epic fantasy series. | Lit Hub
• Cutter Wood considers the implications of the retirement of the universal kilogram, the last physical object used as a standard of measurement. | Lit Hub
• “We were very charmed by her tendency to feel shame. She was a Chinese dog that way.” Xuan Juliana Wang on her long-distance dog, Ella. | Lit Hub
• “I have had two abortions, I have borne two children.” Ani DiFranco on reproductive freedom and taking on the patriarchy. | Lit Hub
• “Camp Fire,” a poem by sam sax from the upcoming issue of Freeman’s. | Lit Hub
• This week in Shhh…Secrets of the Librarians: Eugene Lim on Leni Zumas, Rupert Giles, and libraries full of tears. | Book Marks
• “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel”: William Gibson’s Neuromancer at 35. | Book Marks
• Take a crime fiction tour of Athens, as Paul French guides us through the many superb crime novels written in and about the Greek capital. | CrimeReads
• Herman Wouk, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, and Marjorie Morningstar, among others, died Friday at 103. | AP
• “There is one form of power that has fascinated me ever since I was a girl, even though it has been widely colonized by men: the power of storytelling.” Elena Ferrante on reclaiming the power of stories. | The New York Times
• “Robinson writes like he tries to run – changing mode, changing register, trying to surprise”: On the life of Roger Robinson, the legendary runner and writer who argues that running is an essential part of our shared literary heritage. | Stuff
• “It’s not that Yossarian is afraid to die, it’s that he’s afraid of who gets to take [his life] from him and why.” Read a profile of Christopher Abbott, aka Yossarian in Hulu’s Catch-22. | WSJ Magazine
• The tragicomic story behind “Life With You,” the unlikely jazz hit that Jean Rhys wrote for George Melly and the Feetwarmers. | Belfast Telegraph
• Behold, the first full trailer for HBO’s adaptation of His Dark Materials. | The Verge

Also on Lit Hub: On But That’s Another Story, Lisa Lucas talks Robert Caro and the injustices of NYC urban planning • Walking through the woods of Midtown Manhattan with Jessica Francis Kane • In India, one publisher’s high-stakes fight for a caste-free society • Read from Juliet Grames’ debut novel, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna.