Lit Hub Weekly: May 24-28, 2021

• “We tend to believe that invertebrates lack any mental life whatsoever, but science has been exposing the frailty of such a belief.” Jonathan Balcombe on the secret lives of flies. | Lit Hub Science

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• “We can no longer act as though book sales do not have ethical and moral components.” Josh Cook considers booksellers’ complicity in the resurgence of white supremacy. | Lit Hub Politics

• Nathan Gorenstein on the life of John Moses Browning, whose “name was synonymous with pistols of all types” yet lived in relative obscurity… until World War I. | Lit Hub Biography

• Clinton Heylin on the writers who helped a young Dylan find his voice, and Howard Sounes on the loneliness of the icon’s later years. | Lit Hub Music

• Dwyer Murphy with all the international thrillers to stream this Memorial Day weekend. | CrimeReads

• James Wolcott on Philip Roth, Parul Sehgal on Doireann Ni Ghriofa, J. Robert Lennon on Rachel Cusk, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks

• Roxane Gay is launching her own imprint at Grove Atlantic. | New York Times

• Thessaly La Force considers the complexity of creatively charged romantic partnerships, from the Shelleys to de Beauvoir and Sartre. | T Magazine

• “We protect kids from racist ideas by pointing them out.” Ibram X. Kendi, Sonja Cherry-Paul, and Jason Reynolds discuss the new “remix” of Stamped. | Kirkus

• “You can’t just pick up your art career, eighteen months later, from the place you dropped it. There’s no job to go back to; the job is you.” What effects has the pandemic had on the arts? | Harper’s

• “Food, writing, they’re both offerings of building community and communication.” T Kira Madden considers her relationship to writing and cooking. | Catapult

• Looking for something to watch? Why not try a Rachel Kushner-approved Criterion Collection film. | The Current

• Amy Tan reflects on the legacy of The Joy Luck Club, her relationship to writing, and the value of fiction. | Harper’s Bazaar

• A newly discovered treasure trove of Brontë family manuscripts is up for auction. | New York Times

• Read a conversation between Nicholas Glastonbury and Anton Hur about how the publishing industry is failing translators. | Words Without Borders

• “We’re definitely seeing more people who seem like they’re really willing to do the work.” Checking in with Black-owned bookstores after a year of political reckoning. | NPR

• In his bid for the US Senate, J.D. Vance has embraced the idea of “politics as total war.” Unity! | The New Republic

• “Was that—could that be a hyphen? Sitting unabashedly between the words New and York?” Pardis Mahdavi looks at the politics of the hyphen, circa 1945. | The Paris Review

• “I felt like we weren’t given the room to be funny, to be jerks, to be messy—to be normal.” Randall Park and Adrian Tomine discuss Asian American storytelling in Hollywood, and bringing Shortcomings to the screen. | Vanity Fair

• Ta-Nehisi Coates on his half-decade run in the Marvel universe. | Polygon

• Why we need fiction: Read this interview with Keiichiro Hirano, translated from Japanese to English by Eli K.P. William. | PEN America

Also on Lit Hub:

Here are the 38 novels you should read this summer, plus the 75 nonfiction books you should read after that (according to us) • Cathy Park Hong on the summer of 2020 • Brandon Stosuy recommends “cultivating an art of noticing” in the age of endless scrolling • On the evolutionary uses of storytelling • Gabby Bellot on W.E.B. Du Bois’ radical sci-fi story • Arielle Zibrak against the concept of “guilty pleasure” literature • Linda Rui Feng on writing from the precarious hunger of childhood • Julianna Margulies recalls the tipping point of her TV career • Rinaldo Walcott traces the tradition of rioting • Joy Harjo on making a new map of poetry • Are gay uncles having a cultural moment? • How daytime soaps and PBS laid the groundwork for The Real Housewives • B. Pietras on the old women and queer men of Alice Munro’s fiction • Pioneering mathematician Katherine Johnson on the diagnosis that altered her family forever • Anita Diamant traces the brief, contentious history of menstrual leave • Virginia Kantra on the task of updating Little Women • Robert MacFarlane on the “watery life” of Roger Deakin • Chloe Angyal on the hypercompetitive world of ballet • Bo-Young Kim recommends five sci-fi books that shaped her writing career • Mona Kareem on Ra’ad Abdulqadir’s mission “to save the Iraqi prose poem” • Chad Hanson on the myth of the “tidy forest” • Maya Abu Al-Hayat on the thriving artistic life of the Palestinian city Ramallah • Chad Bryant on literary life in turn-of-the-century Prague • Catherine Wolff considers the ways we seek out the divine

The Best of Book Marks:

“Midnight’s Children sounds like a continent finding its voice.” The first reviews of Salman Rushdie’s Booker-winning magical realist epic • A month of literary listening: AudioFile’s best audiobooks of May • New titles by Rachel Cusk, Joan Silber, Alison Bechdel, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Month

More from CrimeReads:

Kathy Wang with six nonfiction books about tech billionaires behaving badly • Outlaws, addicts, dreamers, hustlers: David Gordon on the literature of the New York underworld • A brief history of the serial killer movie that was supposed to be David Fincher’s follow-up to Zodiac • Charles Casillo on Suddenly, Last Summer and the scene that nearly broke Elizabeth Taylor • Spies in exile, treasure hunts, and missing persons: May’s best nonfiction for crime readers • Ginger Bolton would like you to have a sweet and cozy summer with these delectable mysteries • May’s best new international crime novels • Jonathan Stevenson on the legacy of the CIA’s first defector • 14 new-in-paperback releases to read by the poolside • Krista Davis with cozy mysteries featuring delicious and doable recipes