Lit Hub Daily: May 25, 2021

• Hot Books Summer is upon us: Here are the 38 novels you should read this summer, as recommended by the Lit Hub editors. | Lit Hub

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• “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

• ER without Nurse Hathway? Julianna Margulies recalls the tipping point of her TV career (and her love for the Uncle Vanya monologue). | Lit Hub Film & TV

• Say it with us now: New! Books! Tuesday! | The Hub

• Rinaldo Walcott traces the tradition of rioting, “an important element of the quest for Black freedom,” from slavery to now. | Lit Hub Politics

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• “We must make a new map, together where poetry is sung.” Joy Harjo on the upcoming anthology Living Nations, Living Words. | Lit Hub Poetry

• Are gay uncles having a cultural moment, or is it a clever bit of branding? Steven Rowley, guncle to five, digs into a contemporary phenomenon. | Lit Hub

• “The last thing I want to do in my writing life is repeat myself.” Marisa Silver talks Jane Ciabattari about pivoting to surrealism with The Mysteries. | Lit Hub

• 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

• Kathy Wang on the literature of tech billionaires behaving badly. | CrimeReads

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• “Midnight’s Children sounds like a continent finding its voice.” The first reviews of Salman Rushdie’s Booker-winning magical realist epic. | Book Marks

• Angela Y. Davis, Natalie Diaz, and more artists, critics, and scholars have signed a letter condemning trustees of New York’s Museum of Modern Art for being “directly involved with support for Israel’s apartheid rule.” | Hyperallergic

• On the overlooked legacy of John Wieners, one of the most important gay poets of his generation. | Boston Review

• Kikuko Tsumura, with translator Polly Barton, discusses her new novel, narrative devices, and female solidarity in the workplace. | The Rumpus

• “Back then, I was oblivious to the fact that writing a novel is hard, and that many people try and fail.” Mateo Askaripour talks about his satirical novel, the writing process, and his experiences in corporate America. | The Guardian

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• Fernanda Melchor considers the anti-nostalgia of José Emilio Pacheco’s Battles in the Desert. | The Paris Review

• During April of 2020, Pamela Petro and her partner, each the kitchen archivists of their families, “decided to cook and bake our way back in time.” | Guernica

• “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

Also on Lit Hub: Eric Weisbard recommends music literature spanning from the 18th century to the 21st • How daytime soaps and PBS laid the groundwork for The Real Housewives • Read from Richard Flanagan’s latest novel, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams