Lit Hub Daily: May 3, 2021

• Against leaving your options open: Pete Davis makes a counterargument in an era of infinite browsing. | Lit Hub

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• “The novel offers a meticulous dissection of a German male psyche at a time when German masculinity was being mobilized in a vast genocidal enterprise.” Clayton Wickham rereads The Drinker. | Lit Hub Criticism

• “I’m a non-native to my own ancestral worlds, and for me, no detail was too small.” Gian Sardar on writing across the distance between Kurdistan and rural Minnesota. | Lit Hub

• Kavita Bedford recommends books that expand the tradition of the flâneur, featuring Bryan Washington and Olivia Laing. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• “We’ve broken through glass ceilings—we just never learned how to fix them!” Bethany Kaylor explores the feminist history of DIY manuals. | Lit Hub

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• If your Monday morning needs a little coziness, check out the Fenimore Art Museum’s exhibit of Jan Brett’s children’s book illustrations. | Lit Hub Art

• “In the back of my mind, every project I was working on felt partly like an avoidance of this thing that I knew I had to write.” Adam Mansbach talks to Shawn Setaro about writing an honest elegy for his brother. | Lit Hub

• Anna Moschovakis and Matvei Yankelevich of Ugly Duckling Presse talk about their eclectic editorial taste and avoiding aesthetic homogeneity. | Lit Hub

• A new Andy Weir space adventure, a tale of feral motherhood, and a reissued classic by a groundbreaking Black author all feature among May’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books. | Book Marks

• “What we are witnessing is not criminal negligence, but an outright crime against humanity.” Arundhati Roy on India’s COVID crisis. | The Guardian

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• “There is nothing unique about Blake Bailey. Just like there was nothing unique about my teacher who manipulated, abused, and raped me. Predatory men are pathetically all the same.” Alisson Wood on Blake Bailey, Lolita, and her own experience of abuse. | Vanity Fair

• Computers are getting better at writing. (Not literary newsletters though, right? RIGHT??) | The New Yorker

• Elissa Washuta explains how writing can be an act of healing. | The Millions

• Nico Walker and Brad Phillips remember Giancarlo DiTrapano. | Bookforum

• Robert Jones Jr., Dantiel W. Moniz, Dawnie Walton, and Deesha Philyaw join for a conversation about releasing their first books as Black authors at this moment in history. | Kirkus Reviews

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• Recent controversies over books by Mike Pence and Kellyanne Conway, among others, have challenged “the story that publishers have told about themselves for decades.” | The New Republic

Also on Lit Hub: Your week in virtual book events • Robert Frost’s thoughts on sports, real estate, and drinking • Read from Callum Angus’ debut story collection, A Natural History of Transition