Lit Hub Daily: May 5, 2023

• “Too distasteful, too sordid, and too shameful.” Pauline Harmange on why she needed to write about her abortion. | Lit Hub Memoir

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• Janet Steen on mourning the end of her brother’s story. | Lit Hub

• Elissa Suh reviews the forlorn, faithful new adaptation of Paolo Cognetti’s award-winning novel The Eight Mountains. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• “I’m starting to believe that eating in and of itself is pretty punk rock.” Chana Porter and Cole Kazdin talk food and feminism. | Lit Hub Health

• Introducing the greatest sporting event of all: the World Series of Cats! | Lit Hub

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• Lisa Harding reflects on the rare opportunity she had to revise her first novel, five years after its publication. | Lit Hub

• James Brooke-Smith considers backpackers and globalization in the 1990s: “The last great illusion of the 20th century, the fantasy that travel is a way to transform the self, is on life support.” | Lit Hub Travel

• Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars, and Alexandra Auder’s Don’t Call Me Home all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

• On Miguel Ángel Asturias, the forgotten inventor of magical realism. | NYRB

• Read three stories by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. | The Hudson Review

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• Daniel Lavery on the correct way to reply to a writer asking “is this funny?” (“Immediate, unforced engagement … but it has to feel real.”) | The Stopgap

• An open letter from the empire to King Charles seeks reparations. | Taipei Times

• Here’s a Kool Thing: We’re getting a Sonic Youth memoir. | Rolling Stone

• A new study finds that online “haters” give South Korean journalists a boost. | Neiman Lab

Also on Lit Hub: A reading list of office novels • Abraham Verghese: To plot or not to plot • Read from Janika Oza’s debut novel, A History of Burning