Lit Hub Daily: November 15, 2022

• Mary Kate Frank wonders why we covet writers’ everyday objects… while coveting Joan Didion’s seashell collection, now at auction. | Lit Hub

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• 12 new books to look forward to this week, featuring Patti Smith, Eileen Myles, Hanif Abdurraqib, and more. | The Hub

• “From the first day, everything changed.” How living in Naples changed Shirley Hazzard’s life. | Lit Hub Biography

• Toby Wilkinson examines the technology in King Tut’s tomb, which tells the story of  “a civilization at the height of its power and influence.” | Lit Hub History

• Nick Hornby doesn’t often give novels as gifts, and other insights from the Lit Hub Questionnaire. | Lit Hub

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• Take a look inside Jason Reynold’s (stunning) home: “Books are perhaps the only thing easier to find than works of art.” | Lit Hub Style

• Why verse novels are gay (and glorious). | Lit Hub Criticism

• Jeff Patterson dives deep into a Florida cold case. | CrimeReads

• “They’re easy to overlook even as they go about their quiet work of keeping American literature alive.” Margaret Renkl on the quiet, crucial work of university presses. | The New York Times

• Julia Métraux explores how fairy tales pass along specific messages about women’s bodies and feminine beauty. | JSTOR Daily

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• A look at the growing trend of mindfulness books for children. | The Guardian

• Celebrating authors who write across genre lines. | San Francisco Chronicle

• “I think that that’s the role of literature, that’s the role of reading, to move you, to shake you up and to make you someone new.” A conversation with Tracie D. Hall, the longtime librarian being honored at the National Book Awards. | NPR

• The Brooklyn Public Library’s most-borrowed books of all time might surprise you. | The Hub

Also on Lit Hub: Sofia Coppola in praise of Edith Wharton’s beloved antiheroine Undine Spragg • Meg Howrey recounts narrating her own novel • Read from Johanne Lykke Holm’s newly translated novel, Strega (tr. Saskia Vogel)