TODAY: In 1938, the events in Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano take place.
- “One time, when he forgot to turn up to a tea party he wrote in his letter of apology that he couldn’t come because his thumbs were too small.” Viv Groskop on the weirdos of Russian lit, from Turgenev to Akhmatova. | Lit Hub
- “They found Orwell dreadfully decayed but otherwise entirely himself.” On the last days of George Orwell. | Lit Hub
- Everything that dies does not someday come back: five defunct literary magazines worth remembering. | Lit Hub
- “A mile-ish run in my underwear on a cold winter day seemed like it would be, at least, a significant change of pace.” Peter Sagal on the things divorced dads do. | Lit Hub
- In search of a peach (and the dance floor) at the Words Without Borders Globe Trot. | Lit Hub
- This week’s Lit Hub Recommends: Wikipedia’s trashy cousin, Frankenstein‘s b-day, and, yet again, BoJack. | Lit Hub
- Sylvia Plath’s final letters, Stephen King’s sweet social critique, and Nietzsche’s misunderstood mind all feature among our Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
- “How’s a killing like that arranged?” And other questions that Ian Fleming once asked Raymond Chandler. | CrimeReads
- “Pregnancy and motherhood are experiences as individual as they are universal. We need books that reflect this”: on the exclusion of women of color from the “mom book” conversation. | The Cut
- The Obamas have optioned Michael Lewis’ The Fifth Risk with plans to adapt it for Netflix. | Entertainment Weekly
- “I have long wanted to structure a poetry book the way we might structure a life, the whole mess and breadth of a life.” Ada Limón, A. E. Stallings, and more on how to organize a collection of poetry. | Chicago Review of Books
- “You can often hear me bitching about somebody’s performance, but I’m bitching on a terribly high level.” On Edward Gorey, ballet obsessive (and casual critic). | The Paris Review
- “Women who have their voices heard and have joy and love and agency—that’s the thing I really love about romance.” How to write consent in romance novels. | The Atlantic
- “I wrote the book for people like me, who have been inhabiting realities that aren’t considered valid unless they’re pathologized in Western or religious terms as mental illness or demonic possession.” Read an interview with Akwaeke Emezi. | Granta
- Jorie Graham has won the 2018 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry for her collection “Fast”. | The New York Times
Also on Lit Hub: The best book covers of the month • Interviews with National Book Award finalists Négar Djavadi, Tina Kover, and Margaret Mitsutani • Read from The Latecomers
