Lit Hub Daily: October 17, 2019

• When we talk about “surviving,” who is “we”? Rebecca Solnit on life under the first thousand days of Trump. | Lit Hub
• “Although Shakespeare’s music stirs the brotherhood inside me, it is also true that the toneless dead must be included among my war buddies.” Tim O’Brien on the scars of war and the bonds of Vietnam. | Lit Hub
• Nnedi Okorafor talks to Emily Connelly about diversity, Afrofuturism, and writing and narrating her memoir. | Lit Hub
• “You might as well be a ghost. But yet, the dead have come to you.” Oscar Villalon on the many ghosts we call family. | Lit Hub
• “Librarians everywhere are now forced to choose: in the face of inevitable loss, what gets saved?” Chloe Vassot on the little-known “slow fire” that’s destroying all our books. | Lit Hub
• From Nordic noir to proto-feminist trolls Elizabeth DeNoma recommends a dozen great books from Scandinavia. | Lit Hub
• “Gender is a trick that’s been played on us.” Sarah Neilson and Cyrus Grace Dunham in conversation. | Lit Hub
• J. Kingston Pierce looks at 9 crime novels wherein man-made chaos is compounded by extreme natural disasters. | CrimeReads
• Elton John’s hilariously self-lacerating memoir, a new biography of Thomas Edison, a lyrical indictment of the carceral industrial state, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• Some Australian booksellers are banning sales of Ronan Farrow’s new book over claims of defamation that PEN America called “reprehensible.” | The New York Times
• “I start by writing a brief, extremely dull short story.” Charles Finch on how to build a good mystery plot. | Vulture
• Alyssa Granacki on the fiction of Italian authors Anna Maria Ortese and Donatella Di Pietrantonio, whose books center on women wrestling with chauvinism, motherhood, and more. | Public Books
• George Mentz, President Trump’s nominee for a federal education board, has a sideline writing Illuminati self-help books. Great!!! | The Hill
• PEN America has launched six regional chapters across the country, in cities including Detroit, Austin, and Birmingham. | PEN America
• Sex ed in the US might be reprehensible, but at least there’s smutty fanfiction. | BuzzFeed News
• Here’s a joint profile of the joint Booker Prize winners, Bernardine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood. | The Guardian

Also on Lit Hub: On the basketball court, the moves tell the truth: Reginald Dwayne Betts on a most democratic sport • The Hungarian author who foresaw the future of nationalism • Read a story by Eka Kurniawan from the collection Kitchen Curse (trans. Annie Tucker).