Lit Hub Daily: October 19, 2021

• “Roses mean everything, which skates close to meaning nothing.” Rebecca Solnit considers the importance of the rose in art and culture. | Lit Hub Criticism

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• Read from the 2021 Cundill History Prize shortlist, celebrating some of the best new titles in contemporary history. | Lit Hub History

• The right to a barstool: how second-wave feminists took on gendered drinking discrimination. | Lit Hub History

• Happy New Books Tuesday, just when you thought your TBR pile couldn’t get any bigger. | The Hub

• Teaching through a pandemic: Joshua Soule on when Texas abandoned its teachers, and Kozbi Simmons on making students feel seen in the era of masking. | Lit Hub Teaching

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• On the daunting, 16-year task of piecing together The Canterbury Tales. | Lit Hub

• “I want the book to consider how what is monstrous to us might also be what is holy.” Tiphanie Yanique in conversation with Jane Ciabattari. | Lit Hub

• Sonya Huber recommends eight great novels that unfold over the course of 24 hours. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• How Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx discovered hard rock in the middle of small-town Idaho. | Lit Hub Music

• “As a closeted queer kid, I was willing to find support anywhere, even if I had to suspend some disbelief.” Nathan Smith on seeking solace in Go Ask Alice. | Lit Hub Criticism

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• Cynthia A. Branigan on rescuing the last diving horse in America. | Lit Hub

• Nick Kolakowski examines the strange intersection of noir fiction and plastic surgery. | CrimeReads

• Matilda, Trainspotting, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and more rapid-fire book recs from TaraShea Nesbit. | Book Marks

• On Keen On, Vanessa Veselka muses on what the next American Revolution might look like. | Lit Hub Virtual Book Channel

• What makes mystery fiction so engaging? | JSTOR Daily

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• Poets of color have ushered in a new golden age for poetry, writes Leah Asmelash. | CNN

• Take a look into where Matt Ortile writes. | Catapult

• “For me, short stories just arrive—or they don’t.” Penelope Lively discusses her new book, the writers she admires, and her childhood. | The Guardian

• On Nella Larsen, Mariah Carey, and the history of passing narratives. | Vulture

• “Something about books, or the way we talk about books, stuns people into an obnoxious reverence about all the places that sell or borrow them.” On You and the trappings of fictional booksellers. | Gawker

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• Inside the surprising succession news at the Scholastic publishing company. | The New York Times

Also on Lit Hub: Take an illustrated tour of beloved, diverse indie bookstores • Sarah Ruhl talks to Beth Henley about craft and catharsis • Read from Claire Vaye Watkins’s latest novel, I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness