Lit Hub Daily: October 20, 2022

• “Ah, Putin! You say you read The Brothers Karamazov, but if only you had understood it!” Austin Ratner on Russian imperialism and misreading The Brothers Karamazov. | Lit Hub Politics

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• What happens to our brains when we read a really good story? | Lit Hub Science

• If you were hoping The Peripheral was going to be a watershed moment for cyberpunk, we have some disappointing news. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• Laying down the bass line: Daniel Torday has some thoughts about what writers can learn from musicians. | Lit Hub Craft

• Further proof that baobab trees are incredible. | Lit Hub Nature

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• How legendary comedian Dick Gregory shut down racist hecklers. | Lit Hub

• Not a polenta, not yet a pizza: Yotam Ottolenghi and Noor Murad put a twist on a classic. | Lit Hub Food

• Kid Congo Powers recalls creating a fan club for the Ramones, “the smartest, dumbest rock ’n’ roll band there ever was.” | Lit Hub Music

• THE ANNOTATED BOOKSHELF: What Maira Kalman is reading now and next, from Madame Bovary to Shy. | Lit Hub

• “Boyne has gifted us with a Holocaust novel so self-indulgent, so grossly stereotyped, so shameless and insipid that one is almost astonished that he has dared.” | Book Marks

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• On the long literary tradition of doctors who write thrillers. | CrimeReads

• “Writing enabled Mantel to locate herself in a body that felt increasingly alien.” Jane Hu revisits the early work of Hilary Mantel. | The New Yorker

• “Writing a story is a way of kind of reminding ourselves of those incredible capacities we have to understand further and to abide longer.” An interview with George Saunders. | NPR

• From Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House to Anne Carson’s Float, ten feminist books that break form. | The Guardian

• On the growing religious movement to ban LGBTQ books. | The New Republic

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• “These scenes are happening with local flavor, influenced by city politics, state politics, and history, all around the country.” Joe Coscarelli talks about reporting on hip-hop. | Los Angeles Review of Books

• Barbara Kingsolver discusses “writing honestly and respectfully” about Appalachia and the opioid epidemic. | Oprah Daily

Also on Lit Hub: How a boutique fitness class fueled Sheila Yasmin Marikar’s novel • A poem by Rebecca Wolff • Read from Billy-Ray Belcourt’s debut novel, A Minor Chorus