Lit Hub Daily: October 24, 2022

TODAY: Sarah Josepha Hale, author of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” is born.  

• 100 YEARS OF “THE WASTE LAND”: Why it’s the most important poem of the 20th century • How T.S. Eliot’s therapeutic practice played a part in his writing • Just how modern is the poem, after all? | Lit Hub Criticism

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• Prams of good and evil: Amanda Parrish Morgan considers how the stroller embodies parental hopes and fears. | Lit Hub Parenting

• “Slavery stops every thing that is good.” On Charles Sumner’s radical, compelling message of abolition. | Lit Hub History

• How Republicans incited their followers to insurrection. | Lit Hub Politics

• Do Icelanders really, truly believe in elves? Nancy Marie Brown considers shades of belief surrounding the country’s “hidden folk.” | Lit Hub

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• “We are the stories we are told and we are the stories we tell ourselves.” Harold R. Johnson on how we narrate our lives. | Lit Hub

• “He lived in his own words, as he did in mine.” Monica Macansantos on the grief of publishing a book without the parent who inspired it. | Lit Hub Memoir

• Barbara Kingsolver on Doris Lessing, John Steinbeck, and the evergreen relevance of Middlemarch. | The Guardian

• Ed Simon offers a literary ode to coffee: “The ritual of counting out scoops as if repeating the rosary, the brewing’s percolation which sounds like a prayer wheel, the first sip which feels like Nirvana.” | The Millions

• “No other tradition in world literature has so valued friendship or made as poignant the inevitable loss and separation of earthly bonds.” Dennis Zhou on Wong May’s translations of Tang Dynasty poets. | Poetry

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• How has the conversation around literacy changed over time? | JSTOR Daily

• Monica Macansantos recommends books that explore ties of kinship in Philippine society. | Electric Literature

• Laurie Hertzel asks: Is it wrong not to finish a book? | Star Tribune

Also on Lit Hub: Considering the banjo’s spiritual and cultural significance • Anna Badkhen explores Ethiopia and the etymologies of maps • Read from Vigdis Hjorth’s latest novel, Is Mother Dead

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