Lit Hub Daily: October 25, 2024

☆☆☆ THE ISSUES: 2024 ☆☆☆

Lit Hub is taking an in-depth look at the everyday issues affecting Americans as they head to the polls on November 5th. Today we examine gun violence, with the ten best books for understanding gun violence in America, local politics as a solution to gridlock, and more. | Lit Hub Politics

• “I feel an extra jolt of delight when I read a sentence that achieves something out of the ordinary.” Julie Sedivy considers the pleasure of language. | Lit Hub Craft
• Tyler Malone on why Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is a new generation’s Showgirls. | Lit Hub Film
• Ariana Reines remembers her mother’s passing and illustrates why we need to record and respect grief. | Lit Hub Criticism
• Jeff VanderMeer’s Absolution, André Aciman’s Roman Year, and Nick Harkaway’s Karla’s Choice all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks
  
• Eiren Caffall recommends books about maritime disasters by Herman Melville, Sebastian Junger, Diana Preston, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• How Piet Mondrian’s later abstract artworks evolved from paintings of puppies: “He would not have dreamed of dipping his hat toward the lyricism and prettiness that were the vogue of the era, and kept anything personal invisible.” | Lit Hub Art
• “The only response / to a child’s grave is / to lie down before it and play dead.” Read three poems by Bill Knott from The Naomi Poems: Corpse and Beans. | Lit Hub Poetry
• “And for all the emotional depth and character development Twain gives to Jim and Huck, it falls short of what that relationship would have been like in real life.” Read from David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson’s graphic novel, Big Jim and the White Boy. | Lit Hub Fiction
• “Don’t worry—it’s poetry you’re craving.” Jordanian writer Lana al-Majali makes the case for poetry’s urgency. | Words Without Borders
• Why playwright James Graham thinks we’re in a “crisis of storytelling.” | The New Yorker
• Bryan Alistair Charles on what Proust has to do with Judd Nelson. | The Millions 
• “Kantarovsky always eschews knowing what he is up to.” Jamieson Webster applies a Freudian lens to the paintings of Sanya Kantarovsky. | The Paris Review
• Gabriel Winslow-Yost looks back at the early career of comics artist CF. | The New York Review of Books
• How Judy-Lynn del Rey changed sci-fi and fantasy publishing by taking big risks. | JSTOR Daily