Lit Hub Daily: October 26, 2022

TODAY: In 1890, Carlo Collodi, author of The Adventures of Pinocchio, dies at 63.   

• Lobotomies, dolls, and cannibals, oh my! Scary book recommendations from your wimpy friends at Lit Hub. | Lit Hub Halloween 

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• Darryl Pinckney on working for the New York Review of Books as a young black writer: “Bob and Barbara are dinosaurs and we’re these mammals running around afraid of getting squashed.” | Lit Hub Memoir

• “War shows what people have been trying not to notice for a long while.” Serhiy Zhadan on Ukraine and Russia, justice and peace. | Lit Hub Ukraine

• How Lucy Ferris’s novel about a United States without Roe v. Wade disappeared 25 years ago—and how it came back. | Lit Hub

• Bob Eckstein breaks down the process of designing the purrrfect cover for The Complete Book of Cat Names. | Lit Hub Design

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• What a reporter can learn from a source’s silence. | Lit Hub Journalism

• Lockdown in a school library: “All the students are going home to their parents tonight. They borrowed more books today than ever.” | Lit Hub

• Joseph Luzzi on the etymological origins of the renaissance. | Lit Hub History

• In praise of the sartorial taste of Rolling Stone drummer Charlie Watts, “a fashion victor, never a victim.” | Lit Hub Style

• Molly Odintz with 14 new and upcoming books featuring witches. | CrimeReads

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• “As an author, dear god, please do not make BookScan data public!” Lincoln Michel on the limitations of data. | Counter Craft

• “Writing is a form of activism.” An interview with George M. Johnson, author of All Boys Aren’t Blue, one of the most-banned books in the US. | NPR

• Lila Shapiro digs into Stephen Elliott’s lawsuit against Moira Donegan, creator of the “Shitty Media Men” list. | New York Magazine

• “Readers and reviewers are invited to exaggerate the groundbreaking nature of contemporary fiction and to perpetuate a broader elision of queer literary history.” Colton Valentine on the perils of queer presentism. | The Drift

• “Trump still understands the game he’s playing better than the press does.” George Packer on all the Trump books—and his argument for ignoring the former President. | The Atlantic

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• A descendent of Boris Pasternak has lost a case in which she claimed that another author copied parts of her book about her ancestor. | The Guardian

Also on Lit Hub: You should probably watch Godzilla vs. Hedorah • New poetry by Julian Gewirtz • Read a story from Damnable Tales (ed. Richard Wells) 

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