Lit Hub Daily: October 27, 2021

• “We were alive and life was us.” On Ken Kesey’s mission to get LSD to the people. | Lit Hub

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• “From an old book filters up a whiff of dissolution and conjuring.” Turns out, there’s a scientific reason we love to smell old books. | Lit Hub Science

• Read an excerpt from Sujit Sivasundaram’s Waves Across the South, winner of British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding. | Lit Hub

• Claire Boyle and Julie Shapiro talk about creating an audiovisual McSweeney’s issue, and how considering accessibility issues brought a new dimension to the work. | Lit Hub

• Centering indigenous voices: Ọlájídé Salawu examines the colonial grounding of Nigeria’s literary industry. | Lit Hub

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• “Having a kid just makes me want to be a better, happier person, and a big part of my self-care is expressing myself through writing.” Frances Badalamenti talks to Chloe Caldwell about her new novel, Salad Days. | Lit Hub

• Antonio Damasio explains why we are both “feeling creatures that think and thinking creatures that feel.” Lucky us! | Lit Hub Science

• Chronicles of W. G. Sebald, Billy Porter, and Oscar Wilde all feature among the best reviewed memoirs and biographies of the month. | Book Marks

• Stephen Graham Jones, Alma Katsu, Josh Malerman, Grady Hendrix and others discuss horror fiction in the time of Covid. | CrimeReads

• Tacky author Rax King talks Giovanni’s Room, A Little Life, and Susan Choi’s sex scenes. | Book Marks

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• Sylvia Plath’s tarot cards recently sold at auction for £151,200—what does that reveal about the public’s fixation on the poet’s private life? | New Statesman

• On the invaluable importance of Goosebumps. | New York Times Magazine

• How Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned was adapted for the big screen. | Vulture

• Kevin Boyle discusses the political and cultural landscape in America in the 1960s. | Los Angeles Times

• Was René Descartes a victim of “skull blasting”? A (spooky) investigation. | Atlas Obscura 

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• Victoria Chang and Dean Rader discuss new works of poetry by Tracy K. Smith and Arthur Sze. | Los Angeles Review of Books

• Brian Logan speaks to comedians about turning their stage work into books. | The Guardian

Also on Lit Hub: Nathaniel Ian Miller on writing a book for dog people • The 10 best book covers of October • Read from Khadija Abdalla Bajaber’s debut novel, The House of Rust