Lit Hub Daily: September 6, 2023

• 25 new novels we think you should read this fall. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• Yiyun Li muses on class, money, joy, and luxury—for writers and their characters. | Lit Hub Memoir

• Where creatives went to play: Jonathan Miles captures the “potent cultural cocktail” of the French Riviera. | Lit Hub History

• “Without racism and its erasure, who would we be free to be?” Safiya Sinclair considers Nicole Sealey’s new book, Ferguson Report: An Erasure. | Lit Hub

• Hugh Ryan on post-truth in the lyric essay: “How does nonfiction function in the hands of writers who aren’t sure the truth exists?” | Lit Hub Criticism

• “The Bell Jar’s achievement, in turn, was to paint a portrait of America full of jagged inconsistencies.” Rafaela Bassili on reading Plath to understand American culture. | The Atlantic

• “The Women of NOW can show today’s feminists the path forward.” Clara Bingham reviews Katherine Turk’s essential history. | The Guardian

• Hannah Carlson considers “the once-vulgar hands-in-pockets stance” and the social evolution of hand placement. | Guernica

• “If he was no longer in backpacks, he was still on library desks and bedside tables. And his example has endured.” Leo Robson’s reflections on Milan Kundera. | New Left Review

• Republican lawmakers are demanding that their states’ libraries withdraw from the American Library Association as the organization vocally opposes book bans (and, you know, supports libraries). | AP

• “If I really do encounter an ethical other in The Fraud, it is Smith herself.” Andrea Long Chu on Zadie Smith’s career and newest novel. | Vulture

• An interview with Irish master of the short form, Claire Keegan, who gives the reason why George Saunders refused to read one of her stories aloud for The New Yorker podcast. | The Guardian

Also on Lit Hub: Isabella Trimboli on reading the diaries of women writers • New poetry by Saskia Hamilton • Read from Olga Ravn’s newly translated novel, My Work (tr. Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell)