Lit Hub Weekly: August 19 - 23, 2024

• Why libraries are often deliberate targets during war: “For book lovers, there is something profoundly, almost viscerally disturbing about a library on fire.” | Lit Hub Libraries
• Why there might still be hope for the Earth’s oceans: “A worse version of today’s ocean is not inevitable, but underestimating the scale of the problems and what needs doing to tackle them would be unwise.” | Lit Hub Climate Change
• Alexis Pauline Gumbs on the iconic life and legacy of Audre Lorde. | Lit Hub Biography
• “Although Nazis were more famous for burning books, they also sold them.” Evan Friss on when the Nazis opened a propaganda bookstore in Los Angeles. | Lit Hub Bookstores
• “Just why is it that so many Nietzsche readers are very young men? What is Nietzsche offering them?” Mat Messerschmidt considers Nietzsche and our crisis of masculinity. | The Point
• Mark Haddon on writing with long COVID brain fog. | The Guardian
• Who would buy a Trump-branded Bible? Apparently, enough people to net him $300,000. | The New Republic
• In cahoots with the National Book Foundation, the novelist Alejandro Varela surveys literary gems from the 1990s. | The Washington Post
• “Who else could have imagined such a motley ensemble but someone who had jostled with the many flavors of humanity?” Camille Ralphs considers Chaucer’s infinite interpretability. | Poetry
• “The means by which the woman writer makes herself—which is to say, by her words—is also what people grab on to as they tear her down.” Annie Berke on television’s version of a woman writer.  | Los Angeles Review of Books
• “The thing that struck me most was the simplicity of it all.” Annie Ernaux documents a year of cancer and desire. | The New Yorker
• “The Nakba and the Palestinian experience in its aftermath have had lasting and far-reaching consequences in Arabic cultural production.” Lena Khalaf Tuffaha talks to Huda Fakhreddine about translating Palestinian literature and experience. | Words Without Borders
• “That was where a famous jazz club used to be. I think it was called Club 845.” Spend a morning walking around the Bronx with Ian Frazier. | Slate
• Children’s librarian Sylvie Shaffer fields questions and offers book recommendations for all manner of young readers. | The Washington Post
• “Today’s activists are grasping for language with which to describe the violence that they see unfolding.” Linda Kinstler on the bitter fight over the meaning of “genocide.” | The New York Times Magazine
• Nneka M. Okona remembers Toni Morrison through her food. | Harper’s Bazaar
• How a recent push to diversify the publishing industry fell short. | The New York Times
• Gozo Yoshimasu asks, “What is poetry?” | Words Without Borders
• Jeffrey Fleishman on how “hell hath no fury like a librarian scored” amid the ongoing tide of book censorship. | Los Angeles Times

Also on Lit Hub:

Sofia Samatar on collage, community, and the loneliness of publishing • On festive mourning practices across eras and cultures • Can you really choose your own adventure? • Iris Gottlieb warns us against treating the galaxy like a trash can • The similarities between religious experiences and UFO sightings • Jane Ciabattari talks to Lena Valencia about the desert •  The literary film and TV you need to watch this fall • Rosie Schaap on losing her husband • Why it’s worth it to look on the bright side of stories • The computer science debate that foretold our current fears • Christiane Ritter’s essential memoir of the north • Are you an asshole if you skip your friend’s book launch? Maybe! • Gabrielle Bellot on the joys and fears of trans motherhood • What Greenland’s melting ice signals about global warming • The ableist past and present of IQ testing • The best reviewed books of the week • A portrait of Salvadoran artist and wife of Antoine, Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry • Actor Oleg Dal, the Narcissus myth, and the lingering effects of the Soviet Union’s rejection of feminism