Lit Hub Weekly: January 27 - 31, 2020

• When did self-help books become. . . literary? Beth Blum explores a debate over bookish advice that goes as far back as the Renaissance. | Lit Hub Literary Criticism
• The bad news is that the machines are coming; the good news is that they still haven’t mastered metaphor, as evidenced by these poems. | Lit Hub Tech
• Best procrastination ever: Did Tolkien write The Lord of the Rings because he was avoiding his academic work? | Lit Hub History
• Hannah Giorgis on Jeanine Cummins, Jia Tolentino on new minimalism, Ron Charles on Paul Yoon, and more of the reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks
• In December of 1926, Agatha Christie vanished. Kate Weinberg explores why we’re still so fascinated with her disappearance. | CrimeReads
• “It’s the power and pain of the Odd Woman to be singular, forever apart. She has the clarity of an impartial observer even when she feels the zeal of a convert.” Read a profile of Vivian Gornick. | The Cut
• Most peculiar! The Nancy Drew series celebrates the heroine’s 90th anniversary by killing her off—and putting the Hardy Boys on the case. | Polygon
• On Stephen Joyce, the difficult, stubborn executor of his grandfather’s estate—and maybe the last of his kind. | The Outline
• “Can liberalism diagnose its own ills?” A look at three new books on “the decline of American greatness.” | Bookforum
• Jon Baskin explains what it means to “hate literature” and why Ben Lerner is the quintessential culprit. | The Point
• E. Jean Carroll’s What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal details the writer’s rape by the sitting president. It’s also “a work of comic genius.” | The New Yorker
• Rumaan Alam on why we’re fascinated with the grisly case of Aaron Hernandez, the former New England Patriots tight end convicted of murder. | The New Republic
• When Raymond Carver invited Charles Bukowski to the University of Santa Cruz, no one wanted to host his party. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• The New York Public Library has acquired a collection of Virginia Woolf’s letters, postcards, and manuscripts. | The New Yorker
• Here are the top ten most beloved—and the top ten most hated—literary classics, according to Goodreads reviewers. | Daniel Frank
• Read this before you name your kid after a fictional character. | The Atlantic
• Meet the group of female writers that has been a driving force in Philadelphia’s literary resurgence. | Philadelphia Magazine
• After decades of rejection, 80-year-old Georgia-based author Roberta George published her first novel, The Day’s Heat. | Indiana Gazette
• Ahead of Black History Month, which starts on Saturday, Bay Area authors are reading and reflecting on Lesley Nneka Arimah, Jan Willis, and others. | San Francisco Chronicle
• Here’s the deal with Bookshop, the startup that wants to “anti-disrupt” the online bookselling business and help indie bookstores. | Wired

Also on Lit Hub:

50 fictional booksellers, ranked (from murderous bibliophiles to Pamela Anderson and beyond) • “We, the undersigned, do not see a faceless brown mass. We, ourselves, are not faceless, nor are we voiceless.” An open letter to Oprah Winfrey about American Dirt • Patrick Modiano on Françoise Frenkel, the writer and bookshop owner who escaped the Nazis • An illustrated reading list of groundbreaking mixed-media literature • Marcelo Hernandez Castillo in the home of his ancestors • Poverty hurts children in ways we’re just beginning to understand • On pig hearts, placental stem cells, and the search for the aging cure • Craig Pittman on the extreme move that saved Florida panthers from extinction • On one of the greatest children’s ghost books ever published • Paul Yoon revisits five great novels that take place over 48 hours • How the ways we pay attention change the shape of our brains • Samuel Freedman rereads the 1975 book that “foretold the construction of Trump’s impregnable base among white working-class men” • The professor who smuggled intellectuals out of Nazi-occupied France • Jack London’s call to service and humanism • Fred Kaplan on how we learned to start fearing the bomb, again: • Donna Jackson Nakazawa on immunity, microglial cells, and social media

Best of Book Marks:

New on CrimeReads:

Paul French guides us through the elusive crime novels of Prague • Nicci French on what authors can learn from the greatest long takes in movie history • Seven series that prove women are revitalizing the Western • Neil Nyren helps us discover the wild, weird, corrupt, uproarious world of Carl Hiaasen’s Florida • Lisa Levy interviews three crime writers who broke through in a big way last year • Chris McGinley rediscovers a lost classic of rural noir • It’s cold outside—time to read some wintry thrillers • C.J. Tudor with seven novels where murder is a group activity • The crime writer and the FBI agent: the story of an unlikely friendship • Staff picks: our favorite CrimeReads stories of the month