Lit Hub Weekly: July 22 – 26, 2019

• The Booker Prizes released the longlist for this year’s award. | The Hub
• Howard Norman on his 42-year correspondence with W.S. Merwin, and the accumulated meaning of 416 letters.| Lit Hub
• Stephen King on Laura Lippman’s Lady in the Lake, Jonathan Galassi on a history of Faber & Faber, The New Jim Crow ten years on, and more of the Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• Rachel DeLoache Williams on the bizarre and uncomfortable experience of being conned by Anna Delvey, the pretend-heiress who took Manhattanites for thousands. | CrimeReads
• “Is woman crowding out man in the field of fiction?”: Going backwards in time 112 years, when The New York Times asked whether there would ever be a woman who wrote a bestseller. | The New York Times
• Jill Lepore on the domestic life and literary legacy of Herman Melville, who “wrote most of Moby-Dick on land, in a valley, on a farm, in a house a-dither with his wife, his sisters, and his mother, a family man’s Walden.” | The New Yorker
• Read a lost 1933 essay by Langston Hughes, never before published in English. | Smithsonian
• “There’s an intellectual arrogance about someone who has decided that non-literary fiction is boring and blank”: Irish author Colm Tóibín is under fire for dismissing genre fiction (and the Golden Age of television!). | The Irish Times
• There’s a standoff between New Hampshire’s governor and the state’s Poetry Society over the new poet laureate. Will it be the decorated literary writer, or the guy who wrote about wanting to have sex with Condoleeza Rice in a bathroom? | Slate
• “I feel such a sense of loss when I think of the great, unwritten poems that took a backseat to polished floors.” On the biggest threat to creative women: a structural lack of uninterrupted alone time. | The Guardian
• “What does it mean to say, She is white? I am white? That is a white person?” Jess Row curates a reading list on whiteness. | Bookforum
• 100 books to inspire any teenager’s (ambitious) summer reading—or, the list Dan Kois gave his daughter this year. | Slate
• The unlikely history of the literary publisher Faber & Faber includes (among other venerable players) Lord of the Flies and Andrew Lloyd Webber. | The New Yorker
• “Just as medieval scribes could abuse their positions, or simply commit errors, so can modern consumers, or those imitating them”: Who needs literary critics to detect fake Amazon reviews when algorithms can do it for us? | The Financial Times
• “‘IT’S MY BIRTHDAY!!!’ feels happier than ‘It’s my birthday!!!’ But ‘i miss u’ is just as pathetic as ‘I MISS U.’” Gretchen McCullough on the subtle and varied meanings of all caps. | Wired
• The writer who removed a criticism of Putin from the Russian translation of his book explains why he allows authoritarian adaptations of his work. | Newsweek
• Macmillan is limiting libraries’ access to its ebooks, claiming that ebook lending is “cannibalizing [their] digital sales.” | The Wall Street Journal
• Turns out the author of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a scholarly folklorist (which still doesn’t explain those nightmare-inducing illustrations). | JSTOR
• In which we learn that Javier Marias organizes his books “in strict chronological order” by language or country. Makes sense, honestly. | The New York Times

Also on Lit Hub:

Helen Phillips on grief, anxiety, and crafting a terrifying literary thriller • Andrew Ervin talks to Robert Macfarlane and Emily Wilson about the world’s “thin places” • Are you an adult who loves Veronica Mars? Scratch your itches for small-town California noir, private detective hijinks, and witty repartee for days with these 11 books • Karen Tongson on her namesake, Karen Carpenter • On the connection between writing and cruising • Was The Odyssey the first Greek novel? • Walt Odets on the first years of the AIDS epidemic and the stigmatization of gay men • Behind the myths of Scott and Zelda’s epic romance: Eleanor Lanahan on her grandparents’ love letters • Some free summer reading advice: cultivate an obsession with Mary McCarthy’s “grimly truthful and strangely modern” The Group • Rick Moody, life coach, returns to tackle questions of body image and self-loathing • Elizabeth Bales Frank on the pleasures and perils of life as a law firm’s poet laureate • Karl Marlantes on the lumberjacking lives of his ancestors • On the uncomfortable contradictions of “Amazing Grace,” which was written by a slave trader • Monica Ali on one of the most insidious myths of the book world • July’s best book covers pair well with a swimsuit • On the underground group supplying incarcerated people in Pittsburgh with books • The unsung woman who changed how we take care of newborns • Writer’s block? Nick Ripatrazone has a poem for that • How Trump’s failed wall still wreaks havoc at the US-Mexico border • Four coming-of-age stories that break down the barriers between adult and YA fiction • On one of the great Dutch novels of social reform • Barred from the 1976 Olympics, these swimmers still beat Olympic records • On opening Ghana’s first subscription-model library • Sally Denton on the cowboy constitutionalists of the Oregon militia standoff • Kim-Marie Walker gives an appraisal (and update) of Lit Hub’s Climate Change Library • Why do we buy books and not read them? Karen Olsson on the ghosts on her shelves • What Caliban tells us about gatekeeping and language • A visual dive into the cultural history of the swimming pool

Best of Book Marks:

The Houston librarian dedicated to community over quietude • Christopher Benfey, the author of If: The Unfold Story of Kipling’s American Years, recommends five books from Rudyard Kipling’s New England • “To write about water you have to follow it. And to follow it, you have to get on it”: Porter Fox recommends 3 books about how water is changing our world • Nora Caplan-Bricker on Ursula K. Le Guin, Elizabeth Hardwick, and mixed reviews • New titles from Laura Lippman, Chuck Klosterman, Courtney Maum, and more all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week

New on CrimeReads:

Zach Vasquez rounds up the best Hollywood-set noirs • Maggie Gee on 5 crime novels out this year that use dark comedy to grapple with “the mad, anarchic, adversarial Brexit spirit” • Owen Matthews recommends 5 Cold War thriller novels that capture the extremes of the era • All the international crime fiction you need to read this month• Wendy Corsi Staub’s tips for writing about the recent past • Daniel Nieh recommends far-flung thrillers for world travelers • Cara Black talks crime writing, fashion, Paris, and 20 years of Aimée Leduc • Ranking Raymond Chandler’s best opening paragraphs • Laura Lippman on the subtle magic of Marjorie Morningstar • T. Marie Vandelly recommends 10 classics of domestic horror