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“Every novelist’s life has taken place during times of turmoil.” Jane Smiley considers how the essay and the novel inform each other. | Lit Hub Criticism
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Nick de Semlyen reveals the literary roots of Die Hard (yes, your favorite Christmas movie is based on a book). | Lit Hub Film & TV
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Alexander Chee recommends Natalia Ginzburg’s novella Valentino, “a story as devastating as it is hilarious.” | Lit Hub Criticism
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Martha Hodes reflects on why she didn’t want her beloved father to read her memoir, the story of her childhood hijacking. | Lit Hub Memoir
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Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos, Deborah Levy’s August Blue, and Frieda Hughes’s George: A Magpie Memoir all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
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The best psychological thrillers of June 2023. | CrimeReads
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Salman Rushdie is planning to write a book about being stabbed onstage in New York last year. | The Guardian
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“Does Comey—do any of these politicos turned authors—have anything to reveal at all?” Jacob Bacharach on James Comey’s crime novel. | The New Republic
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Going beyond True Grit in examining Charles Portis’s legacy. | The Atlantic
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“Walking the property’s grounds, I thought about what it means to be allowed entry into a stranger’s Eden.” Alissa Bennett recounts trespassing on Edith Wharton. | The Paris Review
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How the French government—all the way up to President Emmanuel Macron—is using science fiction to prepare for a variety of apocalyptic futures. | France 24
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Fara Dabhoiwala considers the necessity of the index. | NYRB
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81 queer and feminist books coming out this summer. | Autostraddle
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“Pursuing optimal wellness, whether as a billionaire trying to age himself backward or a glowy-skinned influencer forever calibrating her microbiome, is a lonely business.” Jessie Gaynor on fictionalizing wellness food. | TASTE
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Mosab Abu Toha and Nathalie Handal discuss memory, poetry, and the literature of Gaza. | Words Without Borders
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Hannah Steinkopf-Frank explores the queer publications of the Weimar Republic. | JSTOR Daily
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New York’s prison system has reversed a policy that would have blocked incarcerated writers and artists from publishing their work and receiving compensation. | Yahoo
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What would the world look like if something we’ve become used to were no longer around? The first episode of a new podcast from Omar El Akkad looks at sand. | Without
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Joyce Maynard on why you should travel with things you love (in her case, a sequin dress, handmade cowboy boots, and a vintage jacket.) | WSJ
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There’s still time for you to understand the Anne Carson discourse. | The Hub
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Considering what Canada’s content mandates, intended to protect the country’s culture from “the encroaching power of its southern neighbour by mandating a certain percentage of homegrown TV and radio,” mean for artists. | The Walrus
Also on Lit Hub:
Here’s your Ultimate Summer 2023 Reading List • How Andre Dubus III beats writer’s block • Why Graham Greene and Anthony Burgess went from literary friends to enemies • A photographic study of American childhood • Why The Turn of the Screw still haunts us 125 years later • June’s best sci-fi and fantasy books • Anna Badkhen on the joys of revision • Turns out, ice is everywhere in American literature • On the third rail of The Master and Margarita • Some thoughts on surviving the misery of writing • Is Juliet the best “dead girl”? • How the undocumented fight for love and security • Finding radical potential in Nigella Lawson’s cooking • June poetry recommendations • Seven great novels at the intersection of dystopia and mystery • Exploring the complex world of animal infancy • Frieda Hughes recounts the early days of raising a magpie • Randall Sullivan on surviving a near-death experience on the Columbia River • Moving through the trees at night (to save the forests) • What math can teach us about the stage • On telling stories of the troubled teen industry • Coming of age as a Muslim American in an era of digital surveillance
