Lit Hub Weekly: November 18 - 22, 2019

• Actually, Latin is alive and well: Nicola Gardini dispels the rumors of its untimely death. | Lit Hub History
• “Open-heart surgery was a postwar American invention, as miraculous as space travel and as bloody as the Battle of the Bulge.” On the wild world of early open-heart surgery. | Lit Hub Science
• “You are temporary. Matera is not.” Michael Cunningham visits one of the oldest cities in the world. | Lit Hub Travel
• After much ado, here are our picks for the best novels of the past decade. | Lit Hub Best of the Decade
• Michel Houellebecq’s provocative latest, Ted Chiang’s terraforming sci-fi, the return of Elena Ferrante, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• CrimeReads is ringing out the decade in crime writing with the best crime novels, the best crime nonfiction, and the most iconic series of the past 10 years. | CrimeReads
• Your 2019 National Book Award winners
• Maris Kreizman lays the smack: Why the Big Five publishers “are still putting out books by people who not only play fast and loose with the facts, but who actively spread hate.” | Vanity Fair
• Do we have the culture of infinite scroll to thank for the rise of autofiction? | The New York Times
• This list of ten compelling books about vegetarians and vegetarian ethics does not, contrary to expectations, include Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. | The Guardian
• Read an oral history of Margaret Atwood’s six-decade (and counting) literary career. | The Walrus
• Long days alone, editing headaches: The narrators behind your favorite audiobooks. | The Guardian
• Historic flooding has destroyed “hundreds” of books at Venice’s Libreria Acqua Alta (High Water Bookshop). | The Local Italy
• Why did John M. Ford, a beloved and award-winning science fiction writer, fall into obscurity? | Slate
• The secret feminist history of Shakespeare and Company, which celebrates its centennial this month. | NYRB
• “To his mind, equality could not come in stages.” On the radical legacy of William Monroe Trotter. | The New Yorker
• Diplomatic tensions between Beijing and Stockholm flared again after the Swedish arm of PEN International honored Gui Minhai, a Chinese-born Swedish citizen and Beijing critic who disappeared in 2015. | The Telegraph
• The world’s largest secondhand book market is in Kolkata, India—and it’s under threat. | Atlas Obscura
• “Can fiction be adequate to represent the lives of women while offering both solace and entertainment?” | Public Books
• “May we continue to gift writers with the time for wildness.” Sarah M. Broom on the power of unfinished work. | The Paris Review
• Shawn Wong on John Okada and the politics of reprinting Asian American classics. | Asian American Writers’ Workshop

Also on Lit Hub:

Your 2019 National Book Award winners • On reading Albert Woodfox’s Solitary while detained at Guantánamo • Darryl Pinckney on the American tradition of anti-black vigilantism • Jeff Jackson on cult novelist Dennis Cooper’s elegant jump to film • Rachel Vorona Cote on Jane Austen and the legacy of the stoic woman • On the president’s unprecedented lack of intellectual curiosity • Serhii Plohky on the dinner that changed WWII • Adriano Olivetti: Industrialist, typewriter king… antifascist? • Some of the books that most influenced David Bowie • Poetry by Anne Carson, Honor Moore, and Dan Poppick • Nina McLaughlin on finding the natural world in Ovid • What does the debutante ball look like in the global age of Instagram? • How the Vietnam War changed political poetry • On the risks taken by ambassadors abroad • On the evolution of Hollywood’s black musicals • Kassia St. Clair on correcting the historical bias against domestic materials • Read from National Book Award lifetime honoree Edmund White’s novel-in-progress • What myth retellings and persona poems teach us about ourselves • Jung Young Moon on the small mythologies of place • Is the debutante one of the most misunderstood characters in literature? • Sylvain Tesson retraces Napoleon’s historic retreat from the Russian front • Who were the scribes who actually wrote down the Epic of Gilgamesh • When a city goes bankrupt: a brief history of Detroit, c. 2010 • Piecing together the histories of enslaved Americans in the study of textiles • An ode to women who walk • Do archivists have political motivations, too? • Lindsay McCrae on filming baby penguins in Antarctica • Alyssa Hull tries to find optimism in teaching cli-fi to terrified students • How did George Eliot come to write the proto-Zionist novel Daniel Deronda? • Dorothy Allison on the necessity of making readers uncomfortable.

Best of Book Marks:

Take a trip down memory lane with a look back at every National Book Award for Fiction and Nonfiction winner of the twenty-first century • Wake, Siren author Nina MacLaughlin on five books that deal with nature in a sensual way, from Hiromi Kawakami’s The Briefcase to Annie Dillard’s The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek • Toni Morrison, Michael Ondaatje, Susan Choi, and more rapid-fire book recs from Crystal Hana Kim •Stephen King’s The Institute: first-rate entertainment or writing-by-numbers? • A new historical novel from Robert Harris, a biography of William Monroe Trotter, a reimagining of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and more all feature among the best reviewed books of the week

New on CrimeReads:

Annaleese Jochems looks at literature’s most disruptive third wheels • Julie Mayhew on tarot cards as road maps for crime writing • Troy Rondinone on film noir, asylums, and mid-century paranoia • Óscar Martínez and Juan José Martinez on the complex and violent origins of MS-13 • Aya de Leon on the movie Hustlers, how it works, and who it’s working for • Tinker, tailor, wizard, spy: W. L. Goodwater on how to mix genres when writing • Beau L’Amour on the rise, fall, and counterculture rediscovery of his Western raconteur father, Louis L’Amour • Stephanie Sylverne on Louisa May Alcott’s sensationalist psychological thrillers • Psycho invented the spoiler as we know it •Linda Green knows that sometimes, the darkest mysteries are right there in your family tree