Lit Hub Weekly: October 25 – 29, 2021

• “From an old book filters up a whiff of dissolution and conjuring.” Turns out, there’s a scientific reason we love to smell old books. | Lit Hub Science

  Article continues after advertisement

• Psychoanalyst Josh Cohen looks to Jane Eyre for a lesson about the plus side of narcissism. | Lit Hub

• “For as long as people have been offered the chance to profit in exchange for compromising their ideals and morals, cynics have been there to call them out for it.” How 11 punk bands sold out and shaped music history. | Lit Hub Music

• As the World Series plays out, Lincoln Michel asks (and answers) a very important question: why is baseball the most literary of sports? | Lit Hub Sports

• New titles by Jonathan Franzen, Elizabeth Strout, John le Carré, Rebecca Solnit, and David Sedaris all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Month. | Book Marks

  Article continues after advertisement

• Have a Happy Halloweekend with these horror comedies sure to make you shriek with laughter. | CrimeReads

• “Writers write what they have to, reap the consequences, and they alone know what they can bear.” Molly Fisk on the story her uncle, John Updike, wrote about her father. | Harper’s Bazaar

• “If we truly want more diversity in the stories we tell, perhaps we need to make room for different ways of telling them.” M. Leona Godin on Helen Keller and the problem of disability narratives as “inspiration porn.” | The New York Times

• Wil Haygood considers the history of Black cinema and James Baldwin’s love of the movies. | Shondaland

• Parul Sehgal wonders: is Amazon changing the novel? | The New Yorker

  Article continues after advertisement

• “Do you want to know the real Anthony Bourdain? Think before you answer.” Sarah Rense explores what two new books reveal about his life. | Esquire

• “Before they were anything else, poets were essentially people who delivered news.” Hanif Abdurraqib on the writer as archivist. | The Creative Independent

• Sylvia Plath’s tarot cards recently sold at auction for £151,200—what does that reveal about the public’s fixation on the poet’s private life? | New Statesman

• Colm Tóibín on his fascination with Thomas Mann. | The Believer

• French legislators are taking steps to prevent Amazon from wiping out independent bookstores. | Reuters

  Article continues after advertisement

• Was René Descartes a victim of “skull blasting”? A (spooky) investigation. | Atlas Obscura 

• Blind people have won the right to create accessible versions of e-books, with an exemption to digital copyright law (but they’ll have to appeal again in three years). | Wired

• Remembering the book series “True Philippine Ghost Stories” and how it reflects Filipino culture and traditions. | Vice

• Farah Jasmine Griffin unpacks how banning Beloved sanitizes racism and our country’s legacy of white supremacy. | The Washington Post

• Remembering the legacy of The Green Book and the importance of feeling freedom behind the wheel. | AFAR

  Article continues after advertisement

• How sensationalist crime stories thwarted police reform in Victorian England. | JSTOR 

Also on Lit Hub:

Teju Cole on the wonder of epiphanic writing • Terry Tempest Williams on the loves of the great Jim Harrison • Jenny Holzer talks about a life of turning public spaces into art • Pamela Paul muses on life before the internet • Read a poem from Louise Glück’s new collection • Meet the radical feminist who led an unlikely group of expats • Tice Cin considers queer love in crime fiction • Mona Kareem on growing up stateless in post-Gulf War Kuwait • Why pen on paper is so damn satisfying • Olivia Rutigliano “reads” Wes Anderson’s oeuvre • Unlearning the sunk cost fallacy, in writing and in love • How should you name your characters? • Behind the intellectual property battle that nearly derailed the COVID-19 vaccine • On Ken Kesey’s mission to get LSD to the people • How McSweeney’s and Radiotopia created an audiovisual magazine • Ọlájídé Salawu on the colonial grounding of Nigeria’s literary industry • How do we make sense of the meaning of consciousness? • On writing a book for dog people • Emma Lewis considers feminist photography and storytelling • How to write an obituary for your mother • Looking to Audre Lorde as a guide for navigating systemic oppression • How Josiah Wedgwood created an iconic abolitionist medallion • A fragmentary, lyric essay about fragmentary, lyric essays • On Sam Francis and the boy’s club of the art world • What therapists are reading through this moment • Reconsidering Thoreau in a burning world • Gus Moreno on the power of horror fiction • Andrew Siegrist seeks everyday folklore • Tyler Malone considers the human desire to understand evil • Aimee Parkison on ghostly taboos