- This week, we featured work on the past, present, and future of the climate crisis for Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story. Stories included: Elizabeth Rush on finding women’s voices in the Antarctic • Omal El Akkad on what climate change does to our memories of place • Elizabeth Putfark on reading hyperlocal stories in the face of climate anxiety • Anna Merlan on the dark and dangerous world of climate conspiracy theories • Leah Penniman on Indigenous storytelling and the future of farming • Roy Scranton makes the case against storytelling in the face of ecological disaster • Naomi Klein’s advice for the next generation of climate activists • Torsa Ghosal on Gun Island and the stories that survive a changing planet • Megan Mayhew Bergman revisits E.B. White’s urgent calls for environmental justice. • and more. | Lit Hub Climate Change
- Ta-Nehisi Coates’ fiction debut, Tayari Jones on Jacqueline Woodson, Janet Malcolm on a Susan Sontag biography, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
- 2019 has been an incredible year for crime fiction –and there’s still plenty more to come! Here’s 85 (more) books to look forward to in 2019. | CrimeReads
- Rimbaud tourism is a cottage industry in the poet’s hometown of Charleville-Mézières (which he described as “exceptionally stupid” and “hideous”). | The New York Times
- Marie-Claire Blais is “one of the most distinctive and original living writers of fiction.” Why don’t more Americans read her? | The New Yorker
- “This has to end. We cannot say it any clearer”: A guide to the decades-long familial dispute over John Steinbeck’s estate, which a federal appeals court recently attempted to resolve. | Los Angeles Times
- Lucy Ellman, author of 1,034-page Ducks, Newburyport, thinks people are too hung up on the book’s length. | Washington Post
- The US government has filed a lawsuit against Edward Snowden, alleging that his book, Permanent Record, violates his non-disclosure agreements with the CIA and NSA. | Talking Points Memo
- “Throughout the nineteenth century and again in the twentieth, every generation rewrote the book’s epitaph. All that changes is whodunnit.” Sorry, haters: books will never die. | The Paris Review
- “We will write. We’ll discuss the writing life. We will share our work and learn. We will revise. We will enjoy inspiration, camaraderie and quiet.” On the writing workshop boom. | The New York Times
- Do writers need to be under pressure to produce good work? Paul Kingsnorth, author of Savage Gods, thinks so. | NPR
- “Good-Good; Bad-Good; Good-Bad; Bad-Bad.” Adam Wilson on the Golden Age of Television, the Age of Peak TV, and you. | Harper’s
- Should there be an expectation of ghostwriter/subject privilege? | The Guardian
- “Dean Heller (R-NV) weeps in the strong embrace of Mark Warner (D-VA), torn between his desire for moderation and his fear of a primary challenge.” On the strange political power of congressional fan fiction. | Longreads
- From the archives: Julian Hawthorne (1846-1934), son of Nathaniel, on his father’s “luminous” writing room and fabled mahogany desk. | New England Review
- Why some people become lifelong readers—hint: it has to do with their childhoods. | The Atlantic
Also on Lit Hub:
Anne Boyer on the language of pain • Benjamin Moser on the brief relationship of Susan Sontag and Jasper Johns • On the American tour that made Gertrude Stein a household name • Brian Bouldrey wanders through the “smutty old Times Square” of literature • Josh Gondelman entreats the fashion industry to stop trying to make Dad Shoes cool • Will it ever be ethical for athletes to edit their genes? • On the snarky poem that got its author murdered • Rachel Eve Moulton considers how horror is housed in the body • Kevin Barry on the need to sustain our literature •
Imani Perry and Mitchell Jackson in conversation • Dan Kois recommends twelve songs for traveling the world with kids • What would happen if the world lost the internet? • The last love letters of anti-Nazi German resistance fighters • Jim Shepard on “the indispensability of small literary magazines to what remains of American intellectual culture” • Mona Eltahawy makes the case against civility • Here are the 25 best campus novels of all time • Heroes and (offline) trolls: Neil Gaiman introduces the spellbinding folktales of Norway • Ismail Muhammad walks with the ghosts of black Los Angeles • On “extended parental care” in the human and animal realms • The problem of Germany’s post-war internal refugees • Unsurprisingly, the reality of post-Chernobyl life in Ukraine was more complicated than the HBO series let onBest of Book Marks:
New on CrimeReads:
Three years after the TV series wrap, Craig Johnson is still crafting complex worlds for Walt Longmire • Jonathan Lee recounts the tale of Heather Tallchief, who committed the perfect crime and vanished without a trace • Martin Edwards celebrates the Golden Age detective fiction renaissance • Lee Goldberg revisits a lost classic of the 1970s • Happy 20th Anniversary to “Law and Order: SVU!” Lilly Dancyger celebrates the groundbreaking show, and remembers its classic predecessor • Neon no man’s land and sleaze noir: Zach Vasquez dives into the underappreciated classic television show Vice Squad • Evelyn Toynton traces the evolution of monstrous mothers in literature • Gina LaManna recommends 7 psychological thrillers featuring twisted marriages • As Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy has a moment on TV, Nile Cappello looks at some of the rare real-life examples of this chilling phenomenon • Reed Farrel Coleman borrows from the headlines to continue a beloved Robert B. Parker series
