LitHub Daily: August 18, 2016

TODAY: In 1981, author and screenwriter Anita Loos, best known for her blockbuster comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, dies. 

• C.B. George warns of the dangerous myth of authenticity. | Literary Hub
• Our favorite librarians recommend one more book to read before summer ends… | Literary Hub
• You’re probably misreading Robert Frost’s most famous poem: on the many tricks and contradictions of “The Road Not Taken.” | Literary Hub
• A reading list of 31 women in translation, from Naja Marie Aidt to Liu Xia. | Words Without Borders
• “Wouldn’t it be fantastic, I remember thinking, to have a quaint old name like Seymour?” Ricardo Rolando Hernández on adopting the name of a Salinger character. | The Paris Review
• Chelsea Hodson recommends five genre-combining/genre-creating books that elude classification. | Catapult
• “What fascinates me about Ferrante’s novels is the verisimilitude with which she portrays the working-class woman writer’s life.” Reading the Neapolitan novels as a first-generation academic. | VIDA
• “He was the god of chess each time he spread the crumpled mat and set up the pieces with his haggard, dark brown hands.” A short story by Rion Amilcar Scott. | Electric Literature
• Thomas Mann’s Los Angeles “magic villa” is up for sale and in danger of demolition, as its agent has “a hard time imagining that any potential buyers would be interested in its history.” | LAist
• In the waters we travel, service is strange: A short story by Tobias Carroll. | Joyland
• #DearPresident: 50 writers, including Junot Díaz, George Saunders, and Angela Flournoy, share their messages for the next president. | Poets & Writers

Also on Literary Hub: The birth of a small town bookstore · Why do writers love birding so much? · Tireless trumpet blasts: from Magnus Mills’s The Field of the Cloth of Gold

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