LitHub Daily: February 29, 2016

TODAY: Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera The Pirates of Penzance begins on Leap Day–the 21st birthday of indentured pirate apprentice Frederic. 

• Umberto Eco on Donald Trump: fourteen ways of looking at a fascist.| Literary Hub
• Was Montaigne actually a time traveler? | Literary Hub
• What happens if you are so afraid that you finally cannot love anybody: Colm Tóibín on Giovanni’s Room. | The New Yorker
• James Brown, the history of genetics, and more: Six nonfiction books to look forward to this spring. | The Wall Street Journal
• “Could I write a mainstream book a normal person could read?” An interview with Ottessa Moshfegh. | The Guardian
• Antidotes to loneliness from Jean Rhys, Samuel Beckett, Chris Kraus, and others. | Publishers Weekly
• Everything in this room has too much meaning: Inside Darryl Pinckney’s writing studio. | T Magazine
• Becoming an archaeologist of 1950s pulp with Black Wings Has My Angel. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• An interview with and book recommendations from Marley Dias, the 11 year old behind #1000blackgirlbooks. | NPR
• “Its loss would represent an unimaginable blow to future generations of historians.” A report from the protests to save London’s Feminist Library. | Broadly

Also on Literary Hub: Interview with a bookstore down under: Readings, showcasing the best in Australian literature · 30 Books in 30 Days: Mary Ann Gwinn on Jill Leovy’s Ghettoside · The space between us: From Matthew Griffin’s novel, Hide.

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