Lit Hub Daily: September 28, 2021

• “I want no part of the person I was then, or to be back in the town of those years that made and held me.” Lauren Groff on girlhood in the middle of nowhere. | Lit Hub

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• In the face of overwhelming climate change, Dave Goulson recommends making your surroundings insect-friendly. | Lit Hub Climate Change

• The biggest season of books continues to provide—here are the newest titles to enjoy. | The Hub

• Living in a Rumi poem: Ari Honarvar on inheriting her mother’s devotion to verse. | Lit Hub Poetry

• “When people die spectacularly, in public and in large numbers, no one quite knows how to pick up the pieces.” Robert A. Jensen considers the aftermath of tragedies. | Lit Hub

• Sophie Ward recommends books with multiple narrators—and thus multiple truths. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• Bernie Krause in praise of “woodland therapy.” | Lit Hub Nature

• Eight new sci-fi noirs that extrapolate a bleak future from our harsh present. | CrimeReads

• A George Washington travelogue, a Holocaust story of survival, and a history of Cuba all feature among September’s best reviewed history and politics books. | Book Marks

• Sophie Haigney considers the burgeoning genre of “upbeat, didactic, and unimaginative” children’s books by and about political celebrities. | The Drift

• Examining the long, complex history of book censorship in the US. | Teen Vogue

• Listen to this joint interview with Isabel Allende and Sandra Cisneros. | NPR

• Dave Eggers talks about his sequel to The Circle and the theme of surveillance. | Publishers Weekly

• George Abraham describes how language can address an “apocalypse that colonialism has imposed on Indigenous and dispossessed peoples since the beginning of the settler project.” | Guernica

• Namwali Serpell delves into “the fantasy of American race transformation” and the history of “passing” narratives. | The Yale Review

• “Please try to notice if every artist isn’t ruthless in some way.” Read an excerpt from Patricia Highsmith’s diaries. | The New Yorker

Also on Lit Hub: Seth G. Jones on contemporary digital conflict with China, Russia, and Iran • Dr. Kinari Webb on protecting the forests of Bali and its inhabitants • Read from Joshua Ferris’ latest novel, A Calling for Charlie Barnes