THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET TODAY: In 1895, Friedrich Engels dies. Maybe you just need a writing date with Rumpelstiltskin. | Lit Hub Craft On Etna, The Call of the Wild, and the enduring appear of the canine narrator. | Lit Hub Criticism Here are ten great nonfiction titles to read this August, featuring…
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET TODAY: In 1792, Percy Bysshe Shelley is born. Why mothers with babies are the ultimate flâneurs, even if “there aren’t a lot of mother-flâneurs in literature.” | Lit Hub Craft Tracy Borman recommends books by C.J. Sansom, Hilary Mantel, Stephen Alford and more to shape your Tudor obsession. | Lit…
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET TODAY: In 1905, Elias Canetti is born. “Classical culture is a lot of things including, literally, rape culture.” Rebecca Solnit on the Odyssey and the Western literary tradition of silencing women. | Lit Hub Criticism From Dr. Abdul El-Sayed to Brad Lander, Steven W. Thrasher examines the emerging Democratic…
TODAY: In 1908, Salvadoran poet Vicente Acosta dies on his birthday. Tarot reader Lisa Stardust examines Sylvia Plath’s relationship to her deck. | Lit Hub Criticism How the expectation that “books are now asked to function simultaneously as texts and as lifestyle objects” influences cover design in the social media era. | Lit Hub Design…
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET TODAY: In 1886, Hella Wuolijoki is born. Why writing alt text image descriptions is an act of literary translation. | Lit Hub Technology April Dávila explores the neuroscience of writer’s block (and what we can do to conquer it). | Lit Hub Craft How Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston,…
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET TODAY: In 1930, Brazilian poet, playwright, and novelist Hilda Hilst is born. Why more retellings of the Odyssey should center women: “We are like Penelope, unraveling Homer’s tale for our own purposes.” | Lit Hub Criticism How Jean-Paul Sartre and other French intellectuals came to embrace Marxism, to the…
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET TODAY: In 1866, the steamer Governor Higginson encounters a mysterious sea creature in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. “For years I’ve been trying to obtain Greek citizenship, which, if one of your parents was born in Greece, can be, ostensibly, a straightforward process.” On experiencing your…
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET TODAY: In 1811, William Makepeace Thackeray is born. On the rise (and fall) of the Japanese cell phone novel in the early 2000s (and the its attendant moral panic). | Lit Hub Technology Josh Cook, bookseller and founder of the Porter Square Review of Books, explores why booksellers are…
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET TODAY: In 1892, Walter Benjamin is born. How it feels when one of your poems is literally going to the Moon. | Lit Hub Nature Why Steven W. Thrasher is suing Northwestern University (and the US government). | Lit Hub Politics “Put simply, people don’t buy books. They buy…
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET TODAY: In 1904, Anton Chekhov dies of tuberculosis. “I usually just write my way into things.” Eric Olson profiles Sigrid Nunez on the release of her collection, It Will Come Back to You. | Lit Hub Craft Angela Flournoy explores why Jean Said Makdisi’s Beirut Fragments “is less a…
