August 8, 2025
Today, we talk to Brad Lander about sonnets, wonder what Jane Austen would consider an “accomplished woman” in the present day, ask if we’ve been calling by The Metamorphosis the wrong title this whole time, and more!
- “Sexting a man that you just met in a park is nothing like Jane Austen’s day.” Grace Aldridge asks, how would Austen define an accomplished woman in the present? | Lit Hub Criticism
- This week on The Lit Hub Podcast: Talking sonnets with Brad Lander • What happens when your small press wins the Booker Prize?! | Lit Hub Radio
- Jessica Gross on the challenge and technique of writing a New York novel while no longer living in New York. | Lit Hub Craft
- Should we call it The Metamorphosis or The Transformation? Mark Harman looks at the history and process of translating an uncanny classic. | Lit Hub On Translation
- Jason Mott’s People Like Us, Åsne Seierstad’s The Afghans, and Elaine Castillo’s Moderation all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks
- “Debbie used to love sunny days, but she dreaded them when she became unhoused.” The very real perils of living without shade. | Lit Hub Politics
- On poet William W. Watt’s experience witnessing the aftermath of nuclear devastation in Nagasaki. | Lit Hub History
- Álvaro Enrigue explores the history and fantasy of Manuel Mujica Lainez’s Bomarzo. | Lit Hub Criticism
- What the decline in global population signals about the future of humanity: “Our times, when many people are alive, may prove to be unlike the entire rest of human history, past and future—if what is normal today persists.” | Lit Hub Science
- “Despite being two hundred thousand square kilometers in size, the Thar Desert, also known as the Great Indian Desert, has only one river: the Luni.” Read from Shobha Rao’s new novel, Indian Country. | Lit Hub Fiction
From around the internet:
- “Disabled activists and scholars have put forward a model of ‘interdependency’ that emphasizes the reality that disabled people can and do need care from others—and holds that this is not such a bad thing.” Emily Lim Rogers considers recent books about the concept of “care.” | Public Books
- In an excerpt from her forthcoming memoir, Arundhati Roy recounts her early life. | Vogue
- David W. Blight chronicles the far-right’s animosity towards historians and the role manipulating history plays in support of fascism. | The New Republic
- On the connection between Gabriela Mistral’s queerness and writing (and Langston Hughes as a translator of her work). | Asymptote
- Inside the US government’s pre-Trump 2.0 report on AI safety: “it was one of several AI documents from NIST that were not published for fear of clashing with the incoming administration.” | Wired
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#brad lander#sonnet#jane austen#franz kafka#kafka#new york#new york city#nyc#the metamorphosis#new books#book reviews#book review#shade#history#wwii#nagasaki#unhoused#bomzaro#novel excerpt#arundhati roy#care#historian#american politics#gabriela mistral#langston hughes#ai#ai safety#lit hub daily#lit hub#literary hub
July 22, 2025
Today, we’re examining the impact of ICE raids, revisiting Leonora Carrington’s The Stone Door, thinking about what happens after the post-apocalypse, and more!
- “The terror of ICE has pushed immigrant families in Ventura County to their deaths in ways fast and slow.” Steven W. Thrasher on what these brutal raids signal for the future. | Lit Hub Politics
- Dan Fesperman recommends novels set in imaginary (but realistic) locales by Evelyn Waugh, Margaret Atwood, Gary Shteyngart, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- “Magic and ideology are both practices of belief.” On the cluttered bird’s nest of Leonora Carrington’s The Stone Door. | Lit Hub Criticism
- This week’s new books include titles from Katie Yee, John Gregory Dunne, and more! | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- Ivonne Lamazares discusses family, identity, and Cuba in her novel, The Tilting House. | Lit Hub In Conversation
- Laura Poppick explains why glacial ice isn’t just a product of climate, but a force that shapes it. | Lit Hub Nature
- Henry Wiencek looks at the minds behind McKim, Meade and White, New York’s first great architectural firm. | Lit Hub History
- “And so the great silent words came; transmitted from one continent to the other over the ocean, the crucial message came.” Read from C. F. Ramuz’s novel Into the Sun, translated Olivia Baes and Emma Ramadan. | Lit Hub Fiction
From around the internet:
- Ahoy! Read from Ella Sheldon’s nineteenth century seafaring diary. | JSTOR Daily
- “Yet perhaps what is more intriguing is which lines the post-apocalyptic genre have not crossed.” Isaac Yuen looks at literature and film of the post-post apocalypse. | Public Books
- “The contemporary world is so complex and protean that it is no longer possible to describe it with linear prose and squeeze it into a traditional novel’s structure.” Joshua Cohen and Vladimir Sorokin in conversation. | The Paris Review
- Maya C. Popa explores the life and career of Laura Gilpin, the poet best remembered as the author of “The Two-headed Calf.” | Poetry
- Tony Perrottet explores Hemingway’s Pamplona. | Smithsonian Magazine
- Rosie Thomas reports on the “personalities” of different chatbots (and what it all means for the humans who use them). | 404 Media
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#lit hub daily#literary hub#lit hub#ice raids#california#reading list#book recommendations#margaret atwood#evelyn waugh#leonora carrington#new books#environmental science#glacier#archetecture#new york city#nyc#nyc history#new fiction#c. f. ramuz#translation#novel excerpt#book excerpt#seafaring#post apocalypse#laura gilpin#ernest hemingway#pamplona#chatbot
