August 28, 2025

Today, we’re remembering CliffsNotes, exploring the connection between books and empathy, and more!

On Lit Hub dot com:

“Somebody wrote an article online that shit talks Fidel.” Profiling the cyber soldiers who crush internet dissent in Cuba. | Lit Hub Technology
Huda Fakhreddine on Paul Celan and the necessity of Gaza to poetry: “If time must continue on its course after this, then it cannot but course toward a free Palestine.” | Lit Hub On Translation
As AI invades classrooms, Joelle Renstrom looks back on the most human of study guides, CliffsNotes. | Lit Hub Criticism
Maris Kreizman explains why books aren’t the solution to building empathy, but they definitely help: “We’re stuck in a moment when passive entertainment rules, when books are viewed by the ruling class as strictly utilitarian.” | Lit Hub Criticism
“Academia is a hellscape; Katabasis just makes it literal.” 5 book reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks
Kelly Sundberg recommends titles to read for your new life by Saeed Jones, River Selby, and more! | Lit Hub Reading Lists
What if all the ice on earth suddenly melted? “Everything about this epoch is superlative, bizarre, unprecedented.” | Lit Hub Climate Change
“They come under immediate assault from sandflies. Emil is beating them off his neck and shins the whole way, but it pleases him how well he manages the exertion.” Read from Olufemi Terry’s new novel, Wilderness of Mirrors. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

A middle school teacher shares his strategy for engaging reluctant readers. | The Washington Post
“To remember is to risk punishment”: Sajad Hameed and Rehan Qayoom Mir report on India’s book ban in Kashmir. | Jacobin
Ahmad Almallah on the poetics of Palestine, American hypocrisy, and writing “between linguistic borderlands.” | Asymptote
“I’ve since come to think of guilty pleasure only when I think about terrible beauty.” On the entwining legacies of climate change and family history in California. | Nautilus
Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth read “The Lifted Veil,” George Eliot’s angsty tale of emo telepathy. | Reactor
Tate McFadden interviews Sam Szabo about queer cartooning and comics history: “I always think about my creative process as being two channels in my brain. One is memoir and one is gags.” | The Comics Journal

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August 21, 2025

Today, we’re dishing out some literary advice, looking back on 20 years of Beasts of No Nation, exploring the history of lesbian pulp novels, and more!

On Lit Hub dot com:

Katie Kitamura revisits Beasts of No Nation after 20 years: “There is never the benefit of hindsight, the reassurance of a given outcome, or anything other than the rapidly fading innocence of a child.” | Lit Hub Craft
Trish Bendix explores the history of lesbian pulp, and how queer writers and readers carry its legacy into the present. | Lit Hub Criticism
Is it wrong to cheat on your literary novel with a secret (and fun) fantasy project? Kristen Arnett answers this and other burning questions. | Lit Hub
Yet even though she shared Eleni’s name, it wasn’t until Eleni’s smiling face appeared on the presentation screen that I comprehended that this scholar was my aunt.” Natalie Bakapoulos shares lessons from discovering her family’s place in queer Greek literature and activism. | Lit Hub Memoir
But the women themselves lovingly called the bags in which they carried their uniforms “‘freedom bags.’” How Black women used purses at the service of civil rights. | Lit Hub History
“These and 11 other pieces ventriloquize a chorus of white American grotesques across the sociopolitical spectrum.” 5 book reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks
Khadijah Queen’s TBR features Linda Hogan, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Sinclair Lewis, and more! | Lit Hub Reading Lists
“By the end of her climb her thighs cramped, her left foot ached, and Grandma Blue was an angry bull.” Read from Antonio Michael Downing’s debut novel, Black Cherokee. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

Elissa Altman looks back on her lifelong love affair with guitars. | The Bitter Southerner
“The ur-loneliness is at the heart of Airless Spaces. Mental illness is the metaphor of choice, but the author has something more encompassing on her mind.” Vivian Gornick considers Shulamith Firestone’s life and work. | Boston Review
Rebecca Mead explores the reemergence of Sally Carson’s 1934 novel, Crooked Cross, and its relevance alongside the rise of global fascism. | The New Yorker
“Accusations of terrorism are automatically serious because our capacity for terror is intrinsic.” On Palestine Action and how governments weaponize proscription against activists. | The Baffler
Why typos have become “a reassuring sign of human authorship.” | Slate
Rhoda Kwan examines two newly translated novels that document grief and pain in China’s past. | Los Angeles Review of Books

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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!

On Lit Hub dot com:

“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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August 7, 2025

Today, we’re asking if we’re the (literary) asshole, digging into Chloe Caldwell’s TBR, facing the reality of Kafka’s America, and more!

On Lit Hub dot com:

Princess Joy L. Perry sorts myth from fact while telling the story of how colonists legislated the first slaves in America into existence. | Lit Hub History
“Am I the literary asshole for prioritizing my writing over the travails of my loved ones?” And other questions answered by Kristen Arnett this week. | Lit Hub Advice
“There is no doubt that if anyone is capable of rebuilding and renewing, it is Los Angeles.” Ella Berman on writing about the City of Angels. | Lit Hub Memoir
Chloe Caldwell’s TBR features books by Sheila Heti, Yiyun Li, Hala Alyan, and more! | Lit Hub Criticism
“Dystopian novels are not merely the expression of vivid imaginations, they are often warnings about what’s to come.” 5 book reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks
M.G. Sheftall chronicles daily life in Nagasaki before the atomic bomb: “At least if he could help it, no one else’s grandchild was going to die on his watch because of a decision he made—or failed to make in time.” | Lit Hub History
“All afternoon we watched Elvis’s old films. Elvis as a cowboy, a soldier, a surfer in nothing but his shorts. By the time we reached the news I was a wreck.” Read from Esther Freud’s novel, My Sister and Other Lovers. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

Patricia Lockwood writes about The X-Files, her father, and whether or not we “live in a describable time.” | London Review of Books
Another consequence of AI? America going nuclear. | The Verge
Why online age verification laws may signal the “real-time destruction of the internet as we know it.” | The New Yorker
Sasha Abamsky explores the reality of Kafka’s America. | The Nation
“His work keeps one’s mind on tiptoe. Illusions beget disillusions but also hopes; hopes beget illusions but also clarities.” Yiyun Li on Graham Greene. | The Paris Review
Tess Pollok and Olivia Kan-Sperling discuss the semiotics of online writing. | Los Angeles Review of Books

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July 25, 2025

Today, we’re appreciating the literary value of pranks, rounding up the best reviewed books of the week, considering technoableism, and more!

On Lit Hub dot com:

Katie Yee explains what pranking the Lit Hub staff taught her about writing: “Both pranking and writing are exercises in careful observation.” | Lit Hub Craft
Alex Poppe considers her family’s history of immigration and why distinctions between expats, economic migrants, an refugees shouldn’t matter. | Lit Hub Politics
Michael Clune’s Pan, Barry Mazor’s Blood Harmony: The Everly Brothers Story, and Linn Ullman’s Girl, 1983 all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks
Kalie Cassidy recommends books that explore the myths of sirens by Cassandra Khaw, Rose Sutherland, Emilia Hart, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
“When an obsession comes that wants words to be art, you choose (or invent) whatever container will best display it.” Matthew Clark Davison and Alice LaPlante on the power of hybrid writing. | Lit Hub Craft
“On the Internet, she says, a new platform where students can log on and do homework together. From all over the world. It’s a lockdown thing.” Read from Linn Ullmann’s novel Girl, 1983, translated by Martin Aitken. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

“Technosolutionist approaches to disability as something that can be eradicated through technological innovation exacerbate existing forms of erasure by promising a future without disabled people.” Anya Heise-Von Der Lippe on disability erasure and technoablism. | Public Books
Rami Abu Jamous details the death of Obeida, one of hundreds of Palestinians murdered while waiting for aid distribution to feed his family. | The Nation
Brooklyn Public Library librarians recommend eight books to help you understand the present moment in America. | Electric Literature
Is Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes actually the Great American Novel? Why the undersung book deserves more appreciation. | The Paris Review
“In the shadow of rhetorical warfare and actual persecution, trans writing about sex has acquired a curiously contradictory character.” Emily Zhou explores memoirs of trans women’s sexualities. | Defector
What did Agatha Christie actually do that time she disappeared? As it turns out, we still don’t know. | JSTOR Daily

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May 1, 2025

Today, we’re feeling really petty, crying over Twin Peaks, and wondering why parents don’t like reading with their kids!

On Lit Hub dot com:

My mean, rich, hot ex-friend is a mediocre literary darling and I hate it: Am I the literary asshole? | Lit Hub Advice
Charlotte Beradt on the psychological effects of totalitarianism and how Nazi Germany perfected the art of fear. | Lit Hub History
Dan Reiter dives into the history of surf literature: “One of the best arguments for the legitimacy of the genre is that surfing has its own idiosyncratic language, a patois, and fully inhabits its own universe.” | Lit Hub Sports
“If Twain belongs to anyone now, it’s the writers making mischief in the structures he left behind.” 5 book reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks
Gerald Early traces the role of baseball in Black communities in Reconstruction-era America. | Lit Hub Sports
Lauren Haddad sings the praises of Twin Peaks, television’s equivalent of a damn fine cup of coffee. | Lit Hub TV
“To rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of the world.” Tom Holland examines the legacies of ancient Rome’s most famous emperors. | Lit Hub History
“Peppa Ryan swiveled around for the third time, looking for something, anything, familiar.” Read from Marcia Butler’s new novel, Dear Virginia, Wait for Me. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

Zorimar Rivera Montes meditates on resilience, exhaustion, and Puerto Rican poetics. | Public Books
Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses family history, otherness, and the first 100 days of the second Trump administration. | Democracy Now!
Incarcerated journalist John J. Lennon on the real cost of true crime to prisoners. | Vulture
“What’s undeniable is that 4chan helped form the content ecosystem as we know it.” Kyle Chayka on the life, death, and disastrous legacy of the infamous imageboard. | The New Yorker
Apparently, parents don’t like reading with their kids? Weird! | The Guardian
“It is the daily, diaristic churn that gives her unloosed first novel the sense of a fully textured fictional world.” Anne Enright examines the relationship between Helen Garner’s fiction and her diaries. | London Review of Books