Lit Hub Weekly: June 4 – 8, 2018

TODAY: In 1717, writer and mystic Jeanne-Marie Bouvier, one of the key advocates of “Quietism,” dies.

• “The truth is that truth has always been a contested idea.” Salman Rushdie on the “multidimensional, fractured and fragmented” nature of reality. | The New Yorker
• The New York Times recommends the best thrillers, cookbooks, romance novels, and more to read this summer. | The New York Times
• “People have been saying forever, we live in a glut of images. I thought to myself, how would you tell that story?” A profile of Lynne Tillman. | SSENSE
• “I wanted to watch the patriarchy go up in flames, but I wasn’t excited about what was being pitched to replace it.” Natasha Stagg on nightlife and dating after #MeToo. | n+1
• “I wanted to be able to tell my story directly to someone without couching it in theory, history, the sociological . . . Why pretend I am worth more in some context? Why can’t I just tell my story?” An interview with Porochista Khakpour. | Tin House
• “This was like running a marathon instead of doing a lot of sprints.” Catching up with Michiko Kakutani as she prepares for the release of The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump. | Vanity Fair
• What would James Wood the critic think of James Wood the novelist? Christian Lorentzen considers both. | Vulture
• “Who was America’s railroad king?” T. J. Stiles on the history of the rail. | The National
• A profile of crime novelist Zhou Haohui, who worked as an engineering professor until 2007, when he began publishing, online, the trilogy that earned him a cult following in China. | The New York Times
• “By her third month into the job, her disdain for what she was doing was outsize.” On Renata Adler’s brief stint as the New York Times chief film critic. | Bookforum
• “If I live to be 80 (if humanity survives that long), I’ll be transparent and able to walk through my neighbors’ front doors, not just look through their windows.” Lauren Groff in conversation with Lucie Shelly. | The Paris Review
• “I never did well in math, but I understand fractions better now.” Tommy Orange on what it means to be “Native enough.” | BuzzFeed Reader
• Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire has been awarded the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction. | The Guardian
• “I didn’t want to write a book that leaned into the facts. I wanted to make the language itself part of what helped keep a person reading.” Rising author Elizabeth Rush on finding a new way to write about climate change. | Longreads
• Books Not Bombs: how libraries, whose stacks supposedly “offered excellent radiation shielding,” prepared during the Cold War. | JSTOR
• Anthony Bourdain has died at 61—read the New Yorker essay that started it all. |The New York Times, The New Yorker

Also on Lit Hub:

From cows to Nabokov to art school, 16 books you should read this June • 17 great writers on their favorite short story collections: Lauren Groff, George Saunders, Samanta Schweblin, Helon Habila and more • Paul Beatty talks on LA lit, The Sellout, and life after winning the Man Booker Prize • How train-hopping gave me my life back: poet Kai Carlson-Wee on the origins of his collection, RAIL • The last days of Robert F. Kennedy: Timothy Denevi on the radical compassion of an American icon • From Nobel Prize winners to canonical poets, 20 writers who’re still notoriously underrated • Peter Wohlleben turns his attention to the not-so-secret life of stars • A vigilante feminist terror organization meting out capital justice to #MeToo’s worst offenders? Does AMC’s new adaptation of Dietland take things too far, or not far enough? • From darkly adamant NO, to brightly urgent YES: 14 writers on whether or not to have kids • We, for one, do not welcome our new billionaire space overlords: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the commodification of the void • Kristen Arnett doesn’t actually play a librarian on TV, but she totally could: On pop culture portrayals of the library, and how they’re getting. . . cooler? • When your childhood memories are slowly privatized: Caleb Johnson on the lost lakeshore of his youth • Elizabeth Alexander on Lorna Simpson: “Black women’s heads of hair are galaxies unto themselves. . .” • “I spent the first 19 years of my life defending my virginity!”• Hannah Pittard goes where many of us won’t: a conversation with her mom, about sex • Literary classics retold as two-panel comics: Grapes of Wrath = “Farming sucks. Road trip! Road trip sucks.”• Aminatta Forna digs into the truth about fiction vs. nonfiction • How Prince helped me finally feel seen: James Tate Hill on the multifarious legacy of an American icon • For Adrienne Celt, moving from her beloved apartment to a new home was like going through a bad break-up. So she drew about it • Emily Heiden visits an abortion clinic that wasn’t • On being a translator from Catalan • Salman Rushdie on his sister’s culinary genius: Sameen Rushdie’s home cooking comes to America • Surviving a Rocky Mountain winter in a horse barn, all in the name of writing • When one man has had enough: on documenting the systemic torture of the Assad regime • How did Los Angeles become a destination city on the rare book trail?

Best of Book Marks:

BookPeople’s Eugenia Vela on 10 Contemporary Classics of Children’s Literature by Writers & Illustrators of Color • Acclaimed novelist and screenwriter Anthony Horowitz spoke to Jane Ciabattari about five influential murder mysteries • Writer and critic Hamilton Cain on Sylvia Plath, Vivian Gornick, and the pleasures of being a roving reader • Ron Charles on Bill Clinton’s first foray into fiction, Jonathan Dee on Helen DeWitt’s intellectual unicorns, and more Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week • New titles by Lauren Groff, Tommy Orange, Dorthe Nors, John McCain, and more all feature among our Best Reviewed Books of the Week

New on CrimeReads:

Lit Hub Daily

---

Good read found on the Lithub