Lit Hub Weekly: January 31 – February 4, 2022

• Screens… aren’t great for deep reading. | Lit Hub Tech

• Finding the order of things: Jennifer Croft on the pleasures and challenges of translating Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob. | Lit Hub Translation

• Claire Woodcock on the need to radically rethink how we organize information in the Library of Congress. | Lit Hub

• “I read slowly, allowing its gorgeous language, vivid descriptions and sensory atmospheres to sink in.” Bernardine Evaristo on the pleasures (and lessons) of rereading Toni Morrison. | Lit Hub Craft

• Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob, Tessa Hadley’s Free Love, and Isaac Butler’s The Method all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

• It may be snowing outside, but these podcasts are sure to bring the true-crime heat. | CrimeReads

• Alex Shephard investigates the motives of Filippo Bernardini, the man accused of orchestrating an elaborate plot to steal hundreds of manuscripts from book publishers. | The New Republic

• “How many children have you? I have 50 books.” Anna Holmes looks at the radical life of Margaret Wise Brown. | The New Yorker

• “Was MacDowell’s space key to how I could write the book? Indisputably yes. Could I have foretold the final form of the book beforehand? Not at all.” Casey Plett considers the burden of “relevance” in artists residencies. | MacDowell

• Read two vignettes (of the undead) by Nell Zink. | n+1

• Andy Hunter discusses the mission and future of Bookshop.org on its second anniversary. | Publishing Perspectives

• Has Goodreads turned reading into a “bizarre literary Miss Universe pageant”? | The Cut

• “If the essay really is the intellectual bellwether of an age, America seems to have spent the last twenty years missing the big picture again and again.” Jackson Arn considers the contemporary American essay. | The Drift

• George Sand’s 1867 argument for the vitality of public parks. | Places Journal

• “This isn’t about censorship, it’s about what’s fun.” How the New York Times crossword puzzle editors navigate contentious language issues. | Kotaku

• Lovia Gyarkye on the lessons of Octavia E. Butler’s Fledgling. | The Atlantic

• “A victory that doesn’t quite feel like a victory.” Sarah Raughley considers the publishing industry’s sudden interest in Black authors. | The Walrus

• Read a story by Denne Michele Norris at American Short Fiction, one of four chosen this Black History month by guest editor Danielle Evans. | American Short Fiction

• “Estés laid the groundwork for the empowerment feminism that proliferates today, creating a fertile muck for girl bosses and SHE-E-Os to thrive.” Megan Reynolds on Women Who Run with the Wolves at 30. | Gawker

• Brian Teare confronts narrative medicine’s pressure on patients to “suffer correctly, meaningfully, and usefully” amid the reality that “illness has no intrinsic meaning.” | Boston Review

• “How can we keep complaining about the complete idiocy of our country when there are obvious solutions?” On the problem of paywalling. | Document Journal

Also on Lit Hub:

Lan Samantha Chang on the complicated relationship between writing and money • How the male point of view shapes the narrative of The Great Gatsby • Celebrating Ulysses at 100 • Why Whitney Houston’s rendition of the national anthem still matters • How Antarctic explorers kept themselves sane on long, cold voyages • On the sad Disneyfication of Bambi • On the hidden pain of V.C. Andrews, author of Flowers in the Attic • In a Gazan home in California, two writers share a taste of home • The literary film and TV you should stream this month • Why we should all be reading Kay Dick • On Vladimir, The Lost Daughter, and the intersection of art and motherhood • “Each ingredient carries a story” • Will Smith should’ve been our rom-com hero • What can a dead Egyptian pharaoh teach us about the modern world? • How reading plays helped Julia may Jonas write her novel • The mysterious origins of the world’s oldest commercial beer • Some helpful metaphors, illustrated, on how to write a novel • Is Wonder Boys the best-ever onscreen depiction of a writer? • Daniel Black on the potency of the epistolary form • Taking writing lessons from quantum physics • How Frances McDormand taps into “the Method”