Lit Hub Daily: August 29, 2019

• The best book covers of August feature trompe l’oeil crumples, black and yellow, and an abundance of beauty. | Lit Hub
• “When formulated properly, it’s a source of vitality.” On the unruly virtues of the semicolon. | Lit Hub
• An open letter to Europe: Ilija Trojanow on the chasm between actions and its ideals. | Lit Hub Politics
• HAPPY BIRTHDAY John Williams! Steve Almond on the critical and commercial resurrection of Stoner, “the Velvet Underground of novels” · And here’s Williams considering the literary Western (or lack thereof), c. 1961. | Lit Hub
• Classes! Advice! A Pitch Slam! Bob Eckstein draws his way through the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference. | Lit Hub
• What data-driven corporate medicine has wrought: Terrence Holt revisits Paul Starr’s classic, The Social Transformation of American Medicine. | Lit Hub Health
• “Nothing about an immigrant’s life is truly ordinary.” The life and times of a Filipino overseas worker. | Lit Hub Politics
• It’s back to school season! Time to read up on the best campus mysteries and research thrillers, just in time for the new semester. | CrimeReads
• Parul Sehgal on Salman Rushdie’s latest, Helen Macdonald on a homing pigeon odyssey, Deborah Lipstadt on the memory of evil, and more of the Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• The landmark sci-fi magazine Analog Science Fiction and Fact dropped its former editor John Campbell’s name from a debut author award after Jeannette Ng, this year’s recipient, criticized Campbell’s racist views. | Inkstone
• The mid-1990s were the height of John Grisham fever, when the author’s legal thrillers were taking the publishing world and Hollywood by storm. What did Grisham’s success imply about a changing American South? | The New York Times
• “In a climate change story, nobody will win, but if we learn to tell it differently more of us can survive.” On the necessity of Ursula Le Guin’s “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” in the age of climate catastrophe. | The Outline
• Leah Schnelbach on what Stephen King’s IT can teach us about how to craft a compelling narrative. | Tor
• Two-fifths of British women are apparently ridiculed for their book choices . . . the only question is, by whom? (And can that person sit next to us?) | The Bookseller
• Margaret Atwood’s debut novel, The Edible Woman, was published 50 years ago. Here’s what happened when one intrepid fan went back and re-read it, and every novel she’s written since. | Chicago Review of Books
• Computers are already writing zippy ad copy—will groundbreaking, luminous, triumphant tours de force be next? | JSTOR

Also on Lit Hub: On Just the Right Book with Roxanne Coady, Jenny Odell talks rethinking productivity • R.O. Kwon on art, religion, and Dawson’s Creek, on The Maris Review • What it’s like to be told you have dementia • Falling in love with the writing of José Esteban Muñoz • Read an excerpt from Rune Christiansen’s novel Fanny and the Mystery in the Grieving Forest (trans. Kari Dickson).