Lit Hub Daily: May 8, 2020

• In honor of MOTHER’S DAY this Sunday, consider the magic and mundanity of motherhood: Melanie Abrams on the heartbreaking mysteries of encountering your child’s experience of the world · Mira Ptacin explains how Harry Houdini became the champion of Mother’s Day · Gabriela Weiner on first hearing the manic rhythm of her baby’s heart. | Lit Hub
•  “Now everyone’s baking during self-isolation, and Sea-Monkeys are my sourdough starter.” Aimee Knight, the world’s leading expert on raising a family of Sea-Monkeys during a global pandemic. | Lit Hub
• Rebecca Solnit remembers Michael McClure, poet, teacher, friend. | Lit Hub
• In case you’re TBR piles are looking a little light, we’re back with round seven of our personalized quarantine book recommendations. | Lit Hub
• “Once we get past this sub-acute time, eventually we will wind up in chronic uncertainty. In other words: life.” Elizabeth Silver considers what we can learn from the bad times. | Lit Hub
• ON THE VBC: On The Week in Books LIVE, Dan and Katie talk Pulitzers, Lovecraft, and Guns N’ Roses vs. Bill Clinton · On Tables of Contents Live, Tommy Pico makes ceviche with Evan Hanczor · Kimberly McCreight confesses her long-held desire to be and FBI agent, on Playback · On Sheltering, Adrienne Raphel talks crossword puzzles, Sondheim, and Shortz · Julia Scheeres and Melanie Abrams on cults and California, on Rekindled. | Lit Hub
• New titles by Emma Straub, Samanta Schweblin, Percival Everett, and Jennifer Weiner all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
• Our personalized quarantine recommendations, crime fiction edition. | CrimeReads
• Andrew Martin on the “startlingly original” Nell Zink, whose books are “defined by a fervent restlessness, a desire to ignore the strictures that usually confine the contemporary novel.” | NYRB
• What kinds of books will thrive in the pandemic era? | BBC
• “It is not just a big novel in pure pages, but in scope and in what it tries to say.” On the (unfairly overlooked) Diary of a Yuppie. | Inside Hook
• What are some of Slavic culture’s most prominent influences on contemporary literature? | Tor
• On the lasting importance of Octavia Butler, who “seems to have seen the real future coming in a way few other writers did.” | Detroit News
• A number of small presses in the UK and Ireland say they fear they could go out of business by the fall. | The Bookseller
• How have the poems of Morgan Parker, Claudia Rankine, and Evie Shockley addressed black celebrity and exposure? | Public Books

Also on Lit Hub: Dear Mr. Rogers: A letter from Officer Clemmons • Humera Afridi on the quarantine state of mind • Read an excerpt from Brady Hammes’ debut novel The Resolutions.