Lit Hub Daily: March 20, 2025
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
TODAY: In 1828, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen is born.
- “The cities are stars, the sections constellations, the book a galaxy, and Calvino’s structure allows a reader to study each star and admire its idiosyncrasies.” Anthony Doerr reflects on Invisible Cities at 50. | Lit Hub Criticism
- “During Trump’s first term, some elected Republicans stood against him; now, the idea of opposing Trump is virtually unthinkable.” On the terminal emptiness of the GOP. | Lit Hub Politics
- Alex Bollen explores early childhood brain development and why restrictive moralizing hurts parents.” | Lit Hub Health
- Are you the asshole if you demand semicolons? Kristen Arnett answers this and other awkward literary questions. | Lit Hub Craft
- Madeleine Wulfahrt considers Garth Greenwell’s Small Rain, the future of post-pandemic illness literature, and writing about hospitalization. | Lit Hub Craft
- “The great accomplishment of this book is that I feel I have gotten to know and care for both tenacious people.” 5 book reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks
- Shubha Sunder recommends immigrant novels with unconventional narrative structures by W.G. Sebald, Bruna Dantas Lobato, Sigrid Nuñez and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- Dive into Silvia Park’s reading list, featuring work by Ken Liu, Judy Chicago, Karen Joy Fowler, and others. | Lit Hub Criticism
- “By any means necessary. Freedom, justice, equality. Then. As a student, Mama wasn’t sure how to square the reality of by any means.” Read from Stacy Nathaniel Jackson’s novel, The Ephemera Collector. | Lit Hub Fiction
- “The Democratic Party has offered little more than begrudging responses to acts of repression that rival, if not surpass, the McCarthy era.” Shilpa Jindia examines efforts to suppress free speech and protest at American universities and beyond. | The Baffler
- How J. Russell Smith argued for the restoration of forests as key to sustainable agriculture in his seminal book, Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture. | JSTOR Daily
- B.D. McClay considers the relationship between speculative fiction and trash art: “I like genre fiction for the same reason I like black-and-white film, stylized dialogue, animation, the paintings of Marc Chagall or ballet: things feel more real if they’re obviously a little fake.” | The Point
- Greta Rainbow explores the way “seriousness” is marketed in publishing. | Dirt
- Julian Lucas talks to some of the guerilla archivists resisting Trump’s “digital book burning.” | The New Yorker
- Richard Blair, son of George Orwell, reflects on life with his father. | The Guardian
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