Lit Hub Weekly: June 3 - 7, 2019

• Our most anticipated summer books list is here! In which the Lit Hub staff recommends some reads for the beach (or the cafe, or the porch, or the hammock, or, like, a chair.) | Lit Hub
• How internet insinuation becomes campaign fact: Rebecca Solnit on the curious case of Elizabeth Warren and the “charter school lobbyist” who wasn’t. | Lit Hub
• Justin Torres on Ocean Vuong’s debut novel, Leslie Jamison on Miriam Toews’ Women Talking, and more of the Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• The podcast summer preview is here!Emily Rose Stein rounds up all the crime and mystery podcasts to listen to this season. | CrimeReads
• The kids are all right (at spelling): the National Spelling Bee had to crown 8 co-champions when it ran out of words hard enough for these genius teens. | The New York Times
• “My eternal scene takes place in a faraway country, the one in which I was born and of which I have no memory.” Viet Thanh Nguyen on his mother’s death, and eternity. | The New Yorker
• “When Terry [Pratchett] found out that he was dying, he wrote to me and said, ‘You have to do this.’” Neil Gaiman on adapting Good Omens for the small screen—and why he’s running the show himself. | GQ
• Emma Copley Eisenberg makes the case for Sophie’s Choice as . . . the perfect summer read? | Alma
• “I’d recommend the earnest pursuit of poetry for every writer.” Read a profile of Ocean Vuong (written by his high school classmate). | The Atlantic
• Is Richard Yates’s The Easter Parade the next Stoner? Alix Ohlin on the “inadvertent feminist classic” that could be the best book you’ve never read. | Publishers Weekly
• A reading list inspired by Fleabag, to hold you over until Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s James Bond movie comes out. | Bustle
• Are these the best literary magazines in the world right now? | Stack
• “The source is a very, very good one.” Michael Wolff defends his reporting of his new Trump tell-all, Siege. | NPR
• From Underland to Slime: a summer reading list for scientists. | Science
• Read an excerpt from Ta-Nehisis Coates’ first novel, which comes out in September. | The New Yorker
• “There is no allegory crude enough to create and capture the counterfactual universe we are living in right now, with Trump and how we got here.” Jonathan Lethem on writing (and living) in the Trump era. | Salon
• “The challenge was not getting a book into print, but convincing the thing that writes that it is possible to publish a book without going insane.” Helen DeWitt on writing, reading, and the uses of language. | Full Stop
• Sure, there are the odd genius loners, but writers are more prolific when they cluster. | City Lab
• “Tin House was where the party was at—these were the conversations you wanted to join, the brilliant weirdos with whom you wanted to share a dance floor.” Nicole Rudick remembers the great literary journal, which publishes its final issue this month. | The New York Times
• “I started to see my work, my intellect, my skills, my moments of humor or goodness, not as valuable in themselves, but as ways of easing the impact of my ugliness.” Chloé Cooper Jones on disability, beauty, and sex. | The Believer

Also on Lit Hub:

The story of Britain’s first woman soccer player, the impeccably named Nettie J. Honeyball • Robert Macfarlane talks to Andrew Ervin about finding hope in the world’s darkest places • On Pablo Neruda’s life as a struggling poet in Sri Lanka • A Kafkaesque list of Kafkaesque things • Celebrating 70 years of misapplied allegory: happy birthday, 1984! But with apologies to Orwell, we’ve gone way past 1984 • Charles Kaiser on the painful, powerful legacies of Stonewall in 2019 • Jill Lepore on early American ideas of nationalism • Ma Jian on the short path from utopia to dystopia • What it’s like to teach writing when everyone’s a writer • Philippe Petit meditates on a life walking the high wire • Tyler Malone on the end of TV’s most literary show, Deadwood • The Cold War love story of a would-be travel writer/almost-spy • Selahattin Demirtaş on writing from a Turkish high-security prison • On the role of Black women in the struggle for suffrage • Tyler Mills on her grandfather’s role in the bombing of Nagasaki • Astra Taylor wonders if democracy can survive contemporary capitalism? • Treva Lindsey on Jim DeRogatis’s unflinching look at R. Kelly • The optimist’s guide to what to read at your wedding • Keith S. Wilson and Jericho Brown talk truth, tradition, form, and more • Dominic Smith on the power of silent film • Jay Parini on John Barton’s new History of the Bible • Tyler Wetherall on what it meant to share books with her father while he was in prison • Rachel Vorona Cote on season three in Gilead • How do we reclaim American cities for people who walk? • Antony DeCurtis on the instruments behind iconic rock ‘n’ roll moments • Naomi Alderman on The Heads of Cerberus and the invention of progress • Why women’s soccer—despite its popularity—still struggles for institutional support • Jack London’s journey from rags to riches (and back again) • Read your (incredibly accurate) literary horoscope for June

Best of Book Marks:

Every Women’s Prize for Fiction Winner of the 21st Century: from Bel Canto to Half a Yellow Sun, The Tiger’s Wife to On Beauty (and congratulations to Tayari Jones for taking home this year’s!) • Congratulations to the winners of the 2019 Lambda Literary Awards and the CLMP Firecracker Awards! • On the 75th anniversary of that fateful landing, renowned WWII historian James Holland recommends the five best books about D-Day • 5 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books for June: featuring a school for mages, a sentient spaceship, and a gay Green Man tale • Nicole Dennis-Benn recommends five books about immigrants, from Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake to Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn • This week in Secrets of the Book Critics: Booklist‘s Annie Bostrom on Alex Kotlowitz, Sharlene Tao, and the only critic who really matters • New titles from James Ellroy, Elizabeth Gilbert, Robert Macfarlane, and Ocean Vuong all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week

New on CrimeReads:

From the Golden Age to the present day, Oxford has inspired many a crime novel • All the crime, thrillers, and mysteries to read this June • Radha Vatsal investigates the case of the overly lengthy Agatha Christie adaptation • Zach Vasquez on the surprisingly similar, and similarly twisted, visions of James Ellroy and David Milch • Scarlett Harris on the women behind the true crime renaissance • Timothy Jay Smith looks at the long (and continuing) history of the Cold War spy novel • Maria Hummel on painter and Washington socialite Mary Pinchot Meyer, whose unsolved murder is linked to the JFK assassination • Jennifer Ryan on Jacqueline and Eileen Nearne, sisters and spies • Karen Lord on exploring small crimes within larger landscapes of injustice • Charlie Donlea recommends ten thrillers that are a master class in building slow-burn suspense