It’s the moooost wonderfullll tiiiiime of the yeaaaar! That’s right, folks: tomorrow is perhaps the greatest book-related holiday on the calendar: Independent Bookstore Day! As I’ve been saying at the top of bookstore events at my local indie (where I moonlight as the events manager), every day can/should be Independent Bookstore Day if you’re a true lover of reading and supporter of community spaces—but it’s nice to set aside a day for proper celebration and acknowledgement of all the great things that indies can do. In these trying times, where stores are facing not only the ongoing existen ..read more

TODAY: In 1564, playwright William Shakespeare is baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, England.   “I yearned for a bigger life and was sure it would come for me.” Aaron Hicklin on how the novels of Lynne Reid Banks helped him see himself. | Lit Hub Memoir “The more pertinent question than what we can write is what we who are Black authors can write about that a publisher will publish, will publicize, will market and distribute widely.” Nell Irvin Painter on writing about anything. | Lit Hub Craft Is there something writerly about hypochondria? Caroline Crampton complies a list of aut ..read more

Hypochondria is an extremely isolating condition. Afraid of being mocked or dismissed for our anxieties about our health, we hypochondriacs can be inclined to keep it all inside. It can be a lonely way to exist. Even the word “hypochondria” carries the substantial baggage and stigma borne of centuries of ridicule—“health anxiety” is the preferred term today. My own anxieties began with a cancer diagnosis when I was 17. Five years later when I was declared cured, I couldn’t let go of the concern that the disease would return. That thought pattern then began to apply itself to feelings and symp ..read more

The breast was soft and supple like a blancmange, silhouetted against the hairy chest that pressed gently against it. It was the chest, not the breast, that drew my attention. I was maybe 15, and it was the 1980s, when naked people were still a rare commodity. I had seen them, of course, in the locker rooms, and in a faded copy of Playboy that I found under my parents bed, and I’d spent too much time examining my own body for signs of what in sex ed class we were taught to call pubescence. For me, more than for my friends—as I discovered in the showers—it was going to be a long road. I wasn ..read more

My foray into K-drama amnesia began with Truth (2000). Ja-young is an economically disadvantaged girl living in the basement of a house that belongs to a rich brat named Shin-hee. Ja-young’s dad is Shin-hee’s family driver, while Ja-young’s mom works as their housekeeper. Ja-young and Shin-hee war for several years due to class differences, rivalry, and jealousy. Ultimately, Ja-young wins the affections of Shin-hee’s crush, Hyun-woo, a handsome and gentle young man who comes from a well-off background. Then oopsie. Shin-hee gets behind the wheel of a car after drinking with Hyun-woo and Ja-yo ..read more

In Greek mythology, the goddess Eos had a mortal lover, a Trojan named Tithonus. Eos asked Zeus to make Tithonus immortal but forgot to specify eternal youth. The result (given that Zeus had a mean streak) was that Tithonus lived forever while his body continued to age. According to Tennyson, “when loathsome old age pressed full upon him, and he could not move nor lift his limbs… she laid him in a room… there he babbles endlessly and no more has strength at all.” The moral of the tale, of course, is to be careful what you wish for. Continuing to live while your body and mind fall to pieces is ..read more

This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. Who can we write about? What a dumb question! The answer is obvious. You or I can write about anything we want to write about, as myriad authors have shown over the eons. From its earliest beginning in about 4000 BCE in ancient Mesopotamia, writing was primarily for business purposes: recording expenses, debts, inventories, and contracts. Millennia later in the United States, authors from the obscure to the fabulous have written an astounding array of texts. Closer to our own times, 19th-century Black authors ..read more

Jane Smiley’s Lucky, Judi Dench’s Shakespeare, and Justin Taylor’s Reboot all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews. * Fiction 1. Reboot by Justin Taylor (Pantheon) 2 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an essay by Justin Taylor here “Reboot is an anxious book … Taylor’s gently comic tone and kinetic prose make this hard-going travel easier, as do his many clever reinventions … A performance full of wit and rigor freed of the familiar polarizing semantics, making legible something the actual streaming-posting-retweeting ..read more

D’boy lurked around the edge of the crowd at the newspaper vendor’s stand, looking for a worthy pocket to pick. It was a good hunting spot. Most of the people gathered there had no intention of buying a paper, but that didn’t stop them from reacting loudly to the headlines, their arguments sometimes leading to fistfights. D’boy scanned their back pockets, kicking a rusty can to avoid suspicion. Years of picking pockets had made his eyes discerning, his fingers nimble. But people had become warier too, men carrying valuables in their shirt pockets and women growing fonder of bags with short st ..read more

That’s according to a recently released survey by the Society of Authors, which heard from over 800 of their members about how they’re feeling about emergent technologies and their impact on their creative work. The Society, a UK-based trade organization that has been advising and campaigning for writers, illustrators, and literary translators for over a century, found that its members are curious but extremely wary of new generative technology. This isn’t a universally skeptical crowd: 22% of respondents say they have used generative programs in their work, and 31% have used them for brainst ..read more