August 5, 2025 ‹ Literary Hub

TODAY: In 1850, Guy de Maupassant is born.  

• Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland gets a 21st century reassessment: “…the plot is set in motion by Reagan’s slashing of the federal government, unwittingly severing millions of connections, setting in motion events beyond anyone’s control, resurrecting the suppressed.” | Lit Hub Criticism
• Elaine U. Cho explains the process of building a fictional world around real Korean language and culture. | Lit Hub Craft
• Jon Raymond recommends books about sex and God by Don DeLillo, Denis Johnson, Theodor Adorno and more! | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• Tochi Eze recalls how Igbo folklore taught her that “all literature must be translated.” | Lit Hub Criticism
• m. mick powell highlights five essential books on Black queer friendship, including work by Toni Morrison, Brittany Rogers, and Danez Smith. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• Megan Cummins explores why writers write about writers and how an artist’s relationship to creation can change over time. | Lit Hub Craft
• A new month means new books, and these 27 titles covering everything from the Brontës to Springsteen are out today! | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• “I’m smart, she thought. I have skills. Or, sort of. Maybe. The willingness, at least, to learn them.” Read from Emily Hunt Kivel’s debut novel, Dwelling. | Lit Hub Fiction
•  Leslie Jamison explores the dangerous impossibility of striving for perfection. | The New Yorker
• Riley MacLeod reads Moby-Dick on a boat (over a single day). | Aftermath
• “Do put all your eggs in a single basket if it is the most sublime basket you have ever seen, perfectly molded to the form of your eggs, I mean books.” Award-winning translator Lara Vergnaud offers some advice for pitching translations in a bleak market. | Words Without Borders
• Nicholas Boggs on writing James Baldwin’s life as a love story. | Vogue
• Adam J Smith considers Jane Austen’s role in the history of satire. | The Conversation

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