Lit Hub Daily: May 17, 2019
TODAY: In 1900, L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is published.
“Like its appeal, its applications are personal and often regional.” On Flannery O’Connor’s two deepest loves: mayonnaise and her mother. | Lit Hub
“I still don’t know where Joy Division came from”: an oral history of an iconic band. | Lit Hub
The ongoing exile of the undocumented: Oscar Villalon on The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez . | Lit Hub
Today’s most delightful revelation is that L. Frank Baum’s first book was a manual for breeding fancy chickens. | Lit Hub
Anger and art in a dying empire: Jonathan Jones on Francis Bacon, David Hockney, and British painting in the 1970s. | Lit Hub
New titles from Karen Russell, Max Porter, and Kathleen Alcott all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week . | Book Marks
Nathan Ward on the legendary gangs, outlaws, and cowboy detectives that made the Western the earliest “true crime” sensation. | CrimeReads
On Catch-22 , The Name of the Rose , Hot Zone , and the rise of the literary miniseries . | The Week
A Leonora Carrington biopic based on Elena Poniatowska’s novel Leonora is headed our way. (!!!) | Screen Daily
Hey guys: turns out growing up in a house full of books makes you smarter— even if you don’t read them . | Scientific American
Haymarket Books and Annie Finch are raising money to publish Choice Words , “the first major literary anthology about abortion,” featuring work by Audre Lorde, Margaret Atwood, Leslie Marmon Silko, and more. | Kickstarter
British crime writers recommend 50 great thrillers by women , in response to a Sunday Times list of the 100 best thrillers published after 1945 (which included only 28 female authors). | The Guardian
The Prix Monte-Cristo, a new literary prize in France, will be awarded to a French or Francophone author writing on the theme of confinement. The jury will consist of detainees in Europe’s largest prison . | BookRiot
“We wanted to make a song about one of our favorite dystopian books, but we ended up inadvertently writing a non-fiction jam”: Nerdcore rappers MC Lars and Mega Ran have released a new track (and music video) inspired by 1984 . | Nerdist
Also on Lit Hub: On The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan, Saskia Vogel talks Sex and feminism • On the New Books Network, Carrie Tippen and Nico Slate discuss Gandhi’s diet • Moving through New York’s early 20th-century gay spaces • A betrayed generation is rising up on climate change • Read an excerpt from Igiaba Scego’s Beyond Babylon (tr. Aaron Robertson).
