Lit Hub Weekly: June 8 – 12, 2026

TODAY: In 1752, Frances Burney is born.  

• Round two of our Best of the Best Books Reading Challenge ​is underway with 50 of the greatest summer novels of all time!​ | Lit Hub
• Helen Bain follows in Sylvia Plath’s footsteps from Paris to Wellesley.| Lit Hub Biography
• Dave Eggers talks to Jane Ciabattari about writing a novel that understands visual artists (as a visual artist). | Lit Hub In Conversation
• How remaining un(re)married allowed Muriel Spark’s “intellectual monster” to run free. | Lit Hub Criticism
• “The chief beneficiary of the paper’s broad-mindedness is advancing that narrow-minded man’s agenda while destroying the country’s most venerated television news operation.” Michael Tomasky on the monster the New York Times created. | The New Republic
• In an essay newly translated by Pankaj Mishra, Thomas Mann reflects on America’s “terrifying moral decline” (from 1949, still relevant!). | Equator
• We’d love it if AI left serif fonts alone. | Wired
• “The threat of loss, the inability to ever truly know another person or be known, is not a problem; it is part of what makes love exciting, meaningful, and even fun.” When Lauren Oyler met her AI boyfriend. | The Yale Review
• Matthew Wills traces the history of a Galileo forgery. | JSTOR Daily
• Mitchell Abidor considers what three new books by and about Paul Celan reveal about his life and legacy. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• Ria Banerjee examines the “Woolfian” aspects of Chantal Ackerman’s films. | Public Books
• Morgan Leigh Davies on what COVID novels have gotten wrong. | Current Affairs
• What the 2024 Columbia student protests have in common with Madison Square Garden’s security theater: “What started as an extravagant use of force became a normal part of student life.” | Defector
• “‘I always thought he would live / to a great age. He did not.’” Alan Jacobs on W.H. Auden and James Schuyler, in life and literature. | The Hedgehog Review
• People really, really hated the film adaptation of The Color Purple when it first came out. Nadira Goffe digs into what’s happened since. | Slate
• “In their rush to computerize, American companies inaugurated a race to the bottom, paying workers ever lower wages to ensure their computers would bring a return on investment.” Considering the human labor behind the digital revolution. | The Baffler
• How stories about a lighthouse keeper named Elias Thorne escaped chatbot containment. | 404 Media
• Erik Baker looks at Magnifica humanitas, Pope Leo’s first encyclical, as “an act of position-taking in the debates that have riven Catholicism since the mid-20th century.” | The Nation
• Lavinia Spalding tells Cheri Lucas Rowlands about editing the the Best Women’s Travel Writing series: “I think grief turns us more porous, and so everything we experience when we’re traveling—all the unexpected beauty and tenderness that accompanies travel—can feel heightened.” | Longreads

Also on Lit Hub:

Balancing brutal night shifts with writing poetry • The timeless appeal of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility • Rachel Carson’s poetic environmental vision • The “Black feminist methodology of communing with scraps” • How Katherine Mansfield crafted children’s worlds • 5 books to better understand the World Cup • This week in literary history, Lolita premieres in New York • The day FDR and Anton Cermak witnessed baseball history • What’s in a title? Teamwork. • Authors answer 7 questions about craft and life • Books about human and animal connections • Sofia Montrone on becoming reacquainted with her grandfather through fiction • Six books with (actually) realistic sex • The parallels between how humans treat each other and the natural world • “The Seneca Bear Hunter,” who killed the last Eastern Elk in America • Why art depicting dogs says more about people • Why just kill your darlings when you can murder them? • The Murmuration, possibly the strangest soccer novel ever written • Pushing back againstanti-vaxxer arguments • What’s a multispecies map? • 5 book reviews you need to read this week • This week’s Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers for fiction and nonfiction • We’d like to introduce you to Lost Kite Editions • Maris Kreizman’s best books of the year (so far) • Zinzi Clemmons talks to Myriam Gurba about telling her own story • Namwali Serpell and Vinson Cunningham on Toni Morrison’s Beloved • Don’t know what to write? Get a dog. • Parmigiano Reggiano, a culinary icon • The life and times of George Forster, 18th century naturalist • If literacy is in decline, why are bookstores booming? • Pairing poetry collections with K-pop • Did you know the Mayflower Puritans came from a town called Scrooby? • How ancient writers considered bees • Why sitting on the judge’s bench can inform craft • The best reviewed books of the week • What writers can learn from sculpting