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Lit Hub Daily

April 9, 2026

TODAY: In 1859, Samuel Langhorne Clemens receives his steamboat pilot’s license.

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David Farrier revisits “Briggflatts,” Basil Bunting’s presicent poem warning us all of the loss of the world’s precious soundscapes. | Lit Hub Criticism

“I think my affection for New Kids on the Block alone is definitely not a novel. But a cruise that you’re stuck on with whoever’s on it with you—to me, that’s a perfect novel.” Emma Straub talks to Maria Sherman about her original 1990 New Kids on the Block fanny pack. | Lit Hub In Conversation

Here are this week’s Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers for fiction and nonfiction. | Lit Hub Bookstores

In honor of National Poetry month, we think you should read Michael Ondaatje’s “To a Sad Daughter.” | Lit Hub Poetry

Am I the asshole for not wanting to do an author photo for my debut novel? Kristen Arnett answers this and your other questions. | Lit Hub Advice

“Might be described as a post-porn fever dream of Eastern European magic realism crossed with a plant-based Joy of Sex.” 5 book reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks

Anne Enright’s TBR pile features work by Niamh Campbell, Sally Hayden, Louise Kennedy, and more. | Lit Hub Criticism

“We are Jewish authors who believe in Jewish books, and for whom Palestinian liberation is a moral imperative.” An open letter to the Jewish Book Council from a concerned group of Jewish writers. | Lit Hub

“Not to preserve him exactly. / Not to forget. Eye pits, no eyes.” Read two poems by Leigh Lucas from the collection, Splashed Things. | Lit Hub Poetry

“Caroline was thirty-four, which was not too old to have kids. But it was, she thought, too old to not know if she wanted to have kids.” Read from Hallie Cantor’s debut novel, Like This, But Funnier. | Lit Hub Fiction

NEW PODCAST: BIG LIVES

David Bowie. Amy Winehouse. Richard Pryor. Jane Fonda. Fame made them icons—but their stories made them human. Big Lives, a new podcast from the BBC and Pushkin, explores the defining moments you’ve never heard about. Journalists Kai Wright and Emmanuel Dzotsi move past the flattened mythology of our culture makers to find the forgotten failures and unexpected triumphs that shaped these figures.

Listen Now

“If you would save the planet, forget The Planet; if you would sustain and repair nature, forget Nature. Remember the example of Gilbert White. Think only of the sensual properties of one dear place.” Alan Jacobs on the evolution of writing about the natural world. | The Hedgehog Review

Caroline Fraser considers three recent books about consumption, waste, and “Miltonic corporate devilry.” | NYRB

“The Soviet products became useless paper, sold by the kilo to meat and beignet sellers as wrapping material, and Marx’s Capital, the erstwhile Bible of the intelligentsia, was consigned to the same dusty niche as the Egyptian Book of the Dead.” When the American dream came to Africa. | Equator

Kyle Chayka explores the urge to destroy technology through history. | The New Yorker

In case you need another reason to split from Amazon, your older Kindle may no longer allow you to buy or download books. | Ars Technica

WELCOME TO YESTERYEAR

“Perfect wife, perfect life? Think again. A bold and biting satire, Yesteryear examines the power of social media to spin a lie so deep, it turns ‘home sweet home’ into a prison.” –Nita Prose, author of The Maid series

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