Lit Hub Weekly: August 3 – 7, 2026

THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET

TODAY: In 1965, Shirley Jackson dies.

• Carly Mattox considers Jennette McCurdy’s Half His Age and reckons with the long literary history of age gap relationships. | Lit Hub Memoir
• Why mothers and their babies are the ultimate flâneurs, even if “there aren’t a lot of mother-flâneurs in literature.” | Lit Hub Craft
• Why later in life is maybe the perfect time to read ancient classics (and why it’s never too late to love art for art’s sake). | Lit Hub Criticism
• Maris Kreizman wants you to know that you don’t need to buy a Kindle. | Lit Hub Technology
• Scott W. Stern looks at the emerging trend of fictional character biographies. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• Carson Griffith on Steven Pruitt, wildly prolific Wikipedia editor and therefore “the accidental architect of the internet’s brain.” | The New Yorker
• How genocide has turned Gaza’s soil deadly. | New York Review of Books
• “The jester is not just allowed but encouraged and even expected to openly mock the king in ways unthinkable for the rest of us.” Kari Holloway laments the decline of the court jester. | The Nation
• Robert Rubsam on Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey: “something massive, impressive, and mostly hollow.” | Poetry
• Malka Older digs into the why behind Jules Verne’s school of aimless scientific optimism. | The MIT Press Reader
• Karen Rinaldi, the editor of Kitchen Confidential, attempts to reconcile the public persona of Anthony Bourdain with the Tony she knew. | Air Mail
• What are literary sins? Seven writers share theirs. | The Dial
• On Jonathan Lear’s Radical Hope, the Crow Nation, and the implications of AI. | The Point
• Plato once argued that literacy would fill people “with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.” Michael Marinaccio makes the case that AI has done just that. | Hedgehog Review
• Asya Sağnak examines the queer truth of noir fiction. | Lux
• Zhang Er reflects on reading banned books as a child during China’s Cultural Revolution. | China Books Review
• On the (horrifying!) time chatbots started a religion. | The Verge
• Thea Lim makes the case against “best books” lists. | The Walrus
• Birhan Keskin and Öykü Tekten discuss Turkish poetry in translation. | Asymptote

Also on Lit Hub:

Ten new children’s books • Your August poetry TBR • This week in literary history, Shakespeare’s Macbeth is (probably) performed for the first time • August’s best new sci-fi and fantasy books • Books to shape your Tudor obsession • The Chilean student activists fighting for public education • Books that complicate the marriage plot • Maybe you just need a writing date with Rumpelstiltskin • The enduring appeal of the canine narrator • Ten great nonfiction titles to read this August • How Margrét Ann Thors honors her grandmother, daughter, and Icelandic heritage in her debut novel • The hidden violence in art and photography • How ideas of race and place influenced Harry Belafonte’s music • Finding unexpected inspiration while writing from Ted Hughes’s childhood home • This week’s Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers for fiction and nonfiction • 5 book reviews you need to read this week • Why writing a novel and hiking up a mountain are basically the same thing • Different forms of family and translating Someone to Cook For • The history of book cover trends • Community and belonging in New York’s Black punk scene • On loving the performance of professional wrestling • The best reviewed books of the week