Literary Hub - Lit Hub Daily: February 1, 2021

• Emily Temple reads two new novels about Being Extremely Online—by Lauren Oyler and Patricia Lockwood—in this moment of Being Extremely Online. | Lit Hub Criticism
• While training a bot named Carey, Lydia Paar considers if perhaps bots shouldn’t replace humans after all. | Lit Hub Tech
• Mark Bittman on the philosophy of “agroecology,” a social justice approach to global food production. | Lit Hub Food
• Mean girls are a lot more fun to read about than, you know, be around. Ellie Eaton recommends her favorites, starting with the snobbish Caroline Bingley. | Lit Hub
• After more than 40 years, Mary-Kay Wilmers is stepping down from her post as editor of the London Review of Books. | LRB 
• From a skin-shedding bodyguard to the adopted daughter of death, here are 7 Sci-Fi and Fantasy books to soothe your February blues. | Book Marks
• Read the story of Madeleine L’Engle’s friendship with Ahmad Rahman, a Black Panther incarcerated for a murder he didn’t commit. | Vanity Fair
• “Rape does not go away when you refuse to say it. Euphemisms are death. And so is revenge, in the end.” Carmen Maria Machado on Promising Young Woman. | The New Yorker 
• “There is no one trans story: Morris’s memoir remains one of many. It’s a fine lesson about her life alone, but an iffy guide to trans lives more generally.” Considering Jan Morris’s Conundrum. | The Paris Review
• “Is it the fault of the mother that her child will suffer?” Randa Jarrar on Palestinian mothers, the Virgin Mary, and the Mothers of the Movement. | Lit Hub Memoir
• The Art of Fielding, Postcolonial Love Poem, and more rapid-fire book recs from Emily Nemens. | Book Marks
• Garth Greenwell and R.O. Kwon on the intersection of kink and art, and why “kink in and of itself is an aesthetic practice.” | BOMB
• “I’d dreamt of this day, but I never thought about what it would mean to see my name on the cover—for me, and for every other Keisha out there.” Keisha Bush on what it meant to reclaim her name. | Lit Hub
• The ACLU of Arkansas is calling for the end to a ban on almost all reading material at the Benton County jail. | Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Jacke Wilson searches for Mr. Darcy in Jane Austen’s would-be suitor,
Tom Lefroy, on The History of Literature.
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On First Draft, Mateo Askaripour talks about the toll of racism in the workplace. 
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Can Biden’s “unity” really save us from Civil War? Stephen Marche
discusses the dangers, on Keen On.
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Listen to a narrated essay about the renaissance of druidry during
COVID-19, on Emergence Magazine.