TODAY: In 1866, in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the steamer Governor Higginson encounters a mysterious sea creature. During the encounter, the creature shoots two enormous columns of water 150 feet into the air.

• Did anyone ask us? No. Did we do it anyway? Of course. We compiled 71 of the best books of the century so far (that The New York Times missed). | Lit Hub
• “The lie detector was like any true story in America: the facts didn’t matter as long as a lot of people believed it.” Justin St. Germain considers what the polygraph reveals about our relationships to fact and fiction. | Lit Hub History
• “When I sit down to write, I think about the story elements that transport me as a reader, and I hope that my work will find its way to other readers who feel the same.” Caroline Carlson on writing escapist literature. | Lit Hub Craft
• Joy Williams on the stories of Brad Watson: “The mix, the shifts in intent and tone, makes for a heady experience, a soulful half-­comic songbook of cries and fears and play.” | Lit Hub Criticism
• Literature professors are grappling with how to teach Alice Munro in the wake of the revelation that she stayed with her daughter’s abuser. | The Washington Post
• Phineas Rueckert on how Argentinian journalists and media workers fought far-right politics. | Jacobin
• “At a time of change and uncertainty, [the novel] functioned as an allegory for whatever scared or angered the reader.” Brian Raftery on Jaws at fifty. | The New York Times
• “As disabled writers work to see themselves reflected in Kahlo’s paintings, they might also shift their gaze ever so slightly to recognize the myriad others who have gathered around her hoping to catch a glimpse.” Jess Libow explores how disabled writers have taken up Frida Kahlo’s image and legacy. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• Marianne Hirsch considers “the dangers of building Holocaust memory on victimization alone.” | The Point
• On being a first-timer at the Five Hundred Ponies Sale: “I heard about the auction from a coworker of mine at the equine therapy barn in Queens where I used to work as a stablehand.” | The Paris Review
• Laura Miller asks, “Was Hillbilly Elegy ever good, or did J.D. Vance snow us?” | Slate
• San Francisco’s Fabulosa Books is shipping queer books to conservative states, for free. | Los Angeles Times
• “They didn’t call themselves painters; they called themselves writers. Broadcasting your adopted name, however gnomic or illegible to those unschooled in the stylistics of graffiti, was a language act.” Jonathan Lethem on the museums and graffiti of his childhood. | Harper’s
• Kara Rota considers Miranda July and the “one-kind-of-person industry.” | Dirt
• Elisa Gabbert considers fear as a game, horror, and why we like to scare ourselves. | The Believer
• Katya Apekina interviews Priyanka Mattoo: “I’ve spent 20 years not really talking much about my background because I didn’t want to. It was nice to hide in the smooth-brain Hollywood life. Then that stuff catches up.” | Los Angeles Review of Books
• Poet and translator Shalim M. Hussain discusses Miyah poetry: “It’s difficult to define now because the context in which Miyah poetry originated is gone.” | Words Without Borders
• “The will is the only intervention we have against the conditioning of worldly existence.” Samantha Rose Hill on Hannah Arendt and the myth of authenticity. | Aeon

Also on Lit Hub:

What writers can learn from Are You Afraid of the Dark? • How the migration of wildlife regulates the world • Shame, neurodivergency, and the alt-right • Jane Ciabattari talks to Laura Van Den Berg • How Judy Blume helped destigmatize masturbation • Caroline Carlson on writing escapist literature • The allure of comets and the age-old experience of watching the skies • Joy Williams on the stories of Brad Watson • How the tools of fantasy and speculative fiction can help immigrant writers • What’s the Millennial midlife crisis novel? • Jeffrey Eugenides and Yiyun Li on Colm Tóibín • How did phrenology get so popular, anyway? • How gothic romance helped ease small town loneliness • In praise of the ginkgo tree •  James Folta ranks 100 iconic ALA posters • America’s toxic obsession with pulling yourself up by your bootstraps • How women and queer skateboarders fought for visibility and recognition • Diana Arterian examines Eugene Lim’s reading list • On the life of Jason Epstein, cofounder of The New York Review of Books • How Japanese-American scientist Eugenie Clark revolutionized the study of sharks • Anna DeForest on writing without artifice • Natalie Lampert on the failures of American sex education • On the threat of mixing corporate money with the highest court in the land • The aftermath of a murder-suicide in an idyllic small town