Midweek Links: Literary Links from around the Web (February 9th)

All the best literary links that are fit to, well, link

Ten essential apocalypse reads (since the world seems to be heading toward one soon…)

Judge sentence vandals to… read books: “[T]he defendants have been given a list of thirty-five books and will submit monthly book reports from that selection. As part of the deal, they will also visit the Holocaust Memorial Museum and the National Museum of American History, which is running an exhibit on the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, and will submit to the court research papers on the use of hate symbols.”

Looking for new books to read? Kevin Nguyen picks the best of February.

Will the great millennial fiction be in the noir genre? “[T]he generic pillars of network television have always been the cop show, the hospital show, the high school show, and even the FBI G-man show of the 1950s — shows grounded in a friendly fascination with US institutions. But nothing feels more appropriate for the present moment — another Golden Age for TV and a dark era for civic life — than the rebirth of noir on network television.”

Are you a writer in D.C. for the AWP conference? Read Electric Literature’s 2017 AWP guide.

Donna Tartt in conversation with John Darnielle:

Darnielle: [A friend and I] invented a game that you can play while driving through Iowa. It’s called What’s Growing? It’s a very simple game in which one person says What’s Growing? and the other person says Corn. And the thing is, it’s funny, but there’s something about it, if you’re not from out there, that is other and alien. It’s just an unfamiliar thing.

Tartt: It’s scary to me. I’ve only been there once, and I felt like rifles were trained on me the whole time. The sky is too big.

Looking for a dose of optimism? Six writers and thinkers on what optimism means for today.

Phillip Lopate on the letters of Ernest Hemingway: “this contradictory, alternately smart and stupid, blustering, fragile man who was also a giant of modern literature.”