Midweek Links from Around the Web (March 16th)

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

A new book looks at the intelligent alien creatures living in our seas:

Peter Godfrey-Smith’s brilliant book entirely overturns those preconceptions. Cephalopods — octopuses, squids and nautiluses — “are an island of mental complexity in the sea of invertebrate animals”, he writes, having developed on a different path from us, “an independent experiment in the evolution of large brains and complex behaviour”.

Kerry Washington is planning to adapt Brit Bennett’s novel The Mothers. (If you are an EL member, you can read an excerpt on Recommended Reading.)

Becky Chambers on writing science fiction across cultures.

Paul La Farge delves into the strange relationship between H.P. Lovecraft and Robert Barlow:

A week later, Lovecraft wrote back, as he nearly always did. It’s estimated that he wrote more than fifty thousand letters in his relatively short lifetime (he died at the age of forty-six). This particular letter was the beginning of a curious friendship, which changed the course of Barlow’s life, and Lovecraft’s, too — though almost no one who reads Lovecraft these days knows anything about it. Who keeps track of the lives of fans?

The (printed) book still lives! Young people prefer paper books.

A cool infographic on the authors who are most frequently adapted for film.

China is cracking down on foreign children’s books:

Don’t be fooled by their cuddly appearance and supposed adherence to Taoist principles — Winnie-the-Pooh and other residents of the Hundred Acre Wood are radical agitators dead set on poisoning the minds of children. Or at least that seems to be the new official position in the People’s Republic of China.

If you love books with birds in the title, well, here’s a list for you of books with birds in the title.

Looking for a quick but brilliant read? Check out these amazing novels under 200 pages.

Moscow Shutters Ukrainian Library, Escalating Culture War