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Lit Hub Daily Roundup: Borsook’s ‘Cyberselfish’ Still Prophetic After 26 Years

A literary digest for September 25, 2026: big tech prophecy, leaf blower poetry, and Myanmar's dissident hunters.

By mitch·3 min read
A desk piled with books and a leaf blower rests beneath warm afternoon light.

Lit Hub Daily: September 25, 2026 is a literary roundup that runs the full range, from a 26-year-old tech prophecy to a poem about leaf blowers to a report on Myanmar’s dissident hunters. The digest is a loose collection of book reviews, craft tips, and political musings, stitched together without much pretense.

What the Digest Covers

The digest opens with Cyberselfish, Paulina Borsook’s book about big tech, now being praised as a “prophetic look at big tech.” The review argues the book remains “more relevant than ever” after 26 years. That’s the kind of claim that reads as both a compliment and a warning about how little the industry has changed.

Chris Dixon offers a note on organizing, arguing that successful movements need to “move at a pace that we can maintain, collectively, for years to come.” It’s a reminder that urgency alone doesn’t win elections.

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Book Marks rounds up the week’s best-reviewed titles, including Gloria Steinem’s An Unexpected Life, Naomi Alderman’s The Strangers, Chuck Klosterman’s Rock!, and Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s Said the Dead.

The craft section suggests a surprising cure for writer’s block: going to the theater.

A biography of Grazia Deledda, the Sardinian Nobel Prize-winner, argues the world needs to remember her. The poem “Ode to a Leaf Blower,” by Jill Bialosky, is excerpted from the collection Mock Heart, and it describes a yard where “trees towering at least seventy feet high, squeezing out the sun.”

The fiction section excerpts a passage from V.H. Wildman’s Shrine: A Little Book About Paul Thek, describing a photograph of Paul carrying a heavy wooden cross. It appears to be quite heavy, made of wood, and it can be seen to rest upon his shoulders.

Ed Simon writes about The Corrections at 25 in The Hedgehog Review, calling it “a novel of 2026 as well as of 2001.” The comparison suggests the book’s anxieties about family and society feel newly urgent.

Wired rounds up weird marketing, including Sea World’s “romantasy” Halloween promotion, which is apparently making it “horny.” It’s a silly item, but it’s also a reminder that major brands will do almost anything to sell tickets.

Public Books asks whether graduate students are okay, with Cole Adams considering the state of higher education. Orion praises garlic as the “poor man’s spice,” and The Dial reports on how Myanmar’s military regime tracks down dissidents, even abroad.

The Digest’s Range

The digest’s strength is its range. It moves from serious criticism to light entertainment without losing momentum, and it trusts readers to skip what they don’t want. The weakness is that it doesn’t offer much framing beyond the links themselves. You get the headlines, but not much context for why they’re grouped together.

Section Focus
Book Marks Best-reviewed books
Craft Writing tips
Biography Literary figures
Poetry Excerpts

The digest is a useful snapshot of what literary readers are talking about this week. It’s not a deep analysis, but it’s a fast one.

The Myanmar report stands out as the most consequential item in the digest. Nachemson’s reporting on how the military regime tracks dissidents, even abroad, is the kind of journalism that rarely makes it into a daily roundup.

The digest is worth a quick scan for anyone who wants to see what the literary internet is talking about right now. It’s a small, useful corner of culture, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Source material: “Lit Hub Daily: September 25, 2026,” Literary Hub.

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