TODAY: In 1844, Emily Brontë writes the poem “A Death-Scene,” which was later published in 1846 in a book collecting poetry by Brontë and her siblings.
- We asked the best book designers in the business about their favorite covers of the year: they have thoughts. | Lit Hub
- “I’ve always loved squid—not in the culinary sense, but in the sense of a being that seems alien.” In which Jeff VanderMeer considers the cephalopod. | Lit Hub
- “On the night of May 16, 1940, almost 26 years after the first destruction of the library, the reconstructed building was again mostly destroyed.” The hard luck tale of one of the world’s great libraries. | Lit Hub History
- Kelly Link very much thinks you should read Robertson Davies’s great Canadian classic, Fifth Business. | Lit Hub
- Inventing Babylon Boulevard: snapshots of 19th-century bohemian New York. | Lit Hub Photography
- “It always surprises my students when I tell them that Leonardo Da Vinci was one of the least prolific painters of his time.” THANK YOU. (Francesca Fiorani on the life of an actual Renaissance man.) | Lit Hub History
- WATCH: Live from last week’s Hay Festival Winter Weekend: Robert Macfarlane in conversation with Jackie Morris · Lee Child talks to Heather Martin. | Lit Hub
- Black Swan Green, The Once and Future King, Moominvalley in November, and more rapid-fire book recs from François Vigneault. | Book Marks
- “The Ginza was an introductory text for illusions. If one does not walk its streets, one might as well lose their voting rights.” Yi Sang considers Tokyo. | The Paris Review
- On the legacy of Arthur Calder-Marshall, a writer who “remains on the periphery of renown, slipping between the mainstream and the obscure.” | The Guardian
- ReedPop, organizers of BookExpo, have made the “difficult decision to retire the events,” the company has announced. | Publishers Weekly
- Something to look forward to in the new year: Check out more than two dozen LGBTQ books on the horizon for 2021. | O Magazine
- What’s on Mariah Carey’s reading list? Titles by Isabel Wilkerson, Lenny Kravitz, and… her own book! | Los Angeles Times