TODAY: In 1924, F. Sionil José, known for his epic work, The Rosales Saga, five novels encompassing a hundred years of Philippine history, is born.
- “I have never in my life met anyone with such an acute lexical feel for the specific word needed, for the hidden rhythm of a prose sentence.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on his beloved wife Aliya. | Lit Hub Memoir
- “I am no longer acquainted with the people who made drug ingestion easy, or free, or carefree.” Wendy Ortiz on the urges that never quite leave us. | Lit Hub Memoir
- “With each new hunt for books, he savors the immense pleasure of unearthing abandoned pages, bringing back to the world life buried in wreckage.” Delphine Minoui on reading as refuge from a civil war. | Lit Hub Politics
- “I’m not saying Gravity’s Rainbow is itself earnest. Humorless. Stale. I’m not making any comment on the book’s qualities.” Patrick Allington has opinions about America’s real mid-century genius, William Gaddis. | Lit Hub
- On the misguided Norwegian exceptionalism underlying the Nobel Peace Prize. | Lit Hub Politics
- Endless plastic, eco-sorrow, and disappearing islands: your climate readings for December. | Lit Hub Climate Change
- Colm Tóibín on Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain, Justin Taylor on the life and work of Breece D’J Pancake, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
- Meet Joan Harrison, auteur, producer, and the forgotten woman behind Hitchcock. From Christina Lane. | CrimeReads
- “If every Tolkien fan gave us $2, we could do this.” J.R.R. Tolkien’s longtime home is about to hit the market—and fans have launched a crowdfunding campaign to buy it, hoping to turn it into a museum. | The New York Times
- These books on food justice, farming, and cooking are perfect for kids who love reading about food. | NYC Food Policy Center
- “As you expand into food writing, whether it’s in book form, or magazine form, or online, you really start to open up to voices that you wouldn’t necessarily be exposed to otherwise.” Clementine Thomas on opening up a new culinary bookstore. | Washington City Paper
- “There’s an awful lot riding on these few weeks.” England’s booksellers talk about reopening in the weeks before Christmas. | The Guardian
- Tom Beer highlights four books that deserved more buzz in 2020. | Kirkus
- “With all our talk about democracy it seems not inappropriate to let the people speak for themselves.” The history and future of the Federal Writers’ Project. | JSTOR