TODAY: In 1903, the first of G. K. Chesterton’s short stories, “The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown,” appears in Harper’s Weekly.
- The Ultimate Best Books of 2020 List (in which we read all the year-end lists so you don’t have to). | Lit Hub
- “As is so often the case, editorial passion conquered timid conventional wisdom, and literature was born.” Gerald Howard on the glory days of the trade paperback. | Lit Hub Design
- “These are stories about how food shapes people, neighborhoods, and history.” J. Kenji López-Alt on editing food writing during a pandemic. | Lit Hub Food
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It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the best reviewed fiction and nonfiction of the year. | Book Marks
- Heather Martin has a grand unifying theory of Jack Reacher—and it involves Shakespeare. | CrimeReads
- Just 11 percent of books published by Big Five publishers in 2018 were written by people of color. Why is publishing (still) so white? | The New York Times
- “Book publishing in 2020 was a story of how much an industry can change and how much it can, or wants to, remain the same.” On the publishing upheavals of 2020. | AP
- “We definitely look forward to the holidays in the same way that movie studios look forward to blockbusters.” Los Angeles booksellers say this holiday season is particularly high-stakes for business. | Los Angeles Times
- How indie publishers survived (and thrived) despite the hellish ride that was 2020. | The Guardian
- Alexandra Kleeman on the importance of consistency during a pandemic. | Frieze Magazine
- Revisiting the origins of jigsaw puzzles, which, unsurprisingly, “have made a major comeback in 2020.” | JSTOR Daily
- K-Ming Chang on the freedom of wearing what you want, “the ultimate act of agency and self-creation.” | Guernica
- “It scared the [expletive] out of a lot of kids at that time.” Stephen King ranks the best and worst adaptations of his own books. | The New York Times
- On the heyday of the penny press and the unique relationship the industry built between writers and readers. | New York Review of Books
- “Despite the heat the holidays mean the same here as they do anywhere else.” Dantiel W. Moniz on salvaging traditions in this terrible year. | Harper’s Bazaar
- “When you’re writing a Christmas book, it cannot be too Christmassy. It’s like wearing every glittery thing you’ve got and then some.” On the art of writing Christmas novels 365 days a year. | The Guardian
- These books can help us make sense of a world in which artificial intelligence is a growing force. | WIRED
- On Steinbeck’s lesser-known works and the lessons they hold for getting through this winter. | The Baffler
- Ayana Mathis talks to Thessaly La Force about James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain. | T Magazine
- “What do you imagine when you hear the term “romance novel?” What kind of protagonist do you picture? Who do you expect will fall in love with them?” Alyssa Cole on the politics inherent in romance novels. | O
- “I feel in my body that this grief will be permanent.” Anna DeForest on what resilience means to medical workers during a pandemic. | The Paris Review
Also on Lit Hub:
Why Hemingway lives on in the imaginations of thousands of comic book artists • Anuradha Roy on the importance of companionship, animal and human both • Richard Jean So on the inertia of whiteness in post • On the challenge of creating a new generation of Octavia Butler covers •
On riding the metro in Rome, translating poems • On young Mozart’s life with Leopold, and the origins of his First Symphony • Adam Scovell in praise of literature’s master of scary stories, M.R. James • Ken Layne on the desertscapes of a young William Burroughs • The Bookstore at the End of the World recommend their favorite books of the year • Eduardo Halfon, on the most unique reading he’s ever given • Gabrielle Bellot on Virginia Woolf’s interpretations of malady, and the complexities of writing through a pandemic • Cynthia Tucker on the long road ahead for an America at war with itself • Rob Spillman on what happens when your Twitter account is stolen and you can’t get it back • Christa Parravani on the high barriers to abortion access in contemporary America • Willie, Dolly, Enrique, and the country-pop crossover that changed everything • How Robert Musil slowly discovered the man without qualities in his early writing for the stage • Kelly Coyne on who gets to be loud in America • AI systems are as much a tool of whiteness as any other system of power • Five great holiday audiobooks for the young readers in your life • “Stonehenge might once have been largely a wooden structure.” Wait, what? • Barry Lopez on the life of Richard K. Nelson • Some of the writers, editors, and great literary minds we lost this year • Starting our countdown of The Biggest Literary Stories of the Year: here’s 50 to 31, 30 to 11, and you can read 10 – 1 on Monday!
Best of Book Marks:
New on CrimeReads:
International intrigue abounds in the year’s best spy fiction • Walter Mosley on Devil in a Blue Dress, 30 years later • Gray Basnight asks, how many of the greatest crime books of all time have you read? • Lisa Levy with 2020’s best psychological thrillers • The best true crime books of 2020 • The best debut crime and mystery novels of 2020 • The best gothic fiction of 2020 • Dwyer Murphy on Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and the greatest office Christmas party ever filmed • Graphic Content: Ed Brubaker talks private eyes and pulp fiction with Alex Segura • Olivia Rutigliano on Home Alone and its questionable lessons for adulthood