TODAY: In 1901, 35-year-old writer and illustrator Beatrix Potter prints 250 copies of her first book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, after getting fed up with receiving rejection letters from publishers.
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“It’s the thought that counts, we say of gifts, and with books, well, there’s a whole lot of thought—six hours? twelve?—required to truly appreciate one.” Lewis Buzbee on the difficulty (and joy) of giving books as gifts. | Lit Hub
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A more expansive view of the past: Why women’s contributions to the Italian Renaissance matter. | Lit Hub History
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“Fielding questions about Santa seemed like just one more task in my most difficult but essential duty as a parent.” Nell Greenfieldboyce on making sense of Santa as a science reporter and a parent. | Lit Hub Science
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Heather Cleary on translating the unfamiliar: “We often learn the most from texts (and friends) with which we have little in common.” | Lit Hub
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Parul Sehgal on James Ellroy, Merve Emre on Italo Calvino, Namwali Serpell on “hit me” novels, and more of the Best Book Reviews of 2023. | Book Marks
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The best international crime novels of 2023. | CrimeReads
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Lauren Groff and her husband, Clay Kallman, will open The Lynx bookstore in Gainesville, Florida next year. | Publishers Lunch
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“The architectures of death and dismemberment spare nothing and no one, in Gaza.” Read a dispatch from the Palestinian Youth Movement. | The New Inquiry
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Meet the Texas parents who are fighting back against book bans locally and across the state. | Fort Worth Star-Telegram
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Are the best book covers the ones that never made it to print? Quite possibly yes. | Fast Company
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“I’d never really thought about the fact that my favorite restaurants, as a child, as a teenager, as an adult returning to Mississippi, nearly all served gas.” Kiese Laymon writes a love letter to gas station restaurants. | The Bitter Southerner
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“Frost is a poet of contradictions, complexities, and ambivalences—as all great poets are.” Tyler Malone on Robert Frost and newness. | Poetry
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Laura Miller considers Liz Cheney’s memoir. | Slate
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Emily Gould wishes the film adaptation of Eileen had “a few more fantasy sequences and a lot more poop.” | The Cut
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“The real issue is that a house with a flag suggests a racist dwells within.” Alexis Coe considers the meaning of patriotism in 2023. | Esquire
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What will Spotify do to books? | The New York Times
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So you want to start your own media company: Kelsey McKinney and Aleksander Chan offer some tricks of the trade. | The Nation
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“The Biden books, with striking consistency, evince a pride in how much can be left unsaid.” Jessica Winter reads four Biden memoirs and considers Hunter Biden and the undercurrent of silence. | The New Yorker
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Riding along with the reindeer herders of Troms og Finnmark: A photo essay by Ben Mauk and Carleen Coulter. | The Dial
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“The world of learning has become a battleground between the opposed forces of democratization and commercialization.” Robert Darnton considers the dream of an “Alexandria in the cloud.” | NYRB
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“Wanda Nanibush, the inaugural Curator of Indigenous Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, was forced out of her position for expressing support for Palestinian life and freedom.” Read more of her work here. | O Bod Magazine
Also on Lit Hub:
How each era has reinvented Chaucer for its own gain • On the transmutable photography of Binh Danh • Helen Molesworth in defense of question-seeking criticism • Why you should read Nathan Thrall’s A Day in the Life of Abed Salama • The 138 best book covers of 2023 • How The Cure helped mainstream male emotion • Reading Naomi Klein’s Doppelgänger (as another Naomi) • How a decade in women’s media influenced Gabrielle Korn’s novel • The case for nostalgia as inspiration, not stagnation • Rebecca Solnit considers Megan Riepenhoff’s cyanotype prints made in freezing landscapes • Maura Lammers on choosing to do nothing • The pleasure of writing poems by hand • Notable literary deaths of 2023 • Shaan Sachdev pens an ode to Matthew Perry’s Chandler Bing, “one of sarcasm’s most effective global exporters” • Amanda Parrish Morgan on Wintering and the lessons of a long pandemic season • Counting down the 50 biggest literary stories of 2023 • The adventures of Maggie Higgins, one of America’s first female foreign correspondents • Inside the process of cross-racial creative collaboration • Frank Falisi considers Michael Mann’s new film, Ferrari • Martín Solares on creating novelesque excitement