TODAY: In 1933, Ernest J. Gaines is born.
- What if the stories we tell in order to live happen to be conspiracy theories? William J. Bernstein on the evolutionary origins of collective delusion. | Lit Hub History
- Refugee, resident, dissident: Yiyun Li introduces Bette Howland’s 1974 memoir about her stay in a Chicago psychiatric hospital. | Lit Hub
- The difference between #vanlife and van life: Amanda Mei Kim reflects on growing up on the road as a daughter of tenant farmers. | Lit Hub
- Recovering truth-teller Michael Leviton recommends six books that are (sometimes painfully) honest | Lit Hub
- Horace Julian Bond remembers the Little Rock Nine, whose plight and protests unfolded on televisions across America. | Lit Hub History
- “We went peacefully, nonviolently and in a deep spirit of love.” On Martin Luther King’s Jr.’s handwritten statement from Big Rock jail, where he was joined by 36 student protesters. | Lit Hub
- To write a modern climate change novel, Claire Holroyde centered the people most at risk. | Lit Hub Climate Change
- Gritty private detectives, pensive bounty hunters, maladjusted spies, and murderous cheerleaders: the 15 best crime and mystery shows of 2020. | CrimeReads
- New titles from George Saunders, Gabriel Byrne, Kevin Barry, and Nadia Owusu all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
- Say ahoy (sorry) to the many delights of sea shanty TikTok. | The New Yorker
- Connecticut is actively investigating whether Amazon “engaged in anticompetitive behavior in the e-book business,” according to the state’s attorney general. | WSJ
- “Wilson’s demand for Black artistic independence led some to call him a ‘separatist.’ Today, he seems more like a visionary.” How Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom reached the screen at last. | The New Republic
- How years of political turmoil left Kabul’s Shah M Book Company uniquely prepared to weather the pandemic. | Scroll
- In honor of Wikipedia’s 20th(!) birthday, read an oral history of the website with all the answers. | OneZero
- “Lockdown.” “Superspreader.” Looking at these and other words that have categorized our year of the coronavirus pandemic. | Columbia Journalism Review
- Delving into the world of Shirley Hazzard, who constructs stories “in the unfixed space between the ideal and its compromise.” | The Nation
Also on Lit Hub: Olga Mecking recommends niksen, the Dutch art of doing nothing · Kim Echlin on teaching a censored English class in China · Read from Mark Leyner’s new novel, Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit.