LitHub Daily: December 30, 2016

TODAY: In 1946, poet and singer-songwriter Patti Smith is born.

• The countdown is over: the five biggest literary stories of 2016
• Ann Patchett, Colson Whitehead, Lauren Groff… We asked some of our favorite contemporary writers to tell us what the most important books of the last 20 years have been.
• Remembering the literary greats we lost in 2016.
• The best book-to-screen adaptations in 2016 (and what we want to see adapted in 2017)
• “People often say they feel like they know me, but I know they don’t—they’re just responding to an effect created by artifice.” An interview with Maggie Nelson. | The Creative Independent
• “Zama takes up directly the matter of Argentine tradition and the Argentine character: what they are, what they should be.” J.M. Coetzee on Antonio Di Benedetto’s novel. | The New York Review of Books
• 17 books to look forward to next year, from Han Kang’s second book to be translated into English to Colm Toibin’s retelling of the Greek legend of Clytemnestra. | The New York Times
• Publishing can’t keep living off the fumes of the boy wizard: Why publishing needs a blockbuster book in 2017. | The Los Angeles Times
• “White readers with racial curiosities and quandaries should not assume that all black writers will handhold them:” On the expectations white readers place on black writers. | New Republic
• What would it look like if the young protagonists of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with all their loyalty, feuding, and violence, grew up in Brooklyn in the 1980s? On Ron Wimberly’s graphic novel Prince of Cats. | Hyperallergic
• Threshold Editions has offered alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos a $250,000 book deal. | Hollywood Reporter

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