TODAY: In 1920, Clarice Lispector is born.
- Now that we’ve all watched 10,000 hours of TV, here are our picks for the best literary adaptations of the year. | Lit Hub
- “Every digital device is, fundamentally, a video game: in its intellectual construction, in its logic.” So why isn’t contemporary life more fun then? | Lit Hub Tech
- Thomas Mullen wrote a novel about a terrible pandemic—14 years later his family got COVID-19. | Lit Hub Health
- New titles from Zadie Smith, Helen Macdonald, Claudia Rankine, and Samantha Irby all feature among the Best Reviewed Essay Collections of 2020. | Lit Hub, Book Marks
- “If we cannot escape our history, perhaps we can thumb our noses at it.” On memorializing history’s darkest corners with a little absurdity. | Lit Hub History
- We asked Andrzej Sapkowski—creator of The Witcher—about the mythology behind his global bestseller (but not about when season two is coming). | Lit Hub
- When a great songwriter turns poet: Nina MacLaughlin on Richard Buckner’s new collection. | Lit Hub Music
- “The bigger the big publishers get, the more risk-averse they become. The less willing they are to lose money. And then . . . the risk aversion becomes systemic.” Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson on publishing’s latest merger. | The Atlantic
- From Ursula K. Le Guin to Iain M. Banks to Kim Stanley Robinson, how science fiction has shaped socialism. | Tribune
- “I don’t think we realize how vital it is to step into unknown territory.” Rewa Zeinati on becoming an Arab Anglophone writer. | The Markaz Review
- Tattered Cover Bookstore just became the largest Black-owned bookstore in the US after being sold to two “Denver natives, high school rivals, and long-time friends.” | Publishers Weekly
- “It’s remarkable that she managed to publish as much work as she did, and of such high quality, given what else she was dealing with along the way.” Lucy Scholes on Tove Ditlevsen. | The Paris Review
- “An editor’s job is to walk into a room and listen for what’s not being talked about—and then start talking about that.” Askold Melnyczuk reflects on editing. | Arrowsmith Press
