Lit Hub Daily: December 16, 2021

• Many scammers scamming, two writers feuding, and a Jane Austen controversy: More of the Biggest Literary Stories of the Year. | Lit Hub

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• Cli-fi as Trojan horse? Matthew Schneider-Mayerson digs into the research to find out if climate fiction tends to manifest in change. | Lit Hub Climate Change

• The Station Eleven adaptation is finally here! Emily Temple assures us that it’s not really a pandemic story—bless. | Lit Hub TV

• “Wherever I turn, I see signs of my old age.” What the Stoics understood (and can teach us) about death. | Lit Hub Philosophy

• The history of Rüstem’s Bookshop, Cyprus’s historic bookstore-café that’s been an important cultural hub since 1937. | Lit Hub Bookstores

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• “Now there’s a genre I haven’t wrecked yet…” Mel Brooks goes behind scenes of his iconic Star Wars sendup, Spaceballs. | Lit Hub Film

• George Saunders, Joan Didion, Michelle Zauner, Tom Stoppard, and Tove Ditlevsen all feature among the Best Reviewed Nonfiction of 2021. | Book Marks

• The best international crime novels of 2021. | CrimeReads

• Writers are paying tribute to bell hooks, who has died at the age of 69. | The Cut

• “The Book of Blam, The Use of Man, and Kapo eschew tidy narratives about sanctified victims.” Jess Bergman considers Aleksandar Tišma’s trilogy of post-Holocaust fictions. | Jewish Currents

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• Peter Matthews looks at the US government-approved “Useful Fiction” genre, AKA the “military-mediocre lit complex.” | Dirt 

• “It is really just something that’s motivated by my love for my mother and my desire to honor her.” Grace M. Cho on why she decided to write a memoir, the power of cooking, and the experience of trauma. | NPR

• How Stephen Sondheim made space for queer and trans people. | Bitch Media

• Are these the best translated books of the year? | Words Without Borders

• Erin B. Logan discusses the debate around what children should read. | Los Angeles Times

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Also on Lit Hub: Confronting fascism in Chile’s presidential election • A poem by John Keene • Read from Saša Stanišić’s newly translated novel, Where You Come From (tr. Damion Searls)