TODAY: In 1899, German-born British bookseller and collector Bernard Quaritch, who in 40 years of collecting acquired six separate copies of the Gutenberg Bible, dies.
- The countdown continues: the next installment of the biggest literary stories of the year includes a certain former president and a properly handsome Irishman. | Lit Hub
- “Trump was defeated, but Trumpism was not.” Cynthia Tucker on the long road ahead for an America at war with itself. | Lit Hub Politics
- Here are 2020’s big award-winning novels! | Lit Hub
- “Writing is a hard, lonely business in the best of times, and with lockdown, Twitter became a lifeline.” Rob Spillman on what happens when your Twitter account is stolen and you can’t get it back. | Lit Hub Tech
- How American Islamophobia predates America itself: Alan Mikhail on European colonization and the “specter” of the Ottoman Empire. | Lit Hub History
- The whisper network is already here: Christa Parravani on the high barriers to abortion access in contemporary America. | Lit Hub Politics
- Happy snow day to those who celebrate it! Here are some old timey ways of saying “whoa it’s gonna snow a lot.” | Lit Hub
- How Robert Musil slowly discovered the man without qualities in his early writing for the stage. | Lit Hub Criticism
- “Like many culturally policed boundaries, the line between ‘white silence’ and ‘Black noise’ becomes vivid upon transgression.” Kelly Coyne on who gets to be loud in America. | Lit Hub Politics
- “Easy’s history comprises jazz and lynching, new-world awareness under an old-world class system.” Walter Mosley on Devil in a Blue Dress, 30 years later. | CrimeReads
- “Despite the heat the holidays mean the same here as they do anywhere else.” Dantiel W. Moniz on salvaging traditions in this terrible year. | Harper’s Bazaar
- “You can’t let people you don’t know decide who you are.” Read a profile of Great American Poet Nikki Giovanni. | The New York Times
- How indie publishers survived (and thrived) despite the hellish ride that was 2020. | The Guardian
- “I feel in my body that this grief will be permanent.” Anna DeForest on what resilience means to medical workers during a pandemic. | The Paris Review
- Revisiting the origins of jigsaw puzzles, which, unsurprisingly, “have made a major comeback in 2020.” | JSTOR Daily
- “We created this system, and it’s just one of many. And we can create so many more.” Ijeoma Oluo on white supremacy, mediocrity, and alternate paths for our society. | WBUR
