Lit Hub Daily: December 18, 2017

• The best books of the best of 2017 lists: we did the math so you don’t have to (in this case, math = counting). | Literary Hub
• Am I smarter than a second grader? Evan Lavender-Smith debates his son on the merits of Wikipedia, and the etymology of “ladybird.” | Literary Hub
• In memoriam: the literary figures we lost in 2017. | Literary Hub
• The best-reviewed biographies, memoirs, and science fiction and fantasy books of 2017. | Book Marks
• Margaret Atwood, Naomi Klein, and other writers share the books that inspired them to become feminists. | The Guardian
• Masha Gessen profiles Rūta Vanagaitė, a best-selling Lithuanian writer whose statements about her country’s complicity in World War II have destroyed her career. | The New Yorker
• These are airport novel numbers, not poetry ones: Thoughts on the massive popularity of Rupi Kaur and other “Instapoets.” | The New York Times
• Lynn Steger Strong on the plotless novel as the art of the privileged. | Literary Hub
• On the curious decision to have Tucker Max, the “the one-time king of ‘dick lit,’” co-write comedian and actress Tiffany Haddish’s memoir. | Jezebel
• She was their anchor, and they cast her aside: How Brigid Hughes, former editor of The Paris Review, was erased from her job. | Longreads
• The Goldfinch adaptation will feature Ansel Elgort, Aneurin Barnard, and Willa Fitzgerald (who will also star in a mini-series adapted from Little Women, the trailer for which was just released). | Variety, Vulture
• The writer and philosopher Bette Howland has died at the age of 80. Read A.N. Devers on Howland’s importance, here. | New York Times, Literary Hub

Also on Literary Hub: Joan Juliet Buck on how far you have to go to get to the center of your life · 8 must-read crime titles for the winter holidays · Read “The Gift” by Jean-Philippe Blondel.