Lit Hub Daily: December 18, 2025
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
TODAY: In 1870, Hector Hugh Munro, better known by his pen name Saki, is born.
- We’re proud of everything we publish, but we all have our favorites. These are the Lit Hub stories our staff loved in 2025. | Lit Hub
- Sandy Ernest Allen reckons with Harry Potter as a trans person: “I’d often look at that Harry Potter blockade and wonder why I was clinging to them, especially if their author thought so little of my humanity.” | Lit Hub Memoir
- Am I the asshole for calling out romance novelists who don’t actually care about romance? Kristen Arnett answers this and other questions about your literary drama. | Lit Hub Advice
- Terese Svoboda on mixing personal memories with public histories (and what her mother-in-law has to do with Hitler). | Lit Hub History
- “Everyone is enticed into this orgy of analysis, to feast and gorge on information, to go a little mad in the process.” The 10 best book reviews of 2025. | Book Marks
- “I understand the nature of war—writing about war, living through war—and why war is an indelible, horrible experience, yet absolutely central in human history.” On the history and future of authoritarianism, war, and literature in Europe. | Lit Hub In Conversation
- Tammi Morton-Kelly rediscovers Rea Irvin’s classic comic strip, The Smythes. | The Comics Journal
- Escapism, podcasts, and risk-aversion: Emma Loffhagen considers what’s behind the nonfiction dip. | The Guardian
- Kyle Chayka looks back on the year in AI slop. | The New Yorker
- On Władysław Reymont, “chronicler of the profane” and Poland’s often overlooked Nobel laureate. | Asymptote
- Ellis Simani investigates how nonprofits navigate the language of DEI in the era of Trump. | ProPublica
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