Lit Hub Daily: December 19, 2018

• This month, our beloved fellow book site Book Marks has been compiling the year’s best-reviewed books in every category, and now here they are, in one convenient… hub. | Lit Hub
• “I was willing to let my life be subsumed in his, my light be reflected, and his bright star guide us.” On Charles Dickens, marriage, and the temptations of playing the muse. | Lit Hub
• A seasonally affective thought experiment: 15 perfect gifts for 15 famous writers. | Lit Hub
• On Otherppl, Brad Listi talks with Katya Apekina about dealing with praise, capitalism, and the vagaries of plot. | Lit Hub
• “Goddammit I was having dinner with Hunter S. Thompson and I could barely understand a word he was saying!” Heather Rose recalls a certain night in an Aspen tavern. | Lit Hub
• This week in Secrets of the Book critics: the New Yorker‘s Katy Waldman on Augustine’s Confessions and hating your talented colleagues. | Book Marks
• The best podcasts of 2018, as recommended by CrimeReads’ podcast correspondent Emily Rose Stein. | CrimeReads
• A painting by Adrien Moreau, a 19th-century French artist who made illustrations for books by Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac and others, was recently rediscovered and sold. | Forbes
• “I’m not sure which offends me more, ‘following’ or ‘guest.’ Comma Queen Mary Norris’s holiday grammar gripes. | The New Yorker
• James Patterson will give 333 independent bookstore employees holiday bonuses of $750. | Muskogee Phoenix
• A loving retrospective on the life and work of the late Pakistani poet Fahmida Riaz. | The Wire
• “He may die within 48 hours.” When Walt Whitman’s slow demise was on the front page of The Times—for months. | The New York Times
• This comprehensive book-tracking spreadsheet is a data nerd’s dream (and a handy way to see if you’re reading as many women as you think). | Book Riot
• “With most kinds of writing I’m trying to build the tension—here, I’m doing the opposite.” Meet the writer paid to put people to sleep. | The Guardian

Also on Lit Hub: Preti Taneja and Alejandro Zambra in conversation • What happened to the original version of “The Wasteland”? • Read “Notes from the Underground“, a story from the new issue of Spittoon