Lit Hub Daily: December 20, 2018

• Margaret Atwood: if we lose a free press, we cease to be a democracy. | Lit Hub
• Politics, preventative care, and a giant talking cat! The 10 most popular Lit Hub stories of the year. | Lit Hub
• “The vigilance required of simply walking is so tiring.” A conversation between walkers and writers Aminatta Forna and Taiye Selasi. | Lit Hub
• “We were thinking about time and the rhyming of history.” Director Lars Jan on bringing Joan Didion’s The White Album to the stage. | Lit Hub
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg as feminist gladiator, Virginie Despentes as feminist punk, and more of the Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• From 3 Days of the Condor to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, 10 thrillers you forgot take place during Christmas. | CrimeReads
• The Getty Research Institute received a massive new collection on food practices throughout history. It includes hundreds of books with recipes, etiquette guides, rules for fasting and more. | Hyperallergic
• The best and worst time for the job: Why were so many journalists killed in 2018? | The New Republic
• English poet Simon Armitage received this year’s Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. | The Guardian
• Iris Murdoch believed in the Loch Ness monster, and more excellent facts Kathryn Schultz learned from books this year. | The New Yorker
• Turns out, the internet isn’t killing physical books: how Instagram (or maybe just #bookstagram) is helping to save the indie bookstore. | Vox
• For all your holiday break baths and fireside snuggles, Alyssa Cole highlights the best romance novels of the year (other than her own). | BuzzFeed News
• Exciting news for young feminists everywhere: Rebecca Solnit is publishing her first children’s book, Cinderella Liberator. | San Francisco Chronicle

Also on Lit Hub: On A Christmas Carol and Dickens’ demons • Why do we hug each other, anyway? • Read from Luminous Traitor: The Just and Daring Life of Roger Casement