Lit Hub Daily: December 20, 2019

• In which we pick our favorite Lit Hub stories of 2019. | Lit Hub
• Lydia Davis, Jennifer Egan, Tommy Orange, Valeria Luiselli, and more Freeman’s contributors share highlights from their year in reading. | Lit Hub
• “While the frenzy of the last decade may superficially seem like a cry for moderation, I still, in spite of everything, do not believe in being moderate.” Rachel Vorona Cote on the dawn of the era of the feminine excess. | Lit Hub
• On the quiet death of a legendary Parisian bookstore: among the stacks at Le Pont Traversé. | Lit Hub
• “Never forget that the world is alive. Even mountains may move.” Lisa Lee Herrick traces her ancestry, the Hmong people, from Laos to America. | Lit Hub
• If you need to pass time before Little Women hits theaters, here are 11 books inspired by the March family. | Lit Hub
• “I lost various friends, or people who bore titles to that effect. No great loss.” Novelist and small-town Brazilian mayor Graciliano Ramos’s annual reports are literature unto themselves. | Lit Hub
• “Oh, the humanity!”: Here are the Most Scathing Book Reviews of 2019. | Book Marks Best of 2019
• Revolutionary fervor, enlightenment woes, and jazz-age mysteries galore: rounding up the best historical crime fiction of 2019. | CrimeReads
• “It’s weird to love something that was forced upon you and your ancestors under threat of literal death. . . We didn’t ask for English, but it’s ours now. And look what we’re doing with it.” Kali Fajardo-Anstine and Tommy Pico in conversation. | BOMB
• “As disturbing as they are, these images portray the American story.” Claudia Rankine introduces a photo portfolio of white supremacist terrorists in America. | New York Magazine
• A list with a twist: the team at Foreign Affairs selects their best political books of 2019 (and thankfully, it’s not US-centric). | Foreign Affairs
• The English writer Laurie Lee was fascinated by memories and stories of his youth in a rural English village. But was the source of his inspiration a curse on his career? | The New Statesman
• “I want to change, but I can’t. What young queer person — even closeted to themselves — has not thought this?” Jeanna Kadlec on the formative experience of reading Little Women. | Longreads
• UPS and FedEx delays are hitting indie booksellers during the holidays. | Publishers Weekly

Also on Lit Hub: The romantic, uncompromising, audacious life of musician Lhasa de Sela • A last goodbye to the writers, editors, and booksellers we lost in 2019 • Read from “The Special World,” a story by Tiphanie Yanique, published in The Georgia Review.