Lit Hub Daily: December 21, 2021

TODAY: In 1909, Seichō Matsumoto, credited with popularizing detective fiction in Japan, is born.   

• We read all the year-end book lists so you don’t have to: Here are the 138 most popular titles. | Lit Hub

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• “What does it mean to yearn for the boundlessness of the ocean while doing life in a prison cell in the center of a continent?” Rebecca Solnit on the exoneration of Kevin Strickland. | Lit Hub

• Literary dispatches from around the globe: 81 writers on the books they loved in 2021. | Lit Hub

• “There have been moments when, like the nameless narrator, I’ve become less than alive myself.” Francesca Giacco considers the subtle horror of Ayşegül Savaş’s White on White. | Lit Hub Criticism

• Michael Stewart Foley digs into the politics of Johnny Cash. | Lit Hub Biography

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• This month’s 5 Authors, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers features Cara Blue Adams, Peter Ho Davies, Pamela Paul, Kirthana Ramisetti, and Hilma Wolitzer. | Lit Hub Questionnaire

• Sharon Gless of Cagney & Lacey fame on the acting break that changed her career. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• The knives are out in literary land with the most scathing book reviews of 2021. | Book Marks

• Natalie Shure considers the plight of Tiny Tims, real and fictional. | The New Republic

• “Romanticizing the writing life and denouncing it are not so different; in both cases the thing that gets left out is why we actually live it.” Apoorva Tadepall on writing and careerism. | The Point

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• Lynnée Denise pays tribute to bell hooks. | LA Times

• “The more that I read poetry, the more I am okay leaving the reader with a question, and to never find the answer to that question myself.” Jeri Frederickson on her new collection and the purpose of poetry. | The Rumpus

• Jenny Bhatt recounts the journey of founding Desi Books, a digital venture with a “twofold aim of connecting South Asian writers and readers and showcasing the diversity and plenitude of our books.” | Publishers Weekly

• Ido Hartogsohn breaks down how Aldous Huxley’s “immense enthusiasm for the intellectual and spiritual implications of hallucinogenic drugs would prove formative” for a generation of Americans. | The MIT Press Reader

• Mike Fu and Jenna Tang discuss mentorship, Taiwanese literature, and translating trauma. | Words Without Borders

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Also on Lit Hub: Linda Coverdale on reading books that “reanimate the human heart” • Nadifa Mohamed on the 1952 case at the heart of her novel • Read from Peter Stamm’s newly translated collection, It’s Getting Dark (tr. Michael Hofmann)

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