Lit Hub Daily: December 22, 2017

TODAY: In 1940, Nathanael West, author of Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust, dies in a car accident in El Centro, California.

The best-reviewed fiction and nonfiction books of the year. | Book Marks
The most rejected books of all time (that eventually found a home). | Literary Hub
Even angels have to work on Christmas: on sentimentality and gratitude in It’s a Wonderful Life. | Literary Hub
From Reading Rainbow to presidential mystery, counting down the top literary stories of 2017: 40 to 31. | Literary Hub
What the Lit Hub staff is reading (and watching, and listening to) over the holidays. | Literary Hub
“I believe Denis’s faith suffuses his writings, although I could be wrong about the ways the two correlate.” On Denis Johnson’s relationship to religion. | Los Angeles Review of Books
Snapshots, passports, drafts of Nobel speeches: a peek into the Harry Ransom Center’s newly-digitized Gabriel García Márquez archive. | The Paris Review
Visiting Harriet Beecher Stowe’s home and Mark Twain’s neighboring proto-man cave. | Los Angeles Times
Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Cristina Henríquez, and more: 8 recommendations of books by Latinx women. | Signature
I went from being a potential Father to another type of father: Nick Ripatrazone on giving up the priesthood for love. | Catapult
Call them the Rural Feminists? Three books by women offering “extraordinary visions of the countryside.” | Omnivoracious
Catch up on the best romance novels of 2017—or curl up under the tree with these holiday-themed options. | Vulture, Shondaland

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