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
