TODAY: In 1934, the patron saint of Lit Hub, Joan Didion, is born.
- Look, we like to read: Here are the Lit Hub staff’s 50 favorite books of 2019. | Lit Hub
- “Charles has said that poems aspire to the condition of prayer…” Mary Szybist on the poetics of Charles Wright. Read a poem from Wright’s collection Oblivion Banjo here. | Lit Hub
- “She would spend the next 30 years polishing-up a single manuscript, refining, updating…” Caroline Scott on her reading her mother’s unpublished novel, and writing her own. | Lit Hub
- “I was not French. I wasn’t Italian anymore either. So I was nothing.” On Inès Cagnati, the French novelist who wrote powerfully about the immigrant experience. | Lit Hub
- Patricia Lockwood on Edna O’Brien, Kevin Young on Ralph Ellison, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
- In honor of Joan Didion’s 85th birthday, classic reviews of Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Play It As It Lays, and The White Album. | Book Marks
- From moral disruptor, to crazy b—-, to the anti-heroine of our century: Halley Sutton gives us an ode to femmes fatales through the ages. | CrimeReads
- A division of the American Library Association has named the Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum in Baltimore a national “Literary Landmark,” making it Maryland’s first. | Baltimore Sun
- Minimalist fonts are so this decade. The next hot trend in text? Didones. | The Outline
- Laureen Nussbaum and her family made it through WWII thanks, in part, to a renegade German lawyer named Hans Calmeyer. Nussbaum’s new book retraces her unlikely tale of survival. | Seattle Times
- Enjoy a deep dive into Baby Yoda’s linguistic patterns. | Slate
- A lot of great queer books were published in 2019—here are 55 of the best. | Autostraddle
- The Delaware Art Museum is safeguarding the state’s only indie bookstore. | Technical.ly
- “There is no hard reset—we’ve poisoned too much of the planet.” Jeff VanderMeer on climate change, local activism, and (not mentioning) Trump. | InsideHook
Also on Lit Hub: On the ambitious beginnings of China’s influential Soong sisters • An excerpt of Thomas Keneally’s newest novel The Book of Science and Antiquities • Read from Angela Meyer’s debut novella Joan Smokes.
