Lit Hub Daily: December 5, 2025
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
TODAY: In 1934, Joan Didion is born.
- If you don’t know what to get the writer who has everything, try something from our holiday gift guide. | Lit Hub
- What can watching Survivor teach you about writing? “As a writer, you cannot and should not shield your characters from being seen in all their messy glory.” | Lit Hub Craft
- “It was clear to African populations that self-reliance was the only way to survive predatory imperial states.” How indigenous West African communities fought the European slave trade. | Lit Hub History
- Olga Tokarczuk’s House of Day, House of Night, Sudhir Hazareesingh’s Daring to Be Free, and Matthew Pearl’s The Award all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks
- Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse recommends chilling tales of folk horror in translation by Zuzana Ríhová, John Ajvide Lindqvist, and more! | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- Itoro Bassey examines how we write about Africa and the plurality of African literature. | Lit Hub Criticism
- Edward J. Larson considers 1776, the pivotal year for what would become America. | Lit Hub History
- “I preferred to take Boulevard du Trente-Avril, a site of permanent chaos that lengthened my trip, rather than the shortest, most logical route, which inevitably led me past the soccer stadium, shops, playgrounds, and my childhood home.” Read from Osvalde Lewat’s debut novel The Aquatics, translated by Maren Baudet-Lackner. | Lit Hub Fiction
- “What makes some countries seem like myths and others not? What makes a child, growing up in Gaza, unable to comprehend that America is real?” Muhammad al-Zaqzouq on looking at America from Gaza (tr. Katherine Hall). | The Dial
- Jake Pitre looks into the futurism of the past. | JSTOR Daily
- Erin Evans examines the complicated literature of eating disorders. | Full Stop
- On the tech moguls who don’t care about the impact of AI on climate change. | The Nation
- Tess McGee on why The Haunting of Hill House is so much more than “a Tumblr moodboard staple, an October reading list must-have.” | The Rumpus
- Why Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless is still “one of the most influential works of the 20th century in any medium” after 65 years. | Vulture
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