Lit Hub Daily: December 7, 2020
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
TODAY: In 1873, Willa Cather is born.
- Our favorite books of the year: 2020 hasn’t given us much, but the reading has been great. | Lit Hub
- “It wasn’t that James Dickey had lied to my face—I could take that okay. It was that by doing so he had seemed to dishonor and disrespect my own father.” Paul Hendrickson wonders what kinds of truth we need from our great poets. | Lit Hub Memoir
- “Shortly after taking ownership, I wondered what made it all worth it.” Samantha Ladwig on buying a bookstore at age 29. | Lit Hub Bookstores
- “Who? How? Why? Was it aliens or art?” Rebecca Worby on monoliths, cairns, hoodoos and other weird stuff people leave in the desert. | Lit Hub Nature
- Musical icon Tina Turner (and newly minted author) talks about her spiritual practice, chanting vs. singing, and what she’s been reading during the pandemic. | Lit Hub Music
- “Writing advice, I found out, was just life advice. The same way writers tackled the blank page was how I should tackle life.” Lauren Martin, hopefully not thinking of actually drowning her darlings. | Lit Hub Craft
- “She was always having to establish the philosophical terms of her own world.” Doreen St. Félix on June Jordan’s visions of Black future. | Lit Hub Biography
- “In his peaceful paradise, the last man is always feverishly pondering some philosophical problem.” On translating the little known 1970s Italian novel that anticipated the Anthropocene. | Lit Hub Translation
- Alison Lurie, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her 1984 novel Foreign Affairs, has died at the age of 94. | Washington Post
- “To truly channel him, I had to go at least partially French.” This James Baldwin-inspired meal will make you want to cancel your dinner plans. | The Paris Review
- “He had a fearless sense of pride and was a champion of the underprivileged.” Ed Morales remembers Miguel Algarín, poet and founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. | The New York Times
- “People inside just want to read:” Jody DiPerna on the troubling history of libraries within Allegheny County Jail. | Pittsburgh Current
- How could the purchase of Simon & Schuster by Penguin Random House affect literary diversity? | Los Angeles Times
- For four decades, Steve Cushing’s radio program has chronicled the vibrant story of American blues. | Belt Magazine
- “Romantic encounters are very weather-dependent,” and other ways that dating during a pandemic is like a Jane Austen novel. | The New Yorker
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