TODAY: In 1896, John Dos Passos is born.
- A snapshot of the year in reading to come: Lit Hub’s most anticipated books of 2020. | Lit Hub
- “Fiction is the dream life of the culture that makes it, and its enduring mysteries are what keep us coming back.” Jennifer Egan on the eternal power of The House of Mirth. | Lit Hub
- “She eludes me, scolds me, ruins my pleasure in having written thoughtful questions.” Merve Emre on being edited by Elena Ferrante. | Lit Hub
- Martha Cooley on the decades-old mystery that inspired her novel: the T.S. Eliot-Emily Hale letters. | Lit Hub
- “You, Very Young in New York.” A poem by Hannah Sullivan from the collection Three Poems. | Lit Hub
- Kiley Reid, Paul Yoon, Jessica Andrews, and more take the Lit Hub Author Questionnaire. | Lit Hub
- Creatures author Crissy Van Meter recommends five books of wild California. | Book Marks
- In 1971, somebody hired a young Black man to assassinate an Italian mafia boss. Five decades later, the mystery continues. Michael Gonzales has the story. | CrimeReads
- The National Book Critics Circle Award finalists—in autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—have been announced. | Publishers Weekly
- Have film adaptations of books based on medical case histories been fair to their subjects? Rick Moody on Jon Avnet’s new movie, Three Christs (and Penny Marshall’s Awakenings). | New York Review Books
- An Iranian literary agency said that publishers from more than a dozen countries have requested books about Qassem Soleimani, the general assassinated by the US. | Tehran Times
- As the new National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, author Jason Reynolds plans to “deputize hundreds of young storytellers” in small towns around the country. | Washington Post
- Goodnight, influential librarian whispering hush: the story of a literary taste-maker’s campaign against Goodnight Moon. | Slate
- In response to climate panic, a new roster of books is focusing on local conservation. | The Guardian
- “At the heart of the novel lies an unmistakable preoccupation with Christian conceptions of the afterlife.” On reading Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping as an unbeliever. | The Paris Review
Also on Lit Hub: Life at the end of American empire • Anthony Marra says goodbye to his favorite place on earth, Trattoria Contadina • Read from Javier Cercas’ nonfiction novel, Lord of All the Dead (trans. Anne McClean).
