Lit Hub Daily: January 16, 2026
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
TODAY: In 1888, Russian avant garde writer and literary critic Osip Brik is born.
- Steven W. Thrasher on Renee Good, ICE, Zohran Mamdani, and the politics of domination vs. vulnerability. | Lit Hub Politics
- Jason Burke chronicles the rise of Carlos the Jackal, one of the 1970’s most infamous icons of terrorism and violence. | Lit Hub Biography
- Today on the Lit Hub Podcast, our staff discuss their picks for the most anticipated books of 2026. | Lit Hub Radio
- “I believe there are even more out there, a sea of us, lying in wait for a new friend to shove works like The Chronology of Water into our hands.” Asha Dore considers Lidia Yuknavitch’s “anti-memoir.” | Lit Hub Criticism
- “I didn’t find myself. Instead, I found an obsession.” Kathleen Boland on getting lost (as a writing practice). | Lit Hub Craft
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Daniyal Mueenuddin’s This Is Where the Serpent Lives, Jung Chang’s Fly, Wild Swans, and Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks
- Catherine Pierce recommends five books to read in the early days of parenting by Rivka Galchen, Mira Jacob, Beth Ann Fennelly, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- In praise of the boarding school novel: “It is precisely because they distill and contain all the pain and pleasure of being young into one crucible that they are such rich source material for novelists.” | Lit Hub Craft
- “Nickel, mercury, and chromium particulates wash off roofs— / he drove to Las Vegas in a Cadillac and left as a hitchhiker—” Read “Entropy,” a poem by Arthur Sze from The Michigan Quarterly Review. | Lit Hub Poetry
- “The chainsaws went quiet all at once. Pedro lowered his arms and rested his machine against a tree.” Read from Simón López Trujillo’s novel Pedro the Vast, translated by Robin Myers. | Lit Hub Fiction
- Greta Rainbow considers the longevity bro in literature. | Dirt
- Aditi Rao on the problem with Babel: “ the task remains, to extend care, humanity, solidarity, and life, to tongues—and people—outside of the trajectories inscribed by our protos; to raze the language tree that dictates our cultural debt and our naturalized nations.”. | Public Books
- Justin Taylor explores Katherine Dunn’s oeuvre. | n+1
- Why we need Wikipedia, “bastion of what the internet once was, and what it still could be” more than ever. | Salon
- From King Arthur to Rip Van Winkle and beyond, Matthew Byrd traces the history of cryosleep in fiction. | Reactor
- Amir Ahmadi Arian explains why The Blind Owl is Iran’s ultimate banned book. | The Dial
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