TODAY: In 1950, George Orwell dies.
- “Tanizaki advocates appreciating what is there, letting your eyes adjust to a different wavelength.” Kyle Chayka on the godfather of minimalism and his case for imperfection. | Lit Hub
- The yurt at the edge of the sea: Emily Cooke on inhibition and actualization at a California writers’ retreat. | Lit Hub Travel
- Plan your year in books and birthdays with our 2020 calendar of noteworthy literary events. | Lit Hub
- “self-portrait as ’90s R&B video.” A poem from Danez Smith’s collection Homie. | Lit Hub
- “Wordsworth himself seems to occupy the universe, as a stream that runs through time.” Adam Nicolson on the friendship between Coleridge and Wordsworth. | Lit Hub Biography
- Ayelet Waldman on O’Connor v. Donaldson, the landmark Supreme Court case that ended the unjust confinement of mental health patients. | Lit Hub History
- Luke Geddes recommends 10 books about obsessed audiophiles, maniacal record collectors, and crime-solving musicians. | CrimeReads
- The first trailer for the BBC’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People is the phone call to end all phone calls (and hearts, you guys). | The Hub
- Dutch art sleuth Arthur Brand—AKA “the Indiana Jones of the Art World”—has recovered a stolen 15th century book by the Persian poet Hafez. | International Business Times
- With a book club and social media advocacy, Noname is working to preserve and support Black intellectual spaces. | Teen Vogue
- “If ever a literary heroine needed the hashtag #IBelieveHer, it is [Anne’s heroine] Helen.” On reading Anne Brontë in the context of #MeToo. | The TLS
- “I need to possess them because I feel they might go away, that they are in the middle of going away.” Stephen Marche on owning every Thomas Browne first edition. | The New York Times
- For many libraries, 2019 was a record-breaking year for digital checkouts. Over 326 million ebooks and audiobooks were checked out around the world. | Book Riot
- Jeanine Cummins’ novel American Dirt, about a Mexican woman and her son fleeing a drug cartel and attempting to reach the US southern border, has split opinions about who has the right to tell stories about migrant experiences. | Los Angeles Times
Also on Lit Hub: On the emotional aftershocks of Alice Adams’ most celebrated work • Post-Soviet travel on the Turkmen-Kazakh border • Read a story by Morgan Talty from the newest issue of TriQuarterly.
