TODAY: In 1844, Hans Christian Andersen’s New Fairy Tales (Nye Eventyr), including “The Ugly Duckling” (“Den grimme ælling”), is published.
- On the importance of occasionally being mean (it makes us feel alive!). | Literary Hub
- Veterans are not symbols. They are real people. They are us. | Literary Hub
- From Mary Poppins to Harry Potter: An umbrella is often so much more than an umbrella. | Literary Hub
- BREAKING: Alan Bennett recalls the time he met T.S. Eliot on a train platform. | Literary Hub
- Reni Eddo-Lodge on combating insidious racism. | Literary Hub
- Carlos Fuentes seems to sense that he might be making a mistake: Read Robert Coover’s 1976 review of Fuentes’ sprawling novel Terra Nostra. | Book Marks
- “We have always known that moving backward was not an option.” Brit Bennett on racism, the past year, and reclaiming her time from Trump. | Vogue
- Tom Stoppard has won the David Cohen prize for a lifetime’s achievement in literature. “That’s one for the gravestone,” Stoppard said. | The Guardian
- Failure is one of the hoax’s main muses: Kevin Young on the “kidnapping” of lesbian political activist Amina Arraf—the invention of a white Georgian man—from his new book, Bunk. | The New Yorker
- “I may grovel the rest of my life in a stew of effort.” Flannery O’Connor’s college journals reveal that she, too, suffered from that most relatable of writerly afflictions: self-doubt. | The Atlantic
- “Especially in the deeply unhumorous time of Trump (whose occasional attempts at humor are invariably cruel) it seemed like a good moment for it.” Bill McKibben on his comic novel, Radio Free Vermont. | Library of America
- 38 years after it was written, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting—Milan Kundera’s final work written in Czech—has finally been published in the Czech Republic. | Calvert Journal
- Hamilton fans will have a little something extra to keep them warm this winter: a trio of historical romance novellas, all linked by Hamilton’s wife Eliza. | NPR
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