Lit Hub Weekly: December 18-22, 2023

• “Protecting students from books containing sexual acts does not protect them from performing sexual acts.” Jane Smiley talks to an Iowa high school newspaper about book banks, after her novel A Thousand Acres was banned from Iowa City schools. | Lit Hub Politics

• Say hello to the ten most popular Lit Hub stories of the year (which definitely proves that readers like to read). | Lit Hub

• It’s time for another Lit Hub tradition, in which Emily Temple scours all the Best Of lists to tally the Ultimate Best Books of 2023. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• The best traditional mysteries of 2023. | CrimeReads

• “The bombs are still falling, my heart breaks every day.” Sally Rooney and Isabella Hammad discuss the Israel-Palestine conflict. | The Guardian

• Carolyn Dever on the British Library’s attempts to recover from a massive cyberattack. | Public Books

• How the Birmingham bombing radicalized James Baldwin. | Boston Review

• “Refaat did not just impart knowledge; he offered a glimpse of hope, a respite from the relentless pressures of Gaza.” Jehad Abusalim remembers his teacher, Refaat Alareer. | The Nation

• Laurie Stone on madeleines: “Once human beings know something, we think we’ve always known it—like the discovery of irony by a child, it’s a one-way door.” | The Paris Review

• Tajja Isen ponders the enigma of how to sell a book. | The Walrus

• Kathy Acker masturbated here: Jack Skelley reports from the celebration of the donation of the author’s desk to the Poetic Research Bureau. | LARB

• “The premise is simple: Show up with a book, commit to vanquishing a chapter or two and chat with strangers about what you’ve just read.” An evening at a “reading party.” | The New York Times

• Writers, artists, and filmmakers weigh in on their best film experiences of the year. | Metrograph

• “Smith diligently repudiates a triumphalist narrative of progress—the present casts its long shadow over the novel—but she offers no theory of history in its place.” On The Fraud and the condition of the social novel. | The Point

• Mr. Darcy: Canceled? | Slate

• “This is the bleak testimony of the damned and blasphemed. It’s sanctioned by the culture of self-aggrandizement. It’s at once one of the great ballads in hip-hop and a manifesto about the insurmountable depravity of the industry.” Harmony Holiday on Madvillain’s “Accordion.” | Oxford American

• How to experience LA like a poet, as told by the poets themselves. | LA Times

• Natan Last on inclusivity in the world of crossword puzzles. | The New Yorker

• “Anything that happens in the present is, by definition, imaginable. We can see it.” Read Masha Gessen’s Arendt Prize lecture. | n+1

Also on Lit Hub:

Drumroll, please: It’s the Biggest Literary Stories of 2023 • On John F. Kennedy’s last movie: From Russia with Love • Sakiru Adebayo on the diasporization of African literature • On the transformative experience of listening to audiobooks while ill • Why you should definitely read Poor Things, even after seeing Poor Things • On the 17th-century witch trials of the Arctic Circle • 30 years after its premiere, Paul Morton considers how Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List has endured, for better and for worse • On the cautious optimism of poet-philosopher Lewis Thomas • A conversation about the Supreme Court’s checkered past and future • Matthew Hays reflects on the complicated experience of reading a late friend’s novel • The authors of Spectral Evidence: The Witch Book discuss the contemporary echoes of centuries-old fears • Andrew Quintana reviews Andrew Haigh’s masterful new queer film, All of Us Strangers • The 15 best literary adaptations of the year • Blake Butler on (not) finding your voice