» Lit Hub Daily: December 23, 2025

THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET

TODAY: In 1896, Joan Lindsay is born. 

• “What might have been just an engaging children’s story becomes also a set of hints, allusions, and glimpses, the early experiences of learning about a larger world.” Making sense of J.R.R. Tol­kien’s expansive world. | Lit Hub Criticism
• Ed Simon defends the symbolic (and René Magritte’s Le Coeur du Monde). | Lit Hub Art
• Peter Kayafas considers Lee Friedlander’s unique perspective on many American Christmases. | Lit Hub Photography
• Did you know there are competitions for tap water? And obviously, someone needs to judge them. | The Walrus
• What Cold War nuclear testing did to the caribou. | JSTOR Daily
• “Yet at every step of the research process, this Enlightenment ideal — a totalizing understanding of the Earth, an organized system for making sense of its changes — is closely trailed by politics in various forms.” Paul N. Edwards on technology, climate change, and counterculture. | Dirt
• Daniel Kolitz and Tony Tulathimutte on loserdom, taboo, and the worst guys on the internet. | Interview

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