Lit Hub Daily: November 19, 2019

• After much ado, here are our picks for the best novels of the past decade. | Lit Hub Best of the Decade
• And here are some of the books that most influenced David Bowie (along with music pairings for each). | Lit Hub
• What if we called it the “Flax Age” instead of the “Iron Age”? Kassia St. Clair on correcting the historical bias against domestic materials. | Lit Hub History
• “Open-heart surgery was a postwar American invention, as miraculous as space travel and as bloody as the Battle of the Bulge.” On the wild world of early open-heart surgery. | Lit Hub Science
• “My overwhelming sense is one of sorrow.” On reading Albert Woodfox’s Solitary while detained at Guantánamo. | Lit Hub
• “Even when your dreams come true, the reality is complex.” Julia Phillips in conversation with Brian Gresko. | Lit Hub
• Poetry by Honor Moore and Dan Poppick. | Lit Hub Poetry
• “The hippie had met the cowboy, and they’d found they were brothers.” Beau L’Amour on the rise, fall, and counterculture rediscovery of his Western raconteur father, Louis L’Amour. | CrimeReads
• Wake, Siren author Nina MacLaughlin on five books that deal with nature in a sensual way, from Hiromi Kawakami’s The Briefcase to Annie Dillard’s The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. | Book Marks
• The secret feminist history of Shakespeare and Company, which celebrates its centennial this month. | NYRB
• Read an oral history of Margaret Atwood’s six-decade (and counting) literary career. | The Walrus
• “To his mind, equality could not come in stages.” On the radical legacy of William Monroe Trotter. | The New Yorker
• “Betts’s poetry is sometimes soul-crushing for me because it spoils my romanticized visions of life after prison.” John J. Lennon on reading Reginald Dwayne Betts’ Felon behind bars. | Poetry Magazine
• Long days alone, editing headaches: The narrators behind your favorite audiobooks. | The Guardian
• “Poetry should be for everyone but especially people who live lives on the margins”: Rachel Rabbit White on capitalism, parties, and poetry. | The Believer
• Rediscovering the joys of reading through the eyes of a second grader. | The Millions

Also on Lit Hub: The education of a civil rights icon: Dovey Johnson Roundtree on life at Spelman College • Read an excerpt from Dexter Palmer’s new novel Mary Toft; Or, The Rabbit Queen.