LitHub Daily: December 31, 2015

• We counted down the 50 biggest literary stories of the year: at long last, the top five stories of 2015. | Literary Hub
• Literary Hub staff picks our favorite stories of the year. | Literary Hub
• “Right now they were just boys. I was just a boy. And still these guns were real and my skin was black.” Clint Smith on shooting guns, what gets to be called an error, and Tamir Rice. | The New Yorker
• George Saunders on letting the world kick his ass, the importance of variation, and how humor is like his oxygen. | TriQuarterly
• What an editor does, other than prevent publishing from “going to hell in a handbasket.” | NPR
• Three well-kept Italian secrets (who are not Elena Ferrante, as far as we know). | Asympote Journal
• “This is the vanguard of slow-minded liberal whiteness, myopia imposed through righteousness. My freedom of expression is to acknowledge that.” Fariha Róisín reflects on the year in Islamaphobia. | Hazlitt
• As the end of the year approaches, the end of the year lists are getting more creative. | Conversational Reading
• Barnes & Noble is considering serving alcohol and not shutting down the Barnes & Noble Review; it is just taking a holiday break, like the rest of us. | LA Times, The New Republic

Also on Literary Hub: New additions to Bartlett’s Quotations for 2015 · Poet-Editors select their favorite poetry this year