This week! Books!
I’ve been reading more literary novels by twenty-somethings lately and woo boy is crippling self-awareness and financial penury a combo. Katy Waldman is apparently on the same wavelength and wrote a really great article on whether the self-awareness in these novels are going too far and what it all means.
The New York Times has a great survey of Indigenous authors pushing science fiction, fantasy, and horror forward. In the words of Rebecca Roanhorse, “We’ve already survived an apocalypse.”
Get your historical fiction subgenres right here!
A fascinating 2013 article about the West Village woman who amassed a collection of 20,000 dictionaries is newly available online! Her dictionaries range from antiques to hyper-niche slang compendiums, including a catalog of slang from San Quentin Prison.
What does it mean for a book to go out of print? Well, it used to be straightforward, but in this day and age of e-books and print on demand, it’s anything but. Agent Kate McKean explains.
This week in bestsellers
Here are the top five NY Times bestsellers in a few key categories. (All links are affiliate links):
Adult print and e-book fiction:
- Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
- Choppy Water by Stuart Woods
- The Midwife Murders by James Patterson and Richard DiLallo
- A Private Cathedral by James Lee Burke
- The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Adult print and e-book nonfiction:
- Live Free or Die by Sean Hannity
- Too Much and Never Enough by Mary L. Trump
- Finding Freedom by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand
- Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
- Untamed by Glennon Doyle
Young adult hardcover:
- Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
- One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus
- Hawk by James Patterson
- Chain of Gold by Cassandra Clare
Middle grade hardcover:
- Rowley Jefferson’s Awesome Friendly Adventure by Jeff Kinney
- Wonder by R.J Palacio
- The One and Only Bob by Katherine Applegate
- Little Leaders by Vashti Harrison
- Refugee by Alan Gratz
This week on the blog
Don’t forget that you can nominate your first page and query for a free critique on the blog:
In case you missed them, here are this week’s posts:
- Writing as a series of lenses
- Be very careful with dreams and hallucinations in novels
- Crystalize the quest (query critique)
And keep up with the discussion in all the places!
Comment! of! the! week! goes to Ken Hughes, with more advice on dreams and hallucinations in novels:
At their worst, dreams are fluff for their own sake and damage our ability to trust anything else.
At their best, your cautions are essential. Besides being clear when the dream ends, it’s usually worthwhile to show at the start that it’s a dream. (I like *Risky Business* beginning with “The dream is always the same” — although ALL movies are an iffy model for dreams in books because the screen is too eager to find a visual form for things.)
Most of all, I agree about giving dreams a purpose. They’re normally outside of usual cause and effect: “just a dream” means it had no consequences except maybe showing that the dreamer was worried. So a proper use for a dream would be to deliver a specific, strong insight into the dreamer, or some compelling mystical clue. Like any other scene, a dream should *change* something to us.
And finally, whales are my favorite animals and I would encourage everyone to read this devastating article about what humanity is doing them.
Have a great weekend!
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