This week! Books!
French memoirist Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Madeleine Schwartz wrote a fascinating profile of her in 2020, and Adam Gopnik argues her win marks the ascendency of the memoir as “perhaps the leading genre of our time.”
Despite recording record profits in the 2022 fiscal year, HarperCollins has nevertheless laid off a “small” number of employees and reduced spending on travel and non-essential expenses, citing supply chain costs and fiscal uncertainty.
In the wake of her runaway bestseller I’m Glad My Mom Died, former iCarly star-turned-memoirist Jenette McCurdy now has a seven figure book deal for a debut novel.
Netflix has released its much-anticipated Blonde about the life of Marilyn Monroe, which was based on Blonde, the early aughts novel by Joyce Carol Oates. The film has been met with mixed reviews, and Heidi Seaborn wonders if the problem is the novel and not the film.
Lots of great writing advice and publishing advice this week!
I really enjoyed Erin Bowman’s recent newsletter about the pursuit of success and the danger of burning yourself out pursuing “specialness.” No matter how successful you are, it’s impossible to feel happy or even satisfied if you’re trapped on the hedonic treadmill.
Joe Ponepinto has a great reminder that if you want to write universally and to have a bigger impact, perhaps counterintuitively, it’s important to think small.
In another post on motivation, this time about how crucial a character’s motivation is in fiction, Kristen Lamb has this great nugget: The WHY makes the WHO.
JoAnn Yao at We Need Diverse books talked to agent Larissa Melo Pienkowski about how to break into the industry, and the changes Larissa would like to see for BIPOC publishing employees.
Mason Engel talks about how to find and maintain the energy it takes to write.
Lastly, if you’re a book lover and you haven’t already subscribed to Ron Charles’ incredible weekly newsletter, well, you absolutely should.
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:
- Righteous Prey by John Sandford
- Verity by Colleen Hoover
- It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover
- Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan
- Fairy Tale by Stephen King
Adult print and e-book nonfiction:
- Confidence Man by Maggie Haberman
- I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
- Live Wire by Kelly Ripa
- Killing the Legends by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
- The Body Keeps the Score by Bassel van der Kolk
Young adult hardcover:
- The First to Die at the End by Adam Silvera
- Long Live the Pumpkin King by Shea Ernshaw
- Hocus Pocus: The Illustrated Novelization by A.W. Jantha
- Foul Lady Fortune by Chloe Gong
- The Girl in the Castle by James Patterson and Emily Raymond
Middle grade hardcover:
- Two Degrees by Alan Gratz
- The Hocus Pocus Spell Book by Eric Geron
- Boys Will Be Human by Justin Baldoni
- Wonder by R.J. Palacio
- Refugee by Alan Gratz
This week on the blog
In case you missed them, here are this week’s posts:
Don’t forget that you can nominate your first page and query for a free critique on the blog:
And keep up with the discussion in all the places!
And finally, I arrived a bit late to this article from August, but I really enjoyed Roberta Smith’s profile of artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden, who creates unnerving works mixing gun culture, blackness, BDSM, and fetishes.
Have a great weekend!
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