This week! Books!
The publishing world lost two luminaries this week. Cormac McCarthy, author of All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, and The Road passed away at age 89. Lincoln Michel looks back at McCarthy’s mesmerizing, precise style.
And one of the most legendary editors of all time, Robert Gottlieb, who worked with the likes of Toni Morrison, John le Carré, Ray Bradbury, and Robert Caro, in addition to editing The New Yorker for a time, and lent Catch-22 its title, passed away at 92. Current New Yorker editor David Remnick examines his legacy.
Simon & Schuster is still for sale after its blocked merger with Penguin Random House, and publisher HarperCollins and private equity company KKR have emerged as bidders.
Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert announced on Twitter that she has preemptively paused publication of her forthcoming novel The Snow Forest, set in the Soviet Union (note: not even modern Russia), due to “an enormous massive outpouring of reactions and responses from my Ukrainian readers.” No Nathan do not say what you are really thinking about this don’t do it have we reached the cancellation for publicity era I’m just asking questions here oh dear you said it.
President Biden forcefully pushed back against the rampant book banning hysteria and will appoint a new coordinator within the Education Department to address the growing threat book bans pose to students’ civil rights.
The First Shakespeare Folio, one of the most influential books in history, is turning 400 years old.
Ever wondered how your manuscript might change as it moves through the copyediting process? Jeanette the Writer has you covered.
Ever wondered what a book packager is? Kate McKean has you covered.
And agent Janet Reid tackles a question I get so, so often: but what if I piss off an agent?
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:
- Cross Down by James Patterson and Brendan DuBois
- Happy Place by Emily Henry
- It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover
- It Starts With Us by Colleen Hoover
- Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
Adult print and e-book nonfiction:
- Pageboy by Elliot Page
- The Wager by David Grann
- Outlive by Peter Attia with Bill Gifford
- Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
- The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
Young adult hardcover:
- Solitaire by Alice Oseman
- Girls Like Girls by Hayley Kiyoko
- Five Survive by Holly Jackson
- See You Yesterday by Rachel Lynn Solomon
- Nick and Charlie by Alice Oseman
Middle grade hardcover:
- The Sun and the Star by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro
- Crowned by Kahran and Regis Bethencourt
- Wonder by R.J. Palacio
- Refugee by Alan Gratz
- The Swifts by Beth Lincoln
This week on the blog
In case you missed them, here are this week’s posts:
- Your dream agent is the one who loves your book
- You probably don’t need to point out that your character is looking at something (page critique)
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, The Truman Show has long been one of my favorite movies, and it somehow seems ever-more prescient as the years pass. Emily Maskell wonders whether any movie has ever predicted the future so accurately.
Have a great weekend!
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Sad the passing of these two, one well known to many of us, the other not so much… and yet both left a library of work in their own skill set that will last for many years. Until paper crumbles into dust, celluloid cracks and splits, and digital pulses lose their strength.