This week! Books!
New-ish Penguin Random House CEO Nihar Malaviya stepped (tiptoed?) out of the shadows for an interview with Elizabeth A. Harris of the New York Times. Apart from quite a few people being at pains to speak to his listening and analytical abilities and a very 2024 allusion to the wonders of A.I. to increase productivity, there weren’t many reveals.
Agent Kate McKean pours some ice water on many a writing dream in a recent newsletter titled Being a Full-Time Writer is the Worst Job, citing a profound lack of stability, no benefits, unclear career paths, and the worst (public) performance reviews.
My own take: Kate makes some very important points that everyone contemplating this path should grapple with. Being CEO of your own personal multinational corporation is no joke. On the other hand, I’ve never met a full time writer who would rather be doing something else. So maybe being a full time writer is the worst job except for all the other jobs.
Amid the ongoing controversy surrounding the Hugo awards after some eligible authors including R.F. Kuang and Xiran Jay Zhao weren’t nominated, Hugo Awards administrator Dave McCarty first argued with people on Facebook, then apologized for arguing with people on Facebook, then resigned. The governing body of the Hugos censured McCarty and several others in connection with the controversy.
Congrats to Asian-owned bookstore Yu and Me Books for its reopening after a devastating fire last July!
Audiobooks have been booming for some time, and there are early signs that Spotify diving into the market are driving them even higher.
Lincoln Michel writes in praise of “shaggy dog” novels like The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker, which just go to show there really are no rules.
Dan Blank writes in favor of giving yourself permission to do less, or, from another vantage point, do more of what matters. I may be returning to this.
And with another posthumous book on the way from Maurice Sendak, Ten Little Rabbits, Elisabeth Egan got a glimpse at Sendak’s fully intact Ridgefield, Conn. home and studio.
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:
- Random in Death by J.D. Robb
- Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
- Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
- The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
- First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston
Adult print and e-book nonfiction:
- Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
- The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
- The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
- The Wager by David Grann
- Oath and Honor by Liz Cheney
Young adult hardcover:
- Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross
- Powerless by Lauren Roberts
- Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross
- Murtaugh by Christopher Paolini
- Nightbane by Alex Aster
Middle grade hardcover:
- The Eyes and the Impossible by Dave Eggers, illustrated by Shawn Harris
- Wonka by Sibéal Pounder
- Wonder by R.J. Palacio
- The Sun and the Star by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro
- Barracoon: Adapted for Young Readers by Zora Neale Hurston, adapted by Ibram X. Kendi
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, anyone who loves nautical books will appreciate this as a potential premise: a 200 year old shipwreck mysteriously washed onto shore in Newfoundland.
Have a great weekend!
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Reading about the “shaggy dog story” type of writing reminds me that this has also been done in the performing arts – theater. In 1963 I joined the theater group where I went to college. Our second production was French playwright Eugene Ionesco’s “The Bald Soprano” (written 1950), a maddening piece — referred to as “theater of the absurd” — that with its seeming unending “shaggy dog stories” related by one character after the other nearly drove us actors telling them bananas. None of them made sense or related in any way to each other or the play’s theme… of which there was none, Ionesco wrote many other long one-act plays like “Soprano” — “The Lesson,” “The Chairs,” and “The Rhinoceros” for example — with some making deep dives into the dark, disturbing side of the human condition.
Lots of people in publishing love pouring cold water on things. Maybe they should change to firefighting, or bartending…
There is a fireman in “Soprano” that shows up to do his job: put out the fires of emotion and free expression erupting from the other characters. “Typical British households” (the setting) don’t allow such.