A.I. comes for the book world (This week in books)

This week! Books!

First up, some very distressing news regarding two famous authors. The late Alice Munro’s daughter Andrea Robin Skinner published an essay about how Munro stood by Skinner’s stepfather even after he admitted to sexually abusing Skinner. Nearly as distressing as that, all of this was more or less an open secret among those who surrounded Munro. And author Neil Gaiman has been accused by two women of sexual assault, allegations he denies.

The New York Times polled 503 authors on the best books of the 21st Century, which comprises an interesting list. Here’s the top 10:

1. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein
2. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
3. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
4. The Known World by Edward P. Jones
5. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
6. 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha Wimmer
7. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
8. Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell
9. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
10. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

It’s hard to disagree with many of the top choices, but I’m disappointed children’s books were completely neglected amid a Young Adult renaissance in the early 2000s in particular (Ghost by Jason Reynolds, The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, etc.), as well as peak genre novels like Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, with only The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin hanging in there for fantasy.

It mainly feels like the top adult literary fiction of the 21st Century with a slightly arbitrary smattering of nonfiction.

Rebecca Ackermann at Esquire has an excellent survey of the state of A.I. in book publishing, including the very bad (A.I. companies ripping authors off whole cloth), and some (maybe? sorta?) interesting uses being tried out by companies like Inkitt. I’m struck by this quote from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz:

“Imposing the cost of actual or potential copyright liability on the creators of AI models will either kill or significantly hamper their development.”

Don’t threaten me with a good time, Andreessen Horowitz!!

A fantastic profile by Rebecca Mead on U.K. publisher Jacques Testard, who in just ten years built Fitzcarraldo Editions into a literary powerhouse with a roster of Nobel Prize winners. A really excellent look at how a clear vision and hard work can move the needle.

Speaking of profiles, I also enjoyed this one by Elisabeth Egan on romance writer Emily Henry, who has rocketed to bestsellerdom in the last four years (see also my appreciation of Beach Read).

Way back in 2009 I wrote about how sports novels don’t really sell unless your name is John Grisham, which was true enough at the time, but Andrew Schenker traces the resurgence of sports books in the last decade, a genre that arguably hit its peak in the ’60s and ’70s.

In fascinating book review news, I found Andrea Long Chu’s examination of Rachel Cusk extremely interesting, as well as Ryan Lackey’s review of R.O. Kwon’s Exhibit.

Hollywood’s latest blockbuster? Uh, books. As in literal books.

A reminder from agent Kate McKean that no one knows how book marketing works exactly, and that’s fine. Love this quote: “Publishers can usually only tell you what sold a book, not what will sell it.

And this doesn’t relate to books per se, but I really loved Grayson Haver Currin’s profile of musician Cassandra Jenkins, who went from nearly giving up on music to an unexpected smash hit to the pain of having to follow that up.

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:

1. The Women by Kristin Hannah
2. The Housemaid is Watching by Freida McFadden
3. The Housemaid by Freida McFadden
4. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
5. Swan Song by Elin Hilderbrand

Adult print and e-book nonfiction:

1. The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson
2. Ask Not by Maureen Callahan
3. The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
4. On Call by Anthony S. Fauci
5. The Art Thief by Michael Finkel

Young adult hardcover:

1. The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson
2. Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross
3. The Shadows Between Us by Tricia Levenseller
4. Nightbane by Alex Aster
5. Two Sides to Every Murder by Danielle Valentine

Middle grade hardcover:

1. Refugee by Alan Gratz
2. Wonder by R.J. Palacio
3. Heroes by Alan Gratz
4. Faker by Gordon Korman
5. The Sun and the Star by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro

This week on the blog

In case you missed them, here are this week’s posts:

• Why my feedback has gotten more direct through time
• What’s your comfort book?
• Putting public query and first page critiques on pause

And keep up with the discussion in all the places!

• Follow me on Threads and Bluesky
• Follow my page on Facebook
• Join the Facebook Group
• Check out the Bransforums

And finally, you probably know from my choices of art that Caspar David Friedrichs is one of my favorite artists, and I enjoyed this look at his oeuvre by Zachary Fine amid some major retrospectives during the 250th anniversary of Freidrichs’s birth.

Have a great weekend!

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