What I've Been Reading, November Edition

Publishing Related

• The National Book Awards have been beset by controversy after Zibby Owens, daughter of the billionaire CEO of the Blackstone Group, who started a press (and magazine and bookstore and a bunch of other things) withdrew her sponsorship over a proposed political statement by the finalists re: Israel/Palestine.
  
  I’ve been following Owens’ growing empire-to-be with raised eyebrows. If you peruse the job listings at Publishers Lunch, as I do, you will note that they’ve been hiring, hiring, hiring. The name of her podcast that started this all, “Moms Don’t Have Time To Read Books” fills me with ire. (Some moms have children in their 50s! Many moms read books for their jobs! Actually I feel dumb explaining!). Also, of course, I’m jealous: just imagine if I had those kinds of funds for my press. But mainly I find her move, her explanation for it, and the proposed statements, enervating, which is the response I seem to have about both the discourse (and reality) of current events which, since they are dominant, and personally emotionally complex, I find myself trying to dodge. I did, however, sign one open letter, from Jewish writers, sponsored by N + 1. I focus on trying to read what’s being written by Israeli leftists (a daily subscription to Haaretz helps me find folks I want to learn from, as well as people I’m now following on social media). Of these events I think about constantly, talk about it little, participate in no rallies, and don’t agree with what Zibby Owens did.
  

• In happier corners of the internet, I’m really loving

  The Leftovers
  , including this great piece about writing Chronicles, how indie magazines die, and his anti-copyright stance.

• It is through The Leftovers, I think, that I found the jaw-dropping research of
  Alex Leslie, whose research into the history of American publishing and book cultures shows that bookstores have never been the primary way Americans found and bought books. Who knew! I’ll make you click through to find out where most 19th century folks purchased books (aka today’s Amazon). I think indie booksellers could learn a lot about what he discovers. Related—and again, very interested for booksellers—his research on books as gifts and when people buy the most books (not what you might have expected). I’ll be honest, as a fan of digital humanities, I often find their analyses of publishing somewhat off, in a way it’s hard for me to deduce, as someone who has been (is?) both a scholar and a publishing professional. But I don’t come away from Leslie’s work with the same impression.
  

• Love this project on “missing” works of 19th century American lit.
  

• I am such a curious non-fan about fandom, and sometimes play around with thinking much harder about this topic as it relates to books. If I did that I could read more about Taylor and Travis and TikTok.
  

• Copies of bestselling book of the moment are rife with printer errors. Bestsellers, they are just like us! I expect I know exactly how and why this happened, and there’s a whole reckoning about the conglomeration of printing and print-on-demand that has to come soon. For a future newsletter, for sure.
  

• These things never happen with ebooks, or if they do, it’s easy to fix them. There were so many interesting comments on my post about e- and audiobooks recently, and I am already drafting a follow-up just on ebook prices. To research, I spent some time here on reddit.
  

Leisure

• Read the Thursday Murder Club series or I’ll have to keep suggesting it over and over and annoy you. (Anthony Horowitz, on the other Brit mystery hand, is overrated).
  

• I was blown away by Benjamin Labutut’s When We Cease to Understand the World so I am excitedly now starting his new one, The Maniac.
  

• Turning my Gen X snarl into a smile and loving Olivia Rodrigo.
  

• Why didn’t any of you tell me about Life In Squares?? (the best thing about watching so much British tv is the stable is smaller, so you can go “wait it’s got Grantland’s hot vicar as Duncan Grant and Leonard as…Leonard???)