News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, and other cool stuff
Book News
- Author Banned From Attending WorldCon (Book Riot)
- Long-Hidden Text Is Uncovered in Alexander Hamilton Letter to his fiance, Elizabeth Schuyler. The missing text, probably crossed out by the Hamiltons’ son, is ardent, even a little racy by the standards of the day, which may be why the son tried to obscure it. (Library of Congress blog)
- The Midwest Writer’s Workshop Is Under Fire After Roxane Gay Called Them Out For Fatphobic Behavior (Bustle)
- Holt ships 700K copies of Fire & Fury, Michael Wolff’s book on the first 9 months inside the Trump White House. The controversial book was released Jan. 5, four days before the original Jan. 9 publication date. (Publishers Weekly) (see also related articles under “Worth Reading” below, detailing MacMillan’s response to the President’s attempt to suppress the book.)
- Fragments of book recovered from wreck of Blackbeard’s flagship. The infamous pirate apparently had a copy of Cook’s Voyage to the South Sea — appropriate reading for a seafarer, though it’s not clear whether it was for reading, or if the pages were used to wedge powder charges into the cannon. (The Guardian)
Worth Reading/Viewing
- John Sargent: “We Are Responding for All Authors and Books’. The CEO of MacMillan issued a statement explaining why MacMillan pressed ahead with publication of Fire and Fury, and why President Trump’s attempt to suppress the book’s publication amounts to “prior restraint,” an unconstitutional limit on the freedom of the press. (Shelf Awareness)
- MacMillan also released the full text of their lawyer’s response to the letter received from Trump’s lawyer, in which the latter alleges that Wolff’s book is libelous and full of falsehoods. (Shelf Awareness)
- Luke Skywalker Isn’t Meant To Be “Nice”. Emily Asher-Perrin examines how Star Wars and the character of Luke Skywalker both construct and deconstruct the concept of heroism. It’s an insightful, thought-provoking and ultimately compassionate look, not just at the Star Wars mythos but at our very human need for heroes and for hope. (Tor.com)
- ‘A tipping point’: women writers pledge to boycott gender biased books after very male anthology (The Guardian) The anthology is The Cambridge Companion to Irish Poets, but it is merely emblematic of a long history of minimization and exclusion of female writers from the literary canon.
- Remaking Bookselling by Going Mobile (Publishers Weekly)
- Happy Birthday: Woman Locked in Bookstore Overnight (Shelf Awareness) Sounds like fun!
For Writers and Bloggers
- Back to Basics: Mastering Your Blog in 3 Easy Steps. Rattled Dreams takes you through the three basics of setting up your blog. No, not HTML—branding, hosting, and writing (or rather, planning ahead, something I’ve definitely let fall by the wayside.)
Awesome Lists
- The Epic List of 120 Speculative Fiction Books To Look For in 2018, Part 1 — and that’s only February through April! The list is a bit shy on YA spec-fic, though. (John DeNardo for Kirkus Reviews)
- Patrick Rothfuss’s 40 Favorite Fantasy/SF Books and Series. The list is from 2011, but it’s a pretty good overview of the SFF field. And if you prefer it in a checklist format, here’s the same list, plus his 20 runners up, on ListChallenge.
- Fantasy Book Review’s Top 100 Fantasy Books (ListChallenge)
- Five Faerie Books for People Who Hate Faeries (Holly Black, for Tor.com) For the record, I enthusiastically second her recommendation of The Perilous Gard.
Bookish Quote
That’s it for this week!
Bea's Book Nook
Whoa, so many fantastic links last week. You always do a great jb curating links.
Nicole
I’m always happy to see authors held accountable for what they do, just like anyone else. Thanks for that WorldCon link, I hadn’t heard the details on that one yet.
And a list of the top 100 fantasy books? You know I now have to see how many I’ve read…
Nicole recently posted…Top Ten Tuesday ~ Bookish Goals
RO
Wow! 700,000 copies released of a nonfiction book is pretty amazing! I wonder how much he was paid? Can you imagine a relative hiding information for so long, then finding it? I wonder how the family feels? I’m pretty sure it would be cool to be stuck in a library all night because they’ve really changed by adding couches and kitchens. I could eat my cheeseburgers and have the run of all kinds of books. Love reading your trivia! Hugs…RO
RO recently posted…FUN STUFF YOU MAY NOT WANT TO KNOW & A COOKIE CRAVING
Lark_Bookwyrm
Re the Wolff book, I imagine the publishers had to rush into a second printing to manage it. As for the Hamilton descendants, if it were me, I’d be delighted to have the two paragraphs deciphered, as it were. I doubt anyone in this century would be all that bothered to find that the man was passionately attracted to his intended bride!