News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, and other cool stuff
Bookish News
- Booksellers to CDC: In My Store, You Mask Up (Publishers Weekly)
- Indian authors speak out over [PRH India’s] plan to reissue Narendra Modi exam book (The Guardian)
- Valeria Luiselli wins €100,000 Dublin literary award for Lost Children Archive (The Guardian)
- Who’s missing? Top author stirs anger with ‘too white’ history (The Guardian) The US publishers of Richard Cohen’s monumental book about “the writers of history” have dropped the book, despite rewrites, because it “failed to take into account enough black historians, academics and writers.” After reading this article, I really wish he had included more black historians and writers, because the writers he includes – white and black alike – sound fascinating.
Worth Reading/Viewing
- Shadow and Bone author Leigh Bardugo: ‘People sneer at the things women and girls love’ “The author of the hit YA fantasy talks about Netflix stardom, making her novels more diverse and why she had to give up a close relationship with her fans.” (Sian Cain, The Guardian)
- The Punctuation Marks Loved (and Hated) by Famous Writers (LitHub)
- The AAPI Star Trek Characters Who Broke Barriers (Amanda Reiko Andomian, Tor.com)
New Books, Movies, and TV
- Illumicrate is issuing hardcover special editions of Talia Hibbert’s Brown Sisters trilogy, signed by the author, with sprayed edges. (Illumicrate is based in the UK, so be prepared for shipping to be pricey if you are outside the UK.)
Lists
- 77 Strange, Funny, and Magnificent Book Titles You’ve Probably Never Heard Of (LitHub, via Chronicle Books) (possibly NSFW)
- Slow Burn Romances to Swoon Over in Fantasy (Liselle Sambury, Frolic) Heads up: they’re all YA as far as I can tell. (Not a problem for me, but YMMV.)
- Does a Color Exist If We Don’t Have a Name For It? Adam Rogers on the Gap Between Concept and Language (Lit Hub)
Shelleyrae @ Book’d Out
I understand the US insistence on the inclusion of African- American History I’m curious about how many Asian writers are represented in Richard Cohen’s book though.
Shelleyrae @ Book’d Out recently posted…Review: Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz
Lark_Bookwyrm
Also a problem. According to the article, it’s very Eurocentric; there were few if any Asian, African, or indigenous historians and writers represented, either. I’m also curious about the number of women Coehn included; the article lists only two, Toni Morrison (who was added in the rewrite) and Mary Renault. And I suspect we’re not getting the publisher’s side of the story. Given that Cohen did add some chapters at the publishers’ request, what caused them to pull out? Was it not enough, or were there issues with the tone of the added material, perhaps? Was the overall approach too steeped in the literary “old white men” culture?
Nicole @ BookWyrm Knits
Slow burn romances are the best! I hope the adult vs. YA nonsense can get sorted out soon. I’m not holding my breath, though.
Nicole @ BookWyrm Knits recently posted…Book Review: A Phoenix First Must Burn (Patrice Caldwell)
Lark_Bookwyrm
I haven’t read them, so I don’t know if are legitimately YA (by which I mean that while there may be encounters, they’re not explicit), or adult fantasy about teens who are coming of age as the novel progresses. Publishers do seem to have decided that if the MC is under 20, it’s YA regardless of content, but that certainly wasn’t always the case… and still isn’t now, for some authors who began writing before the big YA boom. I’d say about half of Mercedes Lackey’s main characters start out as teens, but her books have never been specifically marketed as YA (with the exception of the Hunter trilogy, which didn’t really take off.)
Nicole @ BookWyrm Knits
I hate that YA has been used as a way to segregate women writers in many cases. It seems that lots of adult fantasy novels get shoved into YA because the protagonist is maybe young enough and the author is a woman. It sucks, and I hope it gets fixed. I’ve been trying to make sure I label everything better on my reviews, but I don’t have a big reach. I guess if enough of us notice and mention it, though, maybe something will change.
Nicole @ BookWyrm Knits recently posted…Clear Your Sh*t Readathon 1.5