News & Notes – 2/17/2024

February 17, 2024 Lark_Bookwyrm News & Notes 1

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

Two OpenAI book lawsuits partially dismissed by California court (The Guardian)
Balzer + Bray Imprint to Move to Macmillan Children’s. The imprint has been part of HarperCollins since its launch in 2009. “All books published by [Balzer + Bray] at HarperCollins will remain there, to be reassigned to other imprints in the division.” (Publishers Weekly)
Starting this year, the National Book Awards will be open to non-citizens. (Literary Hub)

More on the Hugo Awards Controversy

It appears that Authors [were indeed] ‘excluded from Hugo awards over China concerns’ (The Guardian.) Diane Lacey, a member of the Hugo Awards administrators, leaked a number of emails and files that indicate that the decision to declare some works ineligible may have originated from some Western members of the Hugo administration team, in a self-censoring effort to avoid violating Chinese laws. If you want more details, I recommend the excellent and detailed report “The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion” by Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford.

In the wake of this news, the Glasgow Worldcon Chair Vows Transparency Following Chengdu Hugos Censorship (Publishers Weekly.)

Worth Reading/Viewing

On book banning: “Meet the thought police of Rockingham County, Va.” (Kate Cohen, Washington Post; paywall possible)
‘Reading is so sexy’: gen Z turns to physical books and libraries (Chloe Mac Donnell, The Guardian)
What Is Fantasy, Anyway (Cheryl Morgan, Speculative Insight) Think you know what is fantasy, and what isn’t? Think again. Morgan challenges a lot of the genre assumptions in an essay that is highly worth reading. “My contention here is not about genre boundaries; it is about exploding them.”
What is romantasy? The best-selling book trend, explained. (Sarah Wendell, Washington Post; paywall possible)
13 Romance Authors Making Space in the Genre (Jennifer Prokop, Kirkus Reviews) Not just a list, but a thoughtful look at the many ways in which the romance genre is expanding, without losing what makes it romance: a focus on the couple, with them ending up happily together. (Without a HEA or at least HFN ending, it’s not a romance. Romantic, possibly, but not a romance. I will die on that hill.)
Year of the Dragon: Six Fantasy Authors Discuss Our Favorite Mythic Beast (Reactor) I mean, it’s dragons, of course I had to include it here!

Free Fiction Online

“Marginalia” by Mary Robinette Kowal. The background to know before reading it is that many medieval manuscripts show knights fighting giant snails. (Thank you to Nicole @ BookwyrmKnits for the links!)

Reviews

Laurie R. King: A Crime Reader’s Guide to the Classics. I absolutely love King’s Mary Russell (and Sherlock Holmes) series, now in it’s 18th book. And while I have tried to explain why in this series review, and have reviewed several of the later books, Nyren’s article-cum-series-review does a much better job of explaining the series as a whole. Not to mention, it’s far more up-to-date than my own series review, written when the series was only half as long as it is now. (Neil Nyren, CrimeReads)