News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, and other cool stuff.
NOTE on paywalls: The Guardian may require you to sign up for a free account in order to read their content. (OTOH, if you can afford to support them, please do.) Publisher’s Weekly, The New York Times and the Washington Post have paywalls, but allow a certain number of free articles per month.
Literary Losses
Lauren Elliott, Canadian author of the Beyond the Page Bookstore and Crystals and CuriosiTEAs cozy mystery series, passed away on Monday, August 11, 2025, at the age of 72. Elliott (the pen name of Linda Maureen Fowler) studied journalism and worked as a reporter and in theater before turning to fiction writing.
Obituaries and tributes: Snodgrass Funeral Home. Bibliography and Biography: Author website; Goodreads
Bookish News
- Study Finds 20-Year Drop in Reading for Pleasure (Publishers Weekly)
- Florida Court Upholds Freedom to Read in ‘PRH v. Gibson’ (Publishers Weekly)
- Denmark to end book tax to encourage people to read (Le Monde)
- Google Launches Personalized Gemini Storybook App to Industry Concern (Publishers Weekly). Related: Joe Foley’s review/critique of the app on CreativeBloq.
- ReedPOP Bringing Back BookCon (ICv2)
- Ali Hazelwood was bullied off Instagram for liking Peeta (SBTB) No, I’m not making that up; the story got a lot of attention on Threads a month or two ago. Seriously, the world is way too messed up for people to waste time being mean to an author for a joking comment about her unpopular ship in a book series that came out over 15 years ago. Save your rage and hate for the people who really deserve it, okay?
Book Awards
- The Hugo Award winners were announce at Seattle Worldcon (Seattle Worldcon website.) Winners include The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett (best novel), Rebecca Roanhorse’s Between Earth and Sky trilogy (best series), Dune, Part 2 (best dramatic presentation, long form), Sheine Lende (Lodestar Award for best YA), and Moniquel Blackgoose (Astounding Award for best new writer.) You can find a list of all the nominees on the Hugo Awards website.
- The Hugo Awards announcers mispronounced the names of a number of nominees. I have tried to find a news article on this, but all I have found are social media posts and blog posts decrying what happened. Apparently, the announcers weren’t given a pronunciation guide. I’m not excusing them; they absolutely should have asked for one well ahead of time. (They also could have prepped on their own; it’s not like the nominees weren’t published weeks or months in advance.) The Hugo committee also should have seen this coming, and provided a pronunciation guide well in advance. Getting people’s names right is basic courtesy and respect, and those involved failed in this respect. I did find this well-written essay on the topic: When People Giggle at Your Name, or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident (GrigoryLukin.com)
- Polari [LGBTQIA+] book prize cancelled after row over gender-critical novelist (The Guardian). And because that article focuses mainly on the anti-trans author at the heart of the controversy, without any statements from the authors who withdrew their books from consideration, here’s an article from Assigned Media that covers those authors’ point of view.
Worth Reading/Viewing
- Literary Criticism vs. Book Consumerism (Kathleen Schmidt, Publishing Confidential substack), and a reply on Book Riot.
- I Tested How Well AI Tools Work for Journalism. “Some tools were sufficient for summarizing meetings. For research, the results were a disaster.” (Hilke Schellman, Columbia Journalism Review)
- This Man Kept a Meticulous List of All 3,599 Books He’d Read Since 1962. When He Died, His Family Published It Online (Smithsonian Magazine)
- The Next Book Ban Target? Romance; the article also includes this week’s book censorship news (Book Riot)
- Fan fiction is everywhere, if you know how to look (Washington Post)
- The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations (McSweeney’s)
- Celia Lake and Freya Marske in conversation. “Freya Marske and Celia Lake have both written novels about magical societies existing in secret, parallel to the non-magical world, set in Edwardian England. I [Speculative Insight] asked them to chat with me, and each other, about their choices regarding magic systems, Edwardian England, and other aspects of their novels…” (Speculative Insight)
- Dish Course: The HEA is Really Freaking Powerful, Huh? (Sarah @ Smart Bitches, Trashy Books)
- ‘Not just smut’: Why it’s happily ever after for romance books (BBC.com) There’s a little bit of condescension in the article, but on the whole, it’s fairly positive.
Surviving the Current (gestures) Everything
Books, Movies, and TV
- Robert A. Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy Is Getting an Animated Film Adaptation (Reactor). I have mixed feelings about this. It’s a classic of YA scifi by one of the early masters of science fiction, but it’s also a product of its time.
Book Lists
- Books about Books and the People Who Love Them (The Irresponsible Reader) A nice, long list which will no doubt add quite a few books to my TBR list!
- Historical Fiction About Little Known History (Book Riot)
- Five [Short] Stories Featuring Dragons Great and Small (Reactor)
- Dungeons and Dragons Romance Books (A Literary Escape blog)
Bookish Quote
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