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: Publisher’s Weekly and The Guardian may require you to sign up for a free account in order to read their content.
Bookish News
- Terry Brooks Announces Retirement From Writing Effective Immediately, Delilah Dawson to Take Over on Shannara (Cinelinx)
- A new collection of Harper Lee’s writing is coming later this year (NPR)
- Macmillan is defending its new tech memoir, Careless People, against Meta’s claims. (Literary Hub)
- The Nebula Awards finalists for 2024 were announced. Works are nominated and voted on by members of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA), so these are the books and stories that their fellow writers think were the best of 2024. The winners will be announced at SFWA’s 60th Nebula Annual Nebula Awards Conference in early June. Finalists for best novel of 2024 include A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher and Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell, among others.
- Librarian Criminalization Bills Are Growing, But They’re Not New: Book Censorship News, March 14, 2025 (Book Riot)
- The Guardian reports on the London Book Fair
Worth Reading/Viewing
- The Billionaire Boycott Conundrum (John Scalzi, Whatever blog) A lot of people are considering whether to boycott Amazon over Jeff Bezo’s support for Trump. For many of us, it’s a complicated decision. SF author John Scalzi has some thoughts on boycotting billionaires that are worth reading.
Free Fiction Online
- “Mail Order Magic” (Stephanie Burgis, on the Sunday Morning Transport substack) A woman with chronic illness gets an unexpected—and quite magical—pet. This story is absolutely delightful, and I want more!
AI (“artificial intelligence”)
- ‘A computer’s joke, on us’: writers respond to the short story written by AI (The Guardian). There’s also a link to the story.
Book Lists
- Books that Include Time Travel (Bookwyrm Knits blog). And if those recommendations aren’t enough, you can check out the 790 titles on Goodreads’ reader-compiled list of The Best Time Travel Books of All Time.
Fun and Useful
- Romance Bookstore Directory. Romancing the Data has put together a “directory of online, physical and pop-up romance bookstores, plus a handy map of physical bookstores.” This appears to be world-wide; a quick scan through A-G shows many bookstores in the US and Australia, and a smattering in Canada, the UK, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, and even Germany. You can search using multiple filters.
- A feral cat in the UK has been showing up all over town. (below)
Bookish Quote
Lory @ Entering the Enchanted Castle
Ooh, I want to read the Meta book, even though it will be disturbing. I loved Facebook in the beginning, now I can’t bear to look at it.
A good piece about the boycotting too. I try not to buy from Amazon, but sometimes I get sucked in, wittingly or not. Interesting times!
Lory @ Entering the Enchanted Castle recently posted…In a Time of War #MarchMagics2025
Lark_Bookwyrm
The Meta book sounds interesting. I would like to drop Facebook, but there isn’t another place where all my people and groups have agreed to go. I spend as little time as I can there, but I do like to keep in touch with college and high school friends, find out what’s going on in my county, and keep up with some of my interest groups that haven’t yet moved elsewhere. Thankfully, some are moving to Bluesky, and the COYER group of bloggers has its own private Discord server now, so I have been able to cut back my use of FB quite a bit. Instagram is another matter, though I’m trying to cut back there, too. I did close my Twitter account and move to Bluesky last year.
Lory @ Entering the Enchanted Castle
I long felt somewhat bad that I was too lazy to get started on Instagram, but now I’m glad I didn’t. There are unfortunately people I don’t hear from anymore since leaving Facebook, but I felt so much better being off it, I did not regret the move. I just found you on Bluesky, so yay for that!
Lory @ Entering the Enchanted Castle recently posted…In a Time of War #MarchMagics2025
Nicole @ BookWyrmKnits
Procrastireading. Yup. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.
I love Mischief the cat! I hadn’t heard of him before now, but now that I know of him? I love him!
Nicole @ BookWyrmKnits recently posted…Mini Reviews: Tabby or Not Tabby, Flea the Scene, & Keeper of Enchanted Rooms
Lark_Bookwyrm
I love Mischief’s nonchalance. He’s like, “of course everyone’s fine with me being here,” regardless of where “here” is. A true cat-about-town. He’s great!