- Gilbert Cruz Is Our Next Books Editor
- The right in the US has a new bogeyman: libraries
- 9 Books About Women Who Can’t Get Out of Their Heads
- The “Great Publishing Resignation” Exposes the Failings of the Industry
- Groundbreaking Study Explores Trauma, Stress in Frontline Library Workers
- The Adele of Audiobooks
- Blonde: An Exclusive Look at Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe
- The myth of Marilyn Monroe: how her ‘sex bomb’ image buries the truth
- The Dark Side of Tourism
Gilbert Cruz Is Our Next Books Editor
The New York Times has announced its new book editor, “veteran culture editor” Gilbert Cruz:
Gilbert spent the past four years bringing important changes to our arts report . . . Now he’ll move to Books to focus his energies on three important pillars of coverage. The first is to reimagine The New York Times Book Review, the nation’s last stand-alone newspaper book-review section, for the digital age. The second is to increase and embolden our reporting on and criticism of ideas and intellectual life, the publishing world and all that lives within it. And the third is to build new muscles in service journalism that will help our readers choose their next books with ease and joy.
Categories: Literary Criticism, Publishing
The right in the US has a new bogeyman: libraries
An informative opinion piece by Mage Higgins, a U.S. columnist for The Guardian.
Categories: Censorship, Libraries
9 Books About Women Who Can’t Get Out of Their Heads
“Nada Alic, author of “Bad Thoughts,” recommends stories of thoughtful rumination and interior complexity”
I’ve always been drawn to books by writers who possess a similar compulsion to think their way out of a problem or a state of being. From lyrical essays to fiction, to experimental memoir, these are books by writers caught in thoughtful rumination, using an event or a question as a jumping off point to explore broader philosophical themes in a way that feels alive and porous and complex
Category: Literature & Psychology, Writing
The “Great Publishing Resignation” Exposes the Failings of the Industry
Arvyn Cerézo examines how this recent occurrence may affect the future of writers and the publishing industry.
The United States has been hit with the so-called “Great Resignation” since the COVID-19 pandemic. Many Americans quit their jobs, chose to stay home, or looked for better opportunities elsewhere. Dubbed the “Great Publishing Resignation” by Twitter users, the phenomenon has just recently hit the publishing industry.
Categories: Publishing, Writing
Groundbreaking Study Explores Trauma, Stress in Frontline Library Workers
“The 2022 Urban Libraries Unite Trauma Study addresses a “crisis of trauma” in urban public libraries”
A thought-provoking article from Publishers Weekly: “a new study released during the 2022 American Library Association Annual Conference is shedding more light on the extent to which many urban librarians and library workers are experiencing ‘trauma, stress, and burnout’ in the workplace.”
Categories: Censorship, Libraries
The Adele of Audiobooks
“Julia Whelan chats (in her friendly-firm timbre) about narrating other people’s books (“Gone Girl”) as well as her own forthcoming novel (“Thank You for Listening”), and about how audio narrators can get snubbed on pay.”
Rachel Levin interviews popular audiobook narrator Julia Whelan, whose dream was to become an actor but whose career took a major detour when she was recruited to record Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl in 2012. Since then, Whelan has gone on to record more than 500 audiobooks and to receive “AudioFile’s Golden Voice, an honor for lifetime achievement.”
Category: Audiobooks
Blonde: An Exclusive Look at Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe
Back in 2001 my book group read and loved Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates, which had been published in 2000. The novel, an amazingly compelling imagination of the life of Marilyn Monroe, is now being made into a movie, which you can read about here.
Categories: Book News, Film
The myth of Marilyn Monroe: how her ‘sex bomb’ image buries the truth
“In life, Monroe made herself noticed far beyond Hollywood and in ways very different from the corny ‘sex bomb’ image that is the leitmotif of her modern iconography,” writes Anthony summers in The Guardian. Among the examples he cites are these:
- “Twenty years before physical exercise became a fad, she went running.”
- “She read serious literature voraciously, Dostoevsky in particular.”
- “She supported the burgeoning civil rights movement.”
- “She was a founder member of the Hollywood branch of Sane, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy.”
Categories: Book News, Film
The Dark Side of Tourism
This is the latest article in the “weekly guide to the best in books” feature by The Atlantic.
You can find the list of all Books Briefing articles here.
Categories: Literary Criticism, Literary History, Book News, Literature & Culture, Reading
© 2022 by Mary Daniels Brown
Interesting article about the publishing industry.
Yes. I fear the whole situation isn’t going to improve any time soon.
I don’t think so either. After the “disruptive innovation of the past ten years or so, I think publishing is in the same place as higher education. They just don’t know where they want to land.
Bad thoughts, I read this book. and the story was amazing. I wan to say something to “Nada Alic” great work are you doing keep updating us with your books.
I haven’t read “Bad Thoughts,” but I’ve read several of the kinds of books recommended. Thanks for reading and commenting, Douglas.