Year: 2020

Here you are again. Another meaningless unit of time marked off. The jar of jellybeans is slowly emptying, people. And there’s no refill. Where do you stand in terms of preparedness for the days of the empty jar? Take that into your weekend and try to get something you find meaningful done.

• My favourite of the awards: Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title;
• Shyam Selvadurai on why it took 26 years for Funny Boy to come to screen;
• Won’t somebody think of the supply chain?!?! It’s fine;
• Needed around here: gift ideas for book-loving feminists;
• Catching up on who is winning what Irish awards;
• Minnesota (practically Canada) nurse uses poetry to cope with pandemic;
• More Bookshop.org coverage;
• Obama getting award from PEN;
• Authors still mad at Audible and is anyone really surprised by this?;
• First AugurCon (CanSpecFic) overcomes reality to set up shop;
• Picador wins four-way auction for Jamaica Kincaid book;
• On the “unbearable banality of romance novel décor“;
• Do these animal books represent a literary Noah’s ARC…? (See what I did there?);

The Guardian offers a few choices. Doomscrolling has made it into ours, along with necessary others. I think for us, it’s “Bubble”. The fucking Bubble arguments with teens were legion. And still are. “Karen” bothers me, mostly because I only really know smart, caring, calm Karens. And “BLM” should get its own classification and award separate from all this noodling about buzzwords. Well, it really should have gotten that years ago. But this year saw it everywhere.

How do we get new words and how do old words get a fresh twist? In normal times, it’s a well-worn process, linguistic business as usual. There will be a new invention or thing to buy, such as “wifi” (1999) or an “iPod” (2001). People will pick up on trends or changes in behaviour and give them labels such as “crowdfund” (2008) or “catfish” (2012). Last year, the Guardian identified “femtech” and “cancelled” as among the words that embodied 2019. This year, you may have noticed, has been a bit different, the verbal equivalent of a dawn raid: a few insistent items of vocabulary have smashed down the front door and pointed guns at us while we cower under the duvet. And while it’s right that the changes wreaked by the virus dominate this year’s list, there have been other developments. As the big dictionaries unveil their wotys (words of the year), we ask which ones – for good or ill – best capture the spirit of 2020.

Happy Colonial Oppression Day, America! Or is that Columbus Day? I can’t keep up with you crazy kids.

My editorial note for today: just as we have to stop thinking that other people in our business are our friends (they’re just our colleagues, which you find out pretty quickly when you try to be actual friends with 99% of them), we also have to stop thinking of the even-more-distant publishers (or employers for many of us) as reflective of our views. They are not our pals, no matter how many free books and nice cards your editors send you. The publisher will go where the money goes. PRH may be made up of left-leaning, art-focused do-gooders like us, at least at the bottom, but up there on 12, the boardroom is answering to shareholders and a bottom line. And that’s why we have a giant amoeba that wants to publish a piece of bacterial shit like Peterson, and we’re the ones who will end up with The Scoots.

• Story of the day: totally unsurprising thing happens! Well, that’s what amoebae do: then envelop. Publishing’s The Blob, coming through!
  • Sale coverage here and here and here and here;
  • PW covers US book biz reaction;
  • Q&Q covers ACP’s reaction;
  • Is all of this because of Amazon?;
• Speaking of PRH gobbling up everything: Jordan Peterson is back, like herpes, and it looks like his publisher is a tool, too:
  • Staff are upset this was hidden from them;
  • PRH has fingers in ears going: LALALALALA!;
  • The Age in Oz covers the dilemma publishers face when they sign douchebag authors;
• Audio book news:
  • Audible launches Canadian titles;
  • Books by Maddow and Flea up for Grammies;
• British Library apologizes to Ted Hughes… No word if he’s accepted;
• All PRH all the time? They’re going full-hog with Spanish publishing;
• Aw… Let’s publish all wee the kiddie’s lockdown stories so they get a sense of how easy it is to live as a writer;
• BookRiot confesses their bad reading habits to make us all feel better;
• LitHub offers a decent primer of Yeats quotes in pop culture;
• When romance novelists attack;

Years ago I sat on an arts jury that had a proposal come forward for building an arts hub inside a video game. The idea was people could “gather” to listen to poetry, view art, theatre, and live music, etc. While I am EXACTLY the sort of person you’d think this would appeal to, I voted against funding it. Not because it wasn’t a good idea, but because I knew the game, hot at that moment, would be shortly gone and the money spent building the infrastructure would be better spent in the real word until we figured this stuff out. (Also, the game was a mostly a vehicle for pervy nerds to make CGI porn they couldn’t really get in real life.) Looks like we’re starting to figure it out. To the point that this Roblox series might be the biggest book tour in history. Much like readings and shows at various bars and venues that come and go, a good publicist can now book you into Roblox, or Minecraft, or WoW or whatever. There are millions of nerds who never want to leave their homes in here. If you can’t bring Mohammed to the Mountain…. etc. A guerilla approach to this sort of thing really seems to be what’s best. Pop from hot platform to hot platform as needed. We just all need 12 year old publicity assistants now to tell us what to book for next year.

This kind of digital collaboration is, unlike these times, not unprecedented. Phoebe Bridgers has performed in Minecraft; Animal Crossing has hosted poetry readings; Lil Nas X performed a concert in Roblox which racked up a whopping 33 million views. The popularity of these events bode well for the Ready Player Two tour; Roblox and Cline are touting the Ready Player Two tour as the “biggest book tour in history,” which honestly could be true, as Roblox has 150 million users.

• Costa Book Awards include Susanna Clarke’s first in 16 years;
• 9 Canadian kids help illustrate book for noted bigot;
• Chicago students get free access to Obama book;
• How to deal with writer’s block even during times of stress — wait, there’s a way to deal with writer’s block that doesn’t involve self-loathing and despair? huh;
• Bernadine Evaristo on becoming everyone’s 2020 lockdown read;
• Ballie Gifford nonfiction prize awarded;
• Audible changes returns policy after outcry;
• Japan’s most infamous novelist?;
• Lockdown Redux is a great time for you to buff up those reading habits;
• AI to help you write like stodgy old white folk (ED, excepted — also, it is my experience that most people do not, in fact, need help with this);
• Obama memoir sells 1.7 MILLION copies in first week;
• Dalkey Archive acquired;

Locus reports. I’ve been saying for years that there’s a distinct possibility we’re headed into a world where the novel and the game merge. And to be frank, there are a few games I’ve played that are better-written, more engaging, and deeper than many novels I’ve read. My dream job, frankly, is writing for a large sandbox videogame like Cyberpunk 2077, Skyrim, Fallout, etc. But alas, I am not in my 20s and can’t do 14 hour days. I’ll just do my part and consume the art. OG Twitter thread below.

Since early 2020, many of us have spent more time gaming than we ever expected. This award will offer fans an opportunity to celebrate the games that have been meaningful, joyful, and exceptional over this past year. Video games draw from the same deeply creative well that has fed science fiction and fantasy writing and art for so many years. This innovative and interactive genre has brought us new ways of story-telling as well as new stories to tell and we are glad to honor them.

In 2021, there's going to be a Hugo Award For Best Video Game.

The DisCon III committee has chosen to create this special category for 2021 only, as provided for by the rules of the World Science Fiction Society.#HugoAwards

1/3 pic.twitter.com/9auCZXo3DW

— DisCon III – The 79th Worldcon (@worldcon2021) November 23, 2020

LitHub talks to Peter Blackstock, the editor behind the last two Booker Prize winners. When you’re hot, you’re hot.

I love having a list that reflects the world, and you don’t have to sacrifice on quality to do so, in fact, quite the opposite. I want my list to reflect both the American experience, particularly of people who are marginalized by societal power, and the broader world beyond the States. I can’t imagine not publishing books in translation, or not publishing novels that take chances in their form or style, from Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater to Jean-Baptiste del Amo’s Animalia to Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other.

Regarding editing, each book requires a different editorial approach, sometimes I suggest quite a lot of work, sometimes less, but one constant is that all of my edits are just suggestions for the author or translator to consider. I don’t acquire pieces of fiction that I wouldn’t be proud to publish in their current form, but I do feel that the editor’s role is in part to act as a counterpoint to the author and suggest things (including stupid ideas—I make at least one of those every edit!) that might spark a different direction or help underline a resonant moment of the story. I don’t write myself, so consider each manuscript a little miracle, and worry sometimes about somehow spoiling the magic with an edit. But in my experience the author always knows what is a good edit and what is a bad edit and takes only the good (and forgives the editor for anything stupid!)

Well, you could see it coming, especially with the rest of Canada on fire, virally-speaking, but our wall of good policy and public engagement with the process around keeping Covid transmission low is starting to crack. That said, the province has pulled itself from the much lauded “Atlantic Bubble” (along with PEI, Nova Scotia must feel terrible right now), and we are thankfully going back into stricter measures around rotational workers, etc. (I’d say Alberta was feeling bad, but I would imagine I’d have to stretch for that). That said, it means I have two teens home from school today with sniffles (Covid test came back negative) who are ARGUING TO GO. What a topsy-turvy time to be alive.

• Books of the Year, NYT edition;
• BotY, BBC edition;
• BotY for Canadian young people, Q&Q edition;
• International Publishers Association gets all-female leadership for first time in 125 years;
• Paul Celan at 100;
• Why are authors reluctant to use Trump’s name in print?;
• Harjo gets third term as US Poet Laureate;
• Missing link: were these Darwin books lost or stolen?;
• Speaking of stolen: a German library whodunit;
• Did you read the Redwall books as a kid? I must have, because I have them, but I don’t remember… And here’s a listicle about the 10 best mouse feasts from it, just in time for American Hacksgiving (when everyone gets together to transmit Covid from person to person);
• Rupi Kaur’s favourite poetry books are illuminating and with only the mild surprise of Sharon Olds;
• Warhol foundation handing out cash to arts writers;
• How today’s crime authors are reinvigorating classic noir tropes;
• Alan Rickman’s diaries to be published, presumably gobbled by Slytherins;

Indigo and PRHC are asking for bookstores to be deemed essential services during the burgeoning shitshow lockdown that is Covid Wave 2 in Canada, and while I agree that reading will be essential, I’m not sure having an indoor gathering place where people finger the merch before buying is a great idea. I would point to the many indie bookstores who provided delivery, curb-side pickup, and other innovative ways to ensure readers were kept busy during the last lockdown as a model for others to follow. I realize this means Heather et al. won’t be able to sell as many candles, novelty textiles, porcelain garbage, and cheap plastic impulse items to people who enjoy pretending to be readers but who really just want to live a spread from Martha Stewart’s Living, but I super don’t care about Heather et al. Right now, this is an argument for the continuation of the slash and burn capitalism Indigo/Chapters wreaked on the Canadian bookselling landscape, not reading. Tough times for sure, but look what remaining-open-for-money has already wrought and tell me staying open during a spike is a good idea?

Retailer Indigo Books & Music Inc. and publisher Penguin Random House Canada both say bookstores should be allowed to remain open as COVID-19 restrictions are tightened because they provide resources that educate and contribute positively to communities coping with the pandemic.

“A shut down of physical bookstores would have serious consequences on the well-being of Canadians young and old, as well as the livelihood of authors and booksellers, across the country,” Indigo said in a statement to The Canadian Press.

• 50 years of A Different Drummer bookstore;
• Writers and Co at CBC turns 30, doesn’t sound a day over 65;
• OED says there are too many potential WotY to pick just one this year;
• Is S&S a bargain at $1.7B? Let me get my wallet;
• The plot thickens: former Poet’s House employees say it didn’t close because of Covid, it closed because they were trying to unionize;
• The neuroscience of the audiobook;
• Has Giftmas shopping begun? Yes, say book sales;
• What’s the best Roald Dahl film adaptation?;
• Too good: the Obamas are producing a Netflix comedy about Trump;
• Wingate Prize (for translating the Jewish experience to the average reader) longlist;
• RIP: Jan Morris, author and journalist, dead at 94;
• On William Faulkner’s demons (all of them? Gee, get comfortable, people);