Well, I hope things are clearing up where you are, because they’re getting murky as Hell here. After having been a bastion of good government and citizenry, our little island in the North Atlantic saw a bunch of kids decided at Xmas and beyond to blow off caution and now the ‘Vid is spreading like wildfire and we’re basically in lockdown, election postponed, and, yes, in snowstorm season. So all that staying home, mask wearing, and not-seeing-my-friends we did is down the drain. On the positive side, my kids can now demonstrably see that I was right and not just as asshole who was trying to cramp their style. Anyway, I write to you now from our bunker where I wait for news from our wonderful CMHO who is appears in the last few press conferences to be getting ready to lay a beat down on the person who asks the next stupid question. I’ve seen that look in her eye, but mostly at reading question periods when someone in the audience stands and says, “This is more of a comment than a question… Actually, it’s two comments, really…” Beware, NL journos. I’ll try to lead with some good news below.
- Top News: author and longtime blogger Sarah Weinman of CrimeReads replaces retiring Marilyn Stasio as NYT’s Crime Fiction columnist! Congratulations, Sarah!;
- Also Top News: Jen Sookfong Lee and Pia Singhal join ECW (my home sweet home) as acquiring editors;
- Adichie to publish book on grief;
- Time riffs on what super-poet Amanda Gorman says about America;
- RIP: Johnny Rogan, music biographer, dead at 67;
- Stephen King keeps rewriting the end of The Stand… Is that allowed? I mean, I love it, but would that we all got a crack at fixing early mistakes;
- Dylan Farrow steps out with first novel;
- Little Free Library owner comes up against the librarian mafia;
- See below*
- In praise of mediocre books: sometimes you just need to power through?;
- On the ties between Calvino and Instagram;
- A visual guide to how long it’s going to be before you get your hands on that ebook from the library, and how the bestseller lists affect, or don’t, just that;
- The National Book Foundation in the US gets a new ED;
- On Seth Abramson and the state of the Twitter Threaderatti Threadosphere;
Bookninja 