Month: November 2021

And here I thought it was just my ADHD. Nope, I’m all kinds of contradictions and I contain multitudes, people. More like multidudes, man. Amirite?

Despite decades of research, scientists still know little about the source of creativity. Nonetheless, humans continue to create things. Or, at least, we continue to be fascinated by creativity; now more than ever, it seems. There may be as many best-selling books on creativity as there are on dieting or relationships. The current focus on creativity isn’t always a net positive. Anyone who does creative work may be labeled a “Creative” (used as a noun) at some point in their career. The term lumps all working artists together, as though their work were interchangeable deliverables measured in billable hours. The word suggests that those who don’t work as “Creatives” have no business in the area of creativity. As psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi put it:

Not so long ago, it was acceptable to be an amateur poet…. Nowadays if one does not make some money (however pitifully little) out of writing, it’s considered to be a waste of time. It is taken as downright shameful for a man past twenty to indulge in versification unless he receives a check to show for it.

So, we all know France likes a bookshop, but this is above and beyond anything the government would do here. Independent bookstores in the country of love and cigarettes are thriving thanks to a law that sets a minimum price for delivery fees. It doesn’t tackle their terrible terms for publishers that allow them to heavily discount books, but it’s a start. The free delivery is a major draw for Amazon, especially for people in places like where I live (we don’t have a single independent bookstore anymore, even in our capital city). I try to order mostly from Canadian independents like McNally Robinson, or direct from publishers, but it often makes the cost of buying a book rise by up to 50%. I still do it anyway, because I can and I believe in it, but this may make it easier for people who can’t resist the savings to switch back to buying independent. I mean, here’s hoping, anyways.

The fate of French independent bookstores during the pandemic has greatly influenced the new law. France had three nationwide lockdowns. During the first two, bookshops remained closed, despite protests from writers and publishers. But during the second lockdown, in November 2020, the government reimbursed delivery fees for small independent booksellers. It resulted in small shops maintaining 70% of their business. “It showed what a brake on business the postage costs are for local bookstores,” said the rightwing senator Laure Darcos who drafted the law.

In the final lockdown this spring, books were deemed essential items and bookshops stayed open, with historically high numbers of customers flocking to buy from them. Across France, independent bookshops saw a year-on-year fall in sales of only 3.3% in 2020 despite three months of closures.

• Woozles forced to moov…les;
• Stop all the clocks! Some freaking genius has made a site that tells you the current time in literary quotes;
• We need more penny dreadfuls to entice the kids into reading;
• The fallout of Bad Art Friend reaches all the way back to Grub Street;
• B&N’s book of the year finalists;
• Colson Whitehead and the art of reinventing oneself … ahem;
• What are the bookies saying about the Booker? Damon Galut 2:1 fav;
• Fellow Bushmills man James Grainger interviews novelist Tananarive Due about her groundbreaking horror work that’s finally getting its….well… due;
• Why every new generation eventually “discovers” Stephen King;
• 107m research papers indexed online for free… ought to keep a few people busy for a hot minute trying to find “proof” for things they’ve believed forever already;
• Little Free Library etiquette (our neighbour had his cleaned out by a used junkshop owner who is now selling them… That’s friggin low);
• Op-Ed on book banning despite the fact that we live in 2021;
• Today in Floof: let a tarot card pick decide your next book;

• Hard to believe this hasn’t already happened: The Paper Bag Princess has finally been optioned for film;
• Speaking of speed demon Munsch, he and 8 other Canucks are up for the super-lucrative Astrid Lindgren Award;
• Inside the author/illustrator relationship;
• It’s National Novel Writing Month: the last you’ll hear of it from me;
• Hard times at Amazon? Lol;
• Word of the Year at OED is “Vax”;
• This is where a link to a piece on Margaret Atwood’s cats would go if I were in to linking to fluff stories about former heroes who have bizarrely aged into conservative viewpoints and the reprehensible anti-Trans support of TERFs;
• Release Pham Doan Trang;
• American Republicans continue fight to claim title of World’s Dumbest Country for America, but at least Morrison’s sales are up;
• Riverhead picks up Nobel Winner’s next novel;
• What constitutes historical fiction?
• Fun with Floof: your Fall reading horoscope;
• Neil Young has written a Sci-fi novel… but will it sound recognizably off-key?;