Bookninja

For me, yes… Especially with fiction. Poetry is my “job”, as it were — the writing, editing, teaching, and judging of — so I find it easier to plow on through texts that don’t jazz me. But I’m a slow reader of fiction to begin with, and because it’s more mysterious to me in terms of how it’s working, I get more absorbed in a good book. That said, I sometimes come off a book that knocked my socks off (Klara and the Sun last year and Piranesi this year) and find myself unable to choose what to read next. It’s like when you take a perfect bite of dinner and then don’t want to eat more because that last forkful was so tasty you don’t want to spoil its memory in your mouth. Anyway, it’s not just me, apparently.

Reader’s block. The struggle is real. Or at least it is for me. I can see it in my reading log. I’ll read a book that I fall in love with so completely — something like Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Dial A for Aunties — and the experience will give me a sort of high. But then it will end and I’ll be at a loss. I’ll read at least seven books I only feel meh about, DNFing god knows how many others, before finally picking up a book that gives me a fraction of the joy that last awesome title gave me. God, I hate reading slumps.

And these past two years, the reader’s block has been even worse. Pandemic-related stress and anxiety have torpedoed attention spans. Our cognitive load — the amount of information our working memory can hold at any one time — has shrunk. “Previously, you might be willing to put that little bit of effort in because you get that extra reward from reading the book,” neuroscientist and psychologist Oliver J. Robinson told the folks at Refinery29. “But if you don’t care about the reward anymore because you’re anhedonic or you’re miserable or you’ve got other things on your mind, then you’re not going to bother.”

Sound familiar, anyone?

• The Maid did it: Nita Pronovost gearing up to make a run for book of the year… not just here, in the US too…. GMA book club pick? Holy moly;
• Nobel winner gets some time in Time (which is nice because normally we here in the West like to immediately forget about winners who aren’t from here);
• George Saunders has a new Substack on short stories. (attn Steven Beattie);
• French book types also dislike massive mergers;
• Today in Floof: How did book adaptations do at the Golden Globes?;
• Joelle Taylor wins TS Eliot Prize;
• What’s the perfect starting word for Wordle? (The game that is ruining thousands of novels every day);
• Having trouble figuring where to donate old books?;

• Canadian comics preview for spring 2022;
• Lawrence Hill moves into kids books;
• Smart move, Larry… After all, our bestseller lists have been dominated by a guy who writes about farts and underwear;
• PEN’s longlists of translated titles;
• Roxanne Gay will start a new podcast;
• The Library of America collects Joan Didion encomium;
• Have we forgotten how to read critically? (Given that we seem to have forgotten, as a species, how to THINK critically, I’ll wager …. yes?)
• In related news: we have a 65 second attention span now;
• Nearly 1 in 3 Americans now read ebooks;
• Everything else gets Kickstartered these days, why not lit journals?;

• Costa Book Awards given out (which one did these used to be so I can remember how much to care?);
• Norman Mailer book dropped by Random House picked up by press that picks up all the distasteful books discarded by other houses;
• Neruda almost jinxed his Nobel by writing love letters to Stalin;
• What if Beowulf wasn’t the first decent poem in English?;
• Bookfairs start falling to Omicron;
• Guy who stole all those unpublished mss over the years finally arrested;
• New awards for criticism and journalism includes crush-worthy superstar Merve Emre;
• Should a mystery novel be outlined first? No, says guy;
• TS Eliot. famed for poetry and fanboying, started wearing a pince-nez to look more like Chekhov;
• Albert Camus named his cat Cigarette… for real… what’s the dog’s name? Ashtray? Dread of the Void? Healthy Nihilism?;
• Is your view of community changing during the pandemic?;

Good luck, publishing. Get in line. We’d all like a new normal, but the new normal might just be constant change. In a weird way, I suspect this cultural brushfire will make the entire sector finally wake up and realize the world has changed around us and we need to adapt. It just did it slowly for about 100 years and now it’s really ramped up. I’d like a new normal as well, but as much as the “old normal” benefitted me, I don’t want it to be that. Adversity has always yielded something exciting from the arts sector. Let’s just be thankful that this time it’s not war, oppression, or the Black Plague. Oh, wait, it’s the Black Plague. More of a Dark Ochre Plague, really. Peuce? Something like the colour of the fingertips of that shop kid who wore the Led Zeppelin 3/4 sleeve shirt in high school and who had a whole section of the parking lot for smoking in.

The supply chain, an aspect of publishing that is generally overlooked by most in the industry, was the focus of intense interest in 2021. Stories began appearing in early summer detailing how forces connected to the pandemic were causing severe supply chain problems in virtually all industries, especially those that depend on overseas vendors.

Publishing supply chain issues were first brought to the fore in a July 6 BISG webinar, which said truck driver shortages, widespread port congestion, and skyrocketing container costs had already begun to put pressure on the industry’s ability to deliver books in time for the holiday season. Exacerbating the situation were widespread labor shortages that made it difficult for Amazon, Ingram, and other companies that operate large warehouses to find enough workers. The book manufacturing industry was also confronting its own long-standing problem with finding skilled workers, while also dealing with paper shortages, all of which combined to result in capacity issues at printers in the second half of 2021, and experts believe the printing crunch will spill over well into 2022.

To confront the immediate problem of getting books on shelves for 2021, publishers engaged in a juggling act, focusing on timely delivery of their big frontlist titles while delaying the releases of other books. Publishers also looked to move more printing back to the U.S., while also using print-on-demand more often. Speakers at an October 6 PW/Westchester Publishing Services webinar said that the long-term solution of addressing supply chain issues was more automation.

Welcome to 2022, which is a good year for Soylent Green. It’s hard to believe the pandemic is almost a toddler now. Boy is he ever really getting around on those fat little legs. Please leave the basement door open on the off chance he makes a dash for the stairs.

• Order of Canada goes to some author types, incl Tomson Highway;
• Ottawa Public Library releases most-requested list for 2021;
• Lots of publishing types are putting out books themselves these days, and from the sales, they really seem to either know what people want or have cattleprods held to the throats of the entire publicity team…. Fun fact: Nita Pronovost and I were in a drama class together in high school….;
• Speaking of…. Canadian…. glitterati in …. …. publishing;
• Booker tops survey as world’s most important book prize;
• What the actual F is “literary character licensing?”;
• My holiday break coincided with the BBC’s books of the year list;
• RIP: Ben McFall, bookseller at The Strand, dead at 73;
• What genres are most popular outside English?;
• The kids gave me a Tolkien tshirt for Xmas and when I first unwrapped it, I thought with a Slipknot shirt… I think he’d have been horrified and tickled;
• Today in Floof: literary horoscopes and reading recs for January;

CBC posts the list with Ninja pal Michelle Good’s Five Little Indians topping it. What a year for that book and Michelle. There’s virtually no room left on the cover for award stickers. Couldn’t happen to a nicer person.

Interrupting the holiday break here to bring news you’ve surely already heard: one of the greatest writers and thinkers of the 20th Century has died at the age of 87. New York Times has the obit.

Her attraction to trouble spots, disintegrating personalities and incipient chaos came naturally. In the title essay from “The White Album,” she included her own psychiatric evaluation after arriving at the outpatient clinic of St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica complaining of vertigo and nausea.

It read, in part: “In her view she lives in a world of people moved by strange, conflicted, poorly comprehended, and, above all, devious motivations which commit them inevitably to conflict and failure.” This description, which Ms. Didion did not contest, could describe the archetypal heroine of her novels.

Might take a week or two off to concentrate on not letting the holidays be ruined by the pandemic, etc. If I disappear, that’s where I am and I’ll be back in January. Schools just closed down early here, so let’s see how it goes.

• Hey, red letter day: the Quill has posted an article not behind a paywall for us plebs to read along with their dozens of librarians and handful of publishing royalty people with trade mag budgets;
• Best thrillers of the year according to Crime Reads includes Ms. Ninja’s The Retreat — pick it up for someone in your house to read on Boxing Day;
• LitHub is reviewing and ranking the reviews;
• BookRiot is matching donations to fight library censorship;
• Tiny book, giant price tag;
• What are you doing for the holidays? Don’t bother answering if you’re a lawyer for PRH or S&S… we already know;
• Our oldest fear is disaster from space? Huh. I would have bet “tigers”;
• Vice and its writers reach a deal to ensure more content slurry;
• Samwise-I-would-have-got-there-and-back-again-in-half-the-time-if-I-wasn’t-dragging-this-whiny-fucking-twat-along-Gamgee has a book club?;
• The Believer looks at the origins of the Jim Crow typeface;
• The Hugos have been skewing female lately, which must drive about 30% of the sci-fi world into a Tiki-torch frenzy;
• Today in Floof: obituaries for the literary arguments we forgot about;

• RIP: Bell Hooks, author and thinker, dead at 69;
• The NYer considers her legacy;
• Did you know that Publisher’s Weekly picks a person of the year?
• Scotland opens year of stories (none of which wear underwear);
• Barak Obama’s books of the year… Gosh, he dreamy;
• Celebrity crime fiction on trial;
• Bookworm alert: how to protect your books from bugs;
• Anne Rice’s final interview;
• Remember when Philip K Dick revealed we live in the Matrix? In 77;