Author: Amanda Nelson

New Sylvia Plath Poems Discovered

In this week’s edition of Old Work By Dead Authors Found in Someone’s Attic (or variations thereof), academics have discovered two poems by Sylvia Plath on old carbon paper “hidden in the back of an old notebook…” The poems are early works, written in 1956 at the start of Plath’s relationship with poet Ted Hughes. The new poems join a handful of newly discovered letters Plath wrote to her psychiatrist, which detail abuse Plath suffered at the hands of Hughes.

Neil Gaiman Will Read You the Cheesecake Factory Menu

Writer and comedian Sara Benincasa asked Neil Gaiman on Twitter if he’d read the entire Cheesecake Factory menu on stage for charity, and he’s agreed to do it if she can raise $500,000. Gaiman has chosen the UNHCR, the United Nation’s refugee agency, to be the recipient of the funds raised. Gaiman’s voice is very nice and the Cheesecake Factory menu is very long, so if this happens I’m very tempted to keep the recording as a soothing thing to fall asleep to at night.

The 2016 Nebula Award Winners!

The winners of the 2016 Nebula Awards from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have been announced! The finalists in the major categories were all excellent, so I was bound to be happy with whoever was chosen by the organization to win. Charlie Jane Anders’s All the Birds in the Sky takes home Best Novel, and Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire wins Best Novella. See the full list of winners here.

Thanks to Barking Up the Wrong Tree by Eric Barker for sponsoring this week’s newsletter.

Much advice about achievement is logical, earnest… and downright wrong. In Barking Up the Wrong Tree, Eric Barker reveals the extraordinary science behind what actually determines success. You’ll learn:

•         Why valedictorians rarely become millionaires
•         How your biggest weakness might be your greatest strength
•         Lessons about cooperation from gangs, pirates, and serial killers
•         The Navy SEAL secret to “grit”
•         How to find work-life balance from Genghis Khan, Albert Einstein, and Spider-Man

By looking at what separates the extremely successful from the rest of us, we learn how to be more like them—and discover why it’s sometimes good that we aren’t.

The Handmaid’s Tale is Feminist, Obviously

At the Tribeca Film Festival, star of Hulu’s Handmaid’s Tale adaptation Elisabeth Moss said the show was “not a feminist story, it’s a human story, because women’s rights are human rights.” The comment irked think piece writers everywhere, as the book and adaptation are very obviously about feminism and reproductive rights. She’s since walked backed her comments, saying “I wanted to say ― and I’ll just say it right here, right now ― OBVIOUSLY, all caps, it is a feminist work. It is a feminist show,” and Margaret Atwood herself has weighed in as well.

You’re Not a Bad Book Person If You Can’t Get Into Book Clubs

I love my book club, probably because there isn’t a book industry person in it at all and it’s refreshing to talk about books with people who have no stake in any aspect of the conversation outside of their love for reading, but book clubs aren’t for everyone. If you’ve found yourself trying and failing to start/join/successfully attend/at all care about the book club scene, you are not alone! Go forth and read in solitary splendor.

Good News Corner

PHRYNE FISHER IS GETTING A MOVIE TRILOGY, REPEAT, PHRYNE FISHER IS GETTING A MOVIE TRILOGY. The excellent TV show Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (based on the Kerry Greenwood books) follow the crime-solving shenanigans of Phryne, a wealthy woman in 1920s Australia who carries a gold-plated gun and refuses to get married. I will watch all these movies until the end of time, forever and ever amen.

Also, Tahereh Mafi is returning to the Shatter Me universe with three new books in the series! Inspired by a recent re-read of the books in preparation for an adaptation, Mafi realized she has more places to take the characters. A+ will read.

This week’s newsletter is sponsored by TarcherPerigee, publisher of Adult-ish by Cristina Vanko and Adulthood for Beginners by Andy Boyle.

Ready for #RealLife?

Whether you’re a newly minted “adult” navigating your first job and paying rent for the first time—or are just about to graduate and join the “sophisticates” in the real world, Adult-ish and Adulthood for Beginners provide the tools and advice for Millennials seeking to ease the transition from dorm room to cubicle life.

Adult-ish, an illustrated, interactive journal encouraging self-reflection, is a celebration (and keepsake) of your first years as an “adult.”

Adulthood for Beginners is the hilarious—yet useful—guide for avoiding years of awkwardness, mistakes, bad dates and more that older Millennials and Gen Xers wish they’d had when they were younger.

2016’s Most Banned Books

The American Library Association releases a top ten list every year of the previous year’s most challenged and banned books. Over half the list from 2016 consists of books challenged for having LBGTQ characters (that bigots feel comfortable calling for books to be banned is unsurprising, but still frustrating), but one stand-out from the year is the Little Bill series of children’s books written by Bill Cosby. The reasons cited for the challenges are the criminal allegations of rape and sexual assault against the author. Yet another chapter in the age-old debate of whether or not books written by objectively awful people deserve space in the public conversation.

Unseen Sylvia Plath Letters Reveal Domestic Abuse

Previously unseen letters from Sylvia Plath to her therapist written a week before her suicide reveal her husband, the poet Ted Hughes, beat her two days before her miscarriage and was also verbally abusive. Their marriage was already known to be tempestuous (and Hughes was a known adulterer), and readers’ fascination with their relationship has continued well past the death of both writers. These new facts will likely fuel that fire for years to come.

The Good News Corner!

And now for the happy news! Margot Lee Shetterly, author of the hugely successful Hidden Figures, has a new book deal for two books that tell the stories of “extraordinary ordinary African-Americans whose contributions to American history have, for one reason or another, been untold, unseen, or overlooked.” The first will focus on the prominent African-American families of Baltimore, along with racist community policies those families faced and continue to face in the city.

Angela Maria Spring, a former manager of Politics and Prose bookstore in D.C., is opening a new bookstore staffed by people of color and focusing on diverse stories. The publishing industry, including bookstores, is notoriously white, which creates a cycle of white stories being published and hand-sold. A direct initiative to combat that, which Spring says is part of her resistance in the current political climate, is welcome and needed.

Thanks to The Widow of Wall Street by Randy Susan Meyers for sponsoring this week’s newsletter.

A provocative new novel by bestselling author Randy Susan Meyers about the seemingly blind love of a wife for her husband as he conquers Wall Street, and her extraordinary, perhaps foolish, loyalty during his precipitous fall.

When Phoebe learns her husband’s triumph and vast reach rests on an elaborate Ponzi scheme her world unravels. Her children refuse to see her if she remains at their father’s side, but abandoning him feels cruel and impossible.

From penthouse to prison, Randy Susan Meyers’s latest novel exposes a woman struggling to survive and then redefine her life as her world crumbles.

I’ve just moved house and donated probably hundreds of books I didn’t like or won’t ever read, so this article that offers a behind-the-scenes look at working at bookstores that accept donations was so interesting. It’s mostly tips about how to make the employees’ lives easier. Did you know that houses with cats make bad houses from which to donate books? I did not. They don’t want your encyclopedia sets. Or bootleg audiobooks (people bootleg audiobooks?). If you wouldn’t pay $5 for the book, no one else will likely do it, either. Who knew!

Women over the age of 60 in the Indian village Fangane are getting chance to learn to read thanks to a “grandmother’s school.” Only 65% of Indian women are literate, compared to 82% of men (sexism and child marriages are cited as the main reasons), and this school offers classes for two hours a day, six days a week, timed so the women can finish their daily work or chores as well.

In news straight out of 2004, Microsoft is opening a digital bookstore that will allow users to read on Microsoft Edge, the new browser that’s replacing Explorer (finally). The store will be available starting April 11th, with the new Microsoft update scheduled for that day. The store will offer “hundreds of thousands” of both back and front list titles. With Amazon, Kobo, and B&N already pretty solid in the digital book world, the question of how much impact this will actually have is an open one.

Thanks to Unbound Worlds’ Cage Match 2017 for sponsoring this week’s newsletter.

Cage Match is back! Unbound Worlds is pitting science fiction characters against fantasy characters in a battle-to-the-death tournament, and you can win a collection of all 32 books featured in the competition. Enter now for your chance to win this library of sci-fi and fantasy titles!