Author: Jeff O'Neal

The Exposing of Elena Ferrante

For the past several years, Ferrante has been the darling of literary fiction. Her quartet of books known has The Neopolitan Novels have sold exceptionally well, especially for fiction in translation. And her real identity (Elena Ferrante is a pen-name) has been the subject of rumor and speculation.

But last week, The New York Review of Books published an investigation that seems to have discovered her real identity. The tone and attitude, not to mention the intrusion into her financial records, though, have much of the literary world unhappy with the NYRB. I have to say I agree. Ferrante is now a genuine literary figure, and as such is part of history. In due time, I think knowing who she was would have been an inevitable part of literary history, but how and why and when we do history matters. In this regard, the NYRB doesn’t seem like an historian, it seems like paparazzi.
New Dan Brown Novel Coming in Fall 2017

Dan Brown announced last week that his next novel, called Origin, will be published in September 2017. It will again feature Robert Langdon, this time involving a plot that will center on humankind’s “two biggest questions.” Presumably, one of those questions will be about something in the area of the origin of the universe and/or humans. You don’t, however, need to be a symbologist to figure out that it will also be about history, art, and a series of delightfully implausible clues.

 

The National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35

Each year, the National Book Foundation honors five debut novelists under the age of 35 who show exceptional promise. The cash value of the award is only $1,000, but what it provides in status is incalculable. And it is always an extremely interesting list. This year’s honorees are:

Brit Bennett, author of The Mothers
Yaa Gyasi, author of Homegoing
Greg Jackson, author of Prodigals
S. Li, author of Transoceanic Lights
Thomas Pierce, author of Hall of Small Mammals

---

 

This week in books is sponsored by Last Seen Leaving by Caleb Roehrig.

Four Writers Among 2016 MacArthur Winners

The MacArthur Foundation awarded its prestigious fellowships last week (the so-called ‘genius’ awards), and four writers were among the 23 winners.

Gene Yan Lueng, graphic novelist and cartoonist

Claudia Rankine, poet

Maggie Nelson, non-fiction

Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins, playwright

I’ve read at least something by all four of these writers, and from what I have read, all are extraordinarily deserving. Here’s looking forward to what they do next.

 

Google Play Books Grows Up

Google has been a sleeping giant in the world of ebooks, just by virtue of controlling the operating system on hundreds of millions of smartphones in use right now. To this point, Google Play Books hasn’t been much more than a search-and-find store, but with the launch of Discover, Google is trying to make its ebook store into a recommendation powerhouse.

Using the enormous amount it knows about your reading habits, Google Play Books Discover will recommend both books and news articles and essays based on your reading habits. Read a book recently about baseball? It might then recommend popular baseball-related stories from the web. If it sees that you read a lot online about movies, it might suggest a new book about Hollywood. You get the idea.

It isn’t leaving the recommendations completely up to algorithms, though. Discover will have robust recommendations chosen by editors as well. Not even Google, the masters of machine learning, think human input is out of date.

 

Bernie Sanders Gets into YA

Bernie Sanders’s Our Revolution, which is scheduled to come out just after the election, is also being adapted for readers ages 12-18. It’s not exactly clear what will change from the version for adults, but it makes sense that Sanders, who was most popular among younger Democratic voters, would be looking toward the next generation of voters. The YA version of Our Revolution will be released November 17.

 

Book Riot Book Mail

A quick plug for Book Riot’s own Book Mail boxes. Get books and bookish items hand-picked by Book Riot, exclusive content from authors, and first crack at new items in the Book Riot Store. A new Book Mail box will be available every few months, and the contents will be a secret! Find out more here.

 

---

 

This Week in Books is sponsored by Afterward by Jennifer Mathieu:

When Caroline’s little brother is kidnapped, his subsequent rescue leads to the discovery of Ethan, a teenager who has been living with the kidnapper since he was a young child himself. Caroline can’t help but wonder what Ethan knows about everything that happened to her brother, who is not readjusting well to life at home. And although Ethan is desperate for a friend, he can’t see Caroline without experiencing a resurgence of traumatic memories. But after the media circus surrounding the kidnappings departs their small Texas town, both Caroline and Ethan find that they need a friend–and their best option just might be each other.

 

The Best U.S. Cities for Book Lovers?

What makes a city great for a book lover? Amazon’s annual list is widely-circulated, but it only counts Amazon-related reading, which seems less than representative.

This list of the 10 best American cities takes into account access to books and opportunities for shared reading experiences, like readings, talks, and book clubs. College towns, not surprisingly, are really boosted by this formula, but that seems right to me. The halo effect of what happens at colleges/universities can make them havens for book lovers. Boston, which takes the #1 spot here, is both a large city and a multi-college town. And I can vouch for it as a book-lover’s dream city too.

---

The Underground Railroad Coming to TV

With so many outlets for TV series these days, I am really not surprised by any adaptation news, but I will say that I wasn’t sure if The Underground Railroad would catch a producer’s eye (no spoilers, but it seems like a tough adaptation).

Barry Jenkins, whose upcoming film Moonlight has received remarkably good early reviews, is attached as a writer/director here, which is encouraging. Escape stories by their nature seem good fits for limited-run series and I have high hopes this could be amazing.

---

RIP Edward Albee and W.P. Kinsella

I’d like to take a moment to note the passing of the playwright Edward Albee (88) and novelist W.P. Kinsella (81). They don’t seem to have much in common, save that each is largely known by readers for one hugely influential work: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for Albee and Shoeless Joe for Kinsella, which would become the film Field of Dreams.

---

This Week in Books is sponsored by The Light Fantastic by Sarah Combs.

Seven tightly interwoven narratives. Three harrowing hours. One fateful day that changes everything.

Delaware, the morning of April 19. Senior Skip Day, and April Donovan’s eighteenth birthday. Four days after the Boston Marathon bombing, the country is still reeling, and April’s rare memory condition has her recounting all the tragedies that have cursed her birth month. And just what was that mysterious gathering under the bleachers about? Meanwhile, in Nebraska, Lincoln Evans struggles to pay attention in Honors English, distracted by the enigmatic presence of Laura Echols, capturer of his heart. His teacher tries to hold her class’s interest, but she can’t keep her mind off what Adrian George told her earlier. Over in Idaho, Phoebe is having second thoughts about the Plan mere hours before the start of a cross-country ploy led by an Internet savant known as the Mastermind. Is all her heartache worth the cost of the Assassins’ machinations? The Light Fantastic is a tense, shocking, and beautifully wrought exploration of the pain and pathos of a generation of teenagers on the brink—and the hope of moving from shame and isolation into the light of redemption.

Americans Are Still Reading

Every year, Pew Research conducts a survey of American reading habits. The 2016 results….look pretty much like they have for the last five years. 73% of Americans read a book last year (up slightly from 2015’s 72%) with the average American reading 12 books, though the median number reported was four books. This suggests that those at the top end of the reading curve read a whole lot more than the “average” American.

Younger adults (18-29) are the most likely to have read a book last year than any other age group and those older than 65 are the least likely. After growing sharply earlier this decade, ebook reading has leveled off with 28% of Americans reporting having read an ebook last year.

All in all, the study shows that Americans are reading about as much, and in much the same ways, they have been for the last several years.

 

Oprah Double Dips

After a prolonged quiet, Oprah has indeed made a second book club pick this fall, tapping Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton. Melton had previously been a guest on Oprah’s show, and when word came that there would be another Oprah pick this fall in addition to The Underground Railroad, many honed in on Love Warrior. It is described as a “spiritual memoir” about revamping her life, marriage, and family that doesn’t shy away from the messiness and difficulty of making real change.

Hero of the Week: Robert Morin

After 50 years of service to the University of New Hampshire as a librarian, Morin left the entirety of his estate, more than $4 million, to the institution, with sizeable earmarks for the library system.

Morin accumulated his estate through patience and frugality: he lived modestly, saved assiduously, and the result was a difference-making bequest. Kudos, Mr. Morin. Hope you found a nice cushy chair in the great reading room in the sky.

---

 

Thanks to The Ones by Daniel Sweren-Becker for sponsoring This Week in Books.

As part of the 1% randomly selected for genetic engineering, Cody and James were born almost perfect. And some think that’s not fair. . . .

The government, their school, and even family turn against them, until Cody joins a radical group determined to fight for their rights.

 

Big Books in Busy Fall Publishing Season

It’s the biggest time of year in books. Most of the book-buying happens in the fall, and there are always major titles coming out in anticipation of holiday buying. Many media outlets are rounding up their picks, so I’ve gathered a few of them here for your perusal. A round-up of round-ups, if you will.

The Wall Street Journal’s Books Every Geek Should Read This Fall

Amazon’s Big Fall Books Preview

The Huffington Post’s 20 Books You Need on Your Shelf This Fall

BuzzFeed’s What Book Should You Read This Fall? Quiz

Entertainment Weekly’s 55 Books to Read This Fall

You might also be interested in the Fall Books episode of our own All the Books! podcast.

 

What Will Obama Write?

President Obama is already of course a best-selling writer, but it seems that his most interesting days as an author will likely come after he leaves the White House. Apparently, President Obama still has one book left on his existing contract with Crown (an imprint of Penguin Random House), though that contract was from before he was elected, and it seems unlikely that those terms will be met (either ripped up, re-negotiated, or otherwise altered to reflect his enormous sales potential). But the most intriguing detail here is that President Obama has always wanted to write a novel. Books by former presidents are nothing new, but a literary novel by one is news indeed. Here’s keeping our fingers crossed.

Alabama Willing to Put People in Jail for Library Fines

Under funding pressure, the Athens-Limestone Public Library in Athens, Alabama will begin enforcing an ordinance in which patrons who “fail or refuse to return” library materials are subject to up to $100 in fines and/or up to 30-days in jail. 

The library reports that it has over $200,000 in overdue library materials outstanding and that it would much rather receive the overdue materials than enforce the ordinance. The ALPL’s move runs counter to many recent amnesty efforts from some public libraries to combat the same problem.

 

---

Thanks to Still a Work in Progress by Jo Knowles for sponsoring This Week in Books.

In a return to middle-grade fiction, master of perspectives Jo Knowles depicts a younger sibling struggling to maintain his everyday life when his older sister is in crisis.

Noah is just trying to make it through seventh grade. The girls are confusing, the homework is boring, and even his friends are starting to bug him. Not to mention that his older sister, Emma, has been acting pretty strange, even though Noah thought she’d been doing better ever since the Thing They Don’t Talk About. The only place he really feels at peace is in art class, with a block of clay in his hands. As it becomes clear through Emma’s ever-stricter food rules and regulations that she’s not really doing better at all, the normal seventh-grade year Noah was hoping for begins to seem pretty unattainable. In an affecting and realistic novel with bright spots of humor, Jo Knowles captures the complexities of navigating middle school while feeling helpless in the face of a family crisis.

Baton Rouge School Library Destroyed in Historic Floods

There are many heart-breaking, jaw-dropping stories coming out of Louisiana in the wake of recent destructive flooding there. As is often the case in these kinds of situations, there is destruction of many kinds and help needed in many ways.

Glen Oaks Elementary lost its entire library collection. The school librarian there, Trey Veazy, is asking for donations to help refill the shelves for the new school year. They’ve set up an Amazon wishlist and are open to receiving mailed books as well:

Glen Oaks Park Elementary School
Attn: Trey Veazey
2401 72nd Avenue
Baton Rouge, LA 70807

 

Drive to Turn Langston Hughes Home into Cultural Center

The brownstone where Langston Hughes lived the last decades of his life is a national historic landmark, but that doesn’t mean it is insulated from a still-gentrifying real estate market in Harlem. Worried that his house would be turned into high-end condos, Rene Watson, director of the I, Too, Arts Collective, decided to try to do something about it.

After speaking with the owner of the building, she has launched a fund-raising drive to turn the the townhouse into a cultural center for the neighborhood. Under a lease agreement, the center would renovate and outfit the building for public use and sign an initial three-year agreement. The drive’s goal in $150,000 and there are a few days left in the campaign.

 

Penguin Random House Opens “Penguin Shop”

Penguin Random House Canada is opening a small (158 square feet, small) store on the first floor of its Toronto office tower. Featuring Penguin-branded merchandise and a rotating selection of about 300 titles, PRH Canada imagines the store as part reader-engagement and part R&D lab.

The store’s concept seems to me part and parcel of other company stores located in corporate buildings (the NBC store in Rockefeller Center comes immediately to mind). These outlets are there to sell stuff, to be sure, but as much as anything they are about establishing a brand and identity. And in publishing, Penguin’s iconic logo and classics series comes just about as close to a real consumer brand as exists.

---

There are always more books that need buying, so we have another $100 of spending money on Amazon to giveaway. Go here to enter, or just click the image below…

 

President Obama’s Summer Reading List

The White House released the five books on President Obama’s summer to-be-read list:

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

There is a lot I am going to miss about President Obama. His overt and enthusiastic bookishness is near the top of the list.

New Film Adaptation of The Phantom Tollbooth

Even though The Phantom Tollbooth was adapted in 1971, it’s still looking for its iconic film version. From time to time, rumors of a new production burble up, and we have a new round of interest from TriStar pictures. Hiring a screenwriter is of course no guarantee of a movie, but intellectual property like The Phantom Tollbooth won’t sit on the shelf forever.

Following Coup Attempt, Turkish Government Closing Publishers

In the wake of the recent failed coup attempt, more than 20 book publishers have been forced to close in Turkey. All assets of the publishing houses are to be immediately transferred to the Turkish treasury, and outstanding money owed to authors and translators is likely to go unpaid. These publishers join a host of newspapers, TV stations, and other media outlets that the government has closed under an emergency law for suspicion of being sympathetic to the coup.

---

This Week in Books is sponsored by Before the Fall by Noah Hawley.

On a foggy summer night, a plane carrying eleven passengers inexplicably plunges into the ocean. The only survivors are Scott Burroughs—a struggling painter—and a four-year-old boy, who is now the last remaining member of a powerful media mogul’s family. With chapters weaving between the backstories of the passengers, odd coincidences begin to point to a conspiracy, raising questions about the danger of an unchecked media and the randomness of fate.

Find out more about Before the Fall.

The Boy Who Sold

In case anyone doubted, Harry Potter can still storm the book world. In the first few days of publication, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child sold more than 2 million copies in print in the U.S. and Canada alone. (The next best-selling titles of 2016, for comparison, have sold in the 300k-500k range). And with more than 4.5 million copies in print already, there is no question that it will be the best-selling book of 2016 and might even be enough to move the needle on the industry’s year on the whole.

The Underground Railroad Emerges as the It Book of 2016

Colson Whitehead has had quite a week. First, Oprah announced that The Underground Railroad would be the next selection in the dormant Oprah’s Book Club. Doubleday even moved up the publication date by six weeks so that The Underground Railroad was available to buy the day of the announcement.

Next, in a move I don’t recall ever seeing before, The New York Times printed a 16,000-word excerpt of The Underground Railroad as a standalone section in this weekend’s edition. The literati pre-publication buzz around the book has been excellent, but these two developments make The Underground Railroad the most visible literary title of the year.

Thought Police in Action

Faizah Shaheen, a mental health professional in the U.K., was detained by police and interrogated after her flight landed at Dorchester airport.

The reason? She was reading a book about Syria. A crewmember saw Shaheen reading Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Front Line and reported it to police. Shaheen was interrogated and released.

---

This Week in Books is sponsored by After Anna by Alex Lake.

The real nightmare starts when her daughter is returned. 

A bone-chilling psychological thriller that will suit fans of Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn, Daughter by Jane Shemilt, and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.

A girl is missing. Five years old, taken from outside her school. She has vanished, traceless.

The police are at a loss; her parents are beyond grief. Their daughter is lost forever, perhaps dead, perhaps enslaved.

But the biggest mystery is yet to come: one week after she was abducted, their daughter is returned.

She has no memory of where she has been. And this, for her mother, is just the beginning of the nightmare.

 

The 2016 Man Booker Prize Longlist

Thirteen novels made the the longlist for this year’s Man Booker Prize, probably the most prestigious award given to an individual book. The Man Booker, for this first time this year, is open to American novels; previously, it had only been open to novels from the (loosely-defined) English commonwealth. Five Americans made the cut.

This year’s list doesn’t have many household names:  J.M. Coetzee and Elizabeth Strout are probably the most recognizable names to most readers. This means, I suppose, that we all have some interesting new names to check out.

 

Roxane Gay, Yona Harvey to Write for Marvel Comics

Roxane Gay and Yona Harvey will collaborate to write World of Wakanda, a spin-off of the current run of Black Panther written by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The series will focus on two queer black women who used to be part of Black Panther’s security force.

This will be the first foray into comics for both the essayist-novelist Gay and poet Harvey. World of Wakanda will premiere in November and will also be have black women as illustrators and cover designers.

U.S. Constitution Breaks into Amazon Bestseller List

In the wake of Khizr Khan’s impassioned speech at the Democratic National Convention last week, a pocket-sized copy of the U.S. Constitution rose to the top 10 of Amazon’s U.S. bestseller list. The edition, which sells for $1, is published by the National Center for Constitution Studies. The edition is currently on a 2-3 week back order.

Another book also received a major boost from a convention speech: A Wrinkle in Time. Chelsea Clinton mentioned the novel in her speech and it also briefly rose to be one of Amazon’s best-sellers. I think I can hear publicists all over Manhattan scheming for 2020.