Friday Folio: May 5, 2023
It’s Friday! It’s spring! Let’s hop to it (photo by me, from Volsberg Neck State Park in Pa., where I ran an ultramarathon there weekend).
In the New York Times: fake books as home decor. I can’t get mad at the idea of this. If you thrift/visit Little Free Libraries/go to library book sales, you know how many books are just out in the world. The local Free Book Project was recently begging people to take 5,000 history books off his hands (he was helping out someone selling a house). But using them to pretend you’re smarter than you are? Maybe not! Read a book!
One thing about writing a non-fiction book is that you might be admitting you did a bad thing. I know that. You know that. My last publisher’s lawyer knew that (the legal edit was one of the most grueling parts of the publishing process). You know who didn’t get that? Ron DeSantis. And Disney pounced.
If you’re a podcast person, I recommend Criminal in general, but especially episode 213: “The Most Wonderful Terrible Person.” There is a big literary tie, but I won’t spoil it for you. If you like it, hop back to episode 175, “Ghost Racket Crusade,” about the fight between friends Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Henry Houdini about ghosts and the people who pretend they can talk to them.
Ever wonder who painted the covers of the Baby Sitters Club books? Wonder no more! via Washington Post (it also appears that the author of this piece got the assignment because she tweeted out that she wanted write a story about him selling the paintings on ebay. Good on her!)
Speaking of: it’s Children’s Book Week!
Interesting piece on Publisher’s Weekly on planning book events. For my last book, I held most of my book talks at running stores, coming on whatever night they already had a planned group run. That way, I had a built in audience. It (mostly) worked!
From the Washington Post: The book banners have come for Nora Roberts, and she is not happy. I will have more to say about Roberts, and how she has no problem engaging in a legal fight, in a future post, so hold onto this one. I will add that I’ve read the books targeted: the three in The Dream trilogy and the four in The Bride quartet. You know who gave me The Dream trilogy to read? My grandmother — my conservative grandmother. These books are about as tame of romance novels as you can get outside of “sweet” i.e. often Christian romance. What (scary, fascist) nonsense.
And once again, ending with some good news: Illinois becomes the first state to ban book bans. Paging N.J. Gov. Murphy (whose people all follow me on Twitter): get on this!
