Marlon James knew he was gay from a young age, but he believed he shouldn’t be, so he underwent an exorcism through his church. “He describes the exorcism process as ‘a kind of mental control’: ‘Back then I thought they were just driving out demons,’ he recalls. James said he was sick multiple times during the ‘cure’: ‘Then one day it hit me: ‘What if I got rid of the church?’ And that worked smashingly.'” – The Observer (UK)
Category: words
The Museum-Like Quality Of New York’s Antiquarian Book Fair
To be real, many book-lovers can’t afford the books, or even the ephemera, at the Antiquarian Book Fair. But hey, information wants to be free, right? That seems to be true at the fair, with “dealers happily telling the often fascinating stories behind their wares, even if a potential sale is nowhere in sight.” – The New York Times
After A Magazine Exposé, Amazon Pulls Books Touting Dangerous ‘Cures’ For Autism
Yes, even in 2019, a magazine article – in this case, in Wired – can make a difference. For instance, “Kerry Rivera’s Healing the Symptoms Known As Autism, which advocates dosing autistic children with a bleach-like substance, chlorine dioxide, was no longer available from the online giant.” – The Guardian (UK)
At The London Book Fair, Publishers Salivate Over True Crime
Why is true crime so hot right now? Ask an agent: “I suspect the true-crime podcast thing is driving the current interest.” – The Guardian (UK)
A Friend Asked This Baltimore Sun Reporter To Try Being A Private Eye. She Became A Bestselling Crime Novelist Instead
“In this extended interview, [Laura] Lippman discusses her transition from reporter to writer of such novels as What the Dead Know and Sunburn, how women over 60 make the best spies, and why she’s rooting for the decline of dead-girl fiction.” (watch animated version here) – Topic
The International Campaign To Rebuild And Restock The Mosul University Library
With well over half a million books in Arabic and more than one million antique maps, documents, and other materials (including a 9th-century Quran), the library was one of the most important in the Middle East — until ISIS began its destruction while it occupied the city (2014-17). Now the NGO Book Aid International and a project called the Mosul Book Bridge are gradually undoing the damage. – Publishing Perspectives
Books Need Readers To Be Books. But What About The Quality Of The Reader?
To exist as a book, the pages with their letters and spaces need a reader. We may think of books as unchanging material objects, but they only, as it were, happen when read; they have no absolute identity. And the nature of that reading—an experience extended over many hours, then mulled over for many more, for the book does not cease to happen the moment we turn the last page—will depend, to a large degree, on who the reader is. – New York Review of Books
Has Literary Criticism Become Too “Nice.” Too Apolitical?
“Criticism” in The New York Times Book Review tends to look “positive,” by academic standards, not because it always says the book is good but because it offers market advice as to whether you should buy it, whether you will like it, without asking much about the market itself or about what it would mean about you or about the world if you did like it. – Chronicle of Higher Education
The 25 Top-Earning Authors Of The Past Ten Years
The top name on the list pulled in $290 million more than the runner-up, who in turn grossed just over twice as much as number three. The takeaway? “Franchises make money, and so do adaptations, but if you want to be a literary millionaire, you really have to write a) for children or b) a mystery (or romance) that strikes fear (or lust) in the hearts of the world.” (But isn’t there anyone writing in Chinese, Spanish, or Hindi who’s sold enough books to qualify?) – Literary Hub
A Gaggle Of Geese, A Pride Of Lions. A ??? of Emojis?
In written English right now, there’s little consensus on this question. National publications have not settled on a regular style. The Atlantic, for instance, used both (emoji, emojis) in the last quarter of 2015. – The Atlantic