Category: words

Let’s be clear: Long books are fine. Long-winded books? Not so much. (Still, the Booker Prize judges have rather a lot to read.)

This decade’s double-digit annual growth — with total sales doubling to $2.5 billon over the past five years — has a clear analog in the e-book boom that preceded it, and the same company has driven it: Audible.com owner Amazon.

Times daily books editor John Williams: “To help fill the void of conversation around the prize itself, I recently spoke with The New York Times‘s staff book critics — Dwight Garner, Parul Sehgal and Jennifer Szalai — about what the prize has meant (or not meant) to their own reading habits; their opinions of past winners (and past snubs); and whom they would bestow the honor upon this year if they could.”

Perhaps the two most notable names on the longlist, Michael Ondaatje (who won the 50th anniversary ‘Golden Man Booker’ earlier this year for The English Patient) for Warlight and Nick Drnaso for Sabrina (the first graphic novel ever to be considered for the award), did not make the final cut. Among those who did are Esi Edugyan for Washington Black, Robin Robertson for The Long Take (written largely in verse), and, for Everything Under, 27-year-old Daisy Johnson, the youngest writer ever to make the shortlist.

Studies released over the past decade indicate that reading regularly can increase the odds of longevity, bolster blood flow to the brain, maintain vocabulary and critical thinking skills, and even hold off dementia. What’s more, books provide more benefit than even long-form newspaper or magazine articles.

“No, [the publisher] did not fire me. But he made clear to me that university publishers … were threatening a boycott. They are afraid of the reactions on the campuses, where this is an inflammatory topic. Because of this, I feel forced to resign — in fact it is a capitulation to social media and university presses.” Even so, he says, “I still stand behind my decision to publish.”

In November, just two months after India’s highest court decriminalized same-sex relations, the Awadh Queer Committee (which has already organized a pride march and a film festival in the past year) in Lucknow will present the first dedicated LGBTQ literary event anywhere in South Asia.

Buruma had defended his decision to publish Ghomeshi’s essay in a widely criticized interview with Slate just five days before his ouster at the literary magazine. It is unclear if he resigned or was fired. He was named the editor of the magazine last May, following the death of NYRB’s editor and cofounder Robert B. Silvers.

To figure it out, Rebecca Onion read a bunch of them: “Romance novels, as a genre, do a lot of thinking about the way power (wealth, intelligence, competence) drives attraction — for the women swooning over the male heroes, but also for the men themselves, who (in romance novels written recently, at least) often fall in love with heroines who can match their qualities of personal strength. Given that thematic interest, romance between civilians and stars is a natural fit. These rock stars are ‘alphas’ in the ‘best at their jobs’ sense; they need the women they meet to help them develop their private selves.”