Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
Josh Cook, who I interviewed last year on First Edition about somewhat similar matters, kicks off a series at Lit Hub about how the book world can and should deal with the second Trump administration. This first installment focuses on big and powerful folk, think big 5 c-levels and authors who are titans in the industry. He doesn’t come out and use these exact works, but “don’t platform them” in the simplest terms means don’t give them huge book deals and the attendant marketing and publicity that comes with those deals. If I were running one of these places or sold millions of copies of books, I would have zero interest in pumping out whatever J.D. Vance’s next book is going to be, but I am not sure the warrant of Cook’s argument is valid: that all of these people aren’t necessarily either explicitly or implicitly supporters of the administration.
I List, Therefore I Am: Letting Go of Reading Anxiety
Tajja Isen’s most recent literary post for The Walrus is about the joys and sadness of tracking your reading. This isn’t just a Soderberghian here’s what I read, but rather a more mindful attention to how one spends their reading time–that can turn into something else at times. This something else, an obsessive quasi-virtue-signaling racking-up of books on a spreadsheet, imagines an imagined score sheet, where more is better. And of course we know it isn’t that simple, not by a long stretch. We love a good challenge and tracker here at BR, but scoreboard stuffing has never been a part of that. Unless you think that reading 71 books in a year makes you 27% smarter, more-informed, or otherwise improved than reading 56 books in a year, it’s good to remember that diminishing returns are real and that really no one is watching.
Onyx Storm is Out Today, and Target’s Release Seems Like a Washout
Got a couple of tips from listeners of the Book Riot Podcast that all has not gone well with the release of Onyx Storm (out today), particularly at Target. Social media posts aren’t necessarily definitive of course, but a quick perusal of this Thread and a couple of others like it suggest that somehow, someway Target handled the Swift’s book launch with considerably more care. Maybe that comes down to controlling the supply chain. Also, that different retailers are getting different special editions is pretty wild. The hype around the Fourth Wing saga has had merchandising at the center of its appeal from the beginning, but his feels is starting to take on Beanie Baby-like mania.