Book Marks: Power Readers, Being Happy, Middle-Grade Books

"A few weeks back, The Washington Post ran a piece spotlighting 'super readers,' a self-selecting class of book nerds who pride themselves on reading very, very fast. ... Why, I asked the author, who could not hear me in Washington—Why pedestal the reader who goes to books like a buffet, craving quantity? Why is our culture so intent on praising folks for reading not wider or more deeply, but faster and more?"

A Washington Post article about power readers, which I also bookmarked, prompted some questions and a bit of soul-searching. While some books take a long time to create and consume, titles that could have been designed for mass-consumption, like pulp novels, have been produced for a long time and seem to be popular among a chunk of readers.

But what the LitHub piece rails against is the need to devour books by the ton to establish some kind of identity or fulfil a certain life metric, because that's not what books and reading are about. Why do you read? Answer that question – AFTER some thought, please – and your approach to books may change.


Also:

• "Happiness is not something grand. Aren't you happy when you do what you want to do? But people are creating this mirage by making happiness too grandiose. Happiness is when something small that you want comes true." Eighty-eight-year-old Rhee Kun-hoo, author of "If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy", has advice on attaining happiness for everyone. The book is shceduled for release this month.
• "...there's one sector of publishing that is in free fall. At least among one audience, books are dying. Alarmingly, it's the exact audience whose departure from reading might actually presage a catastrophe for the publishing industry—and for the entire concept of pleasure reading as a common pursuit." Sales of middle-grade books are declining in the US, along with the number of children aged eight to 12 who are reading for fun. How to get kids back to books?
• "Beyond selling books and dabbling in freelance editing jobs, [Ahmad Luqman Zahari] also runs Pipit Press, which translates and publishes classics in Bahasa Malaysia." An indie publisher and bookseller operating out of an old kampung house in Melaka is bringing classic works in English to local audiences.
• "I think it's important for them to know they can have a book of their own, and it not to be a used book because we're all used to hand-me-downs," Jesse Marez, owner of the Libros Lincoln Heights bookstore in Los Angeles, tells the LA Times. "I think in a neighborhood like this, people need to know that they can get a new book, especially at an early age." Not just a neighbourhood bookstore, Libros is also publishing local stories besides selling books that aren't considered mainstream.
• "I felt a great sense of duty and responsibility to be able to talk about a fictional version of my own lived experience as a Tongan Australian because there are no fiction books written by Tongans in this country." Winnie Dunn, the Tongan Australian author of Dirt Poor Islanders, on her "unapologetically", "fearlessly" autobiographical book, writing, and being an Australian-born Tongan.
• In light of the revelations coming out of South Dakota governor Kristi Noem's book, No Going Back, a reminder that even the big publishers do not fact-check their non-fiction releases. Why not? "From the publisher's perspective, hiring a team of checkers is 'a huge expense,' [journalist Jane] Friedman said—it would 'destroy the profitability' of some books. And there are logistical challenges: Fact-checking memoirs, for example, can be difficult, because you're dealing with people's memories."
• If nine-year-old Lashika Poneswaran, who wrote The Waffle Truffle Adventure, is not Malaysia's youngest book author, then she is one of the youngest. The self-published book "is about a group of friends who enter a waffle competition. The protagonist, Rose, wants to seek out the old woman in the forest, rumoured to make the best waffles," reports Free Malaysia Today.
• "Writing advice is always a little funny because everyone's journey is different and there are really no right or wrong answers. For every piece of advice someone gives, you can find someone who did the opposite and thrived. So below I'm just going to include some subjective tidbits that have worked for me during my four years and three books as a mid-list author." Author Anna Dorn shares some writing advice in Literary Hub.
• Publishing books in Egypt can be like navigating a minefield because you never know what might set the authorities off. This report by the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy is a harrowing read. "Book publishing is a very dangerous profession in this country. Publishers can find themselves at the wrong side of the equation at any given moment because nobody knows for a fact what would anger the censoring and security bodies."