The Weekly Wrap: November 8-14

Genre Bookstores

I don’t get it.

A bookstore devoted to romantasy opened in our community. I’ve imagined walking in and asking a bookseller, “do you have anything here that I’d actually enjoy reading?” More likely, I probably just won’t visit.

However, I will concede that romance fiction in all its variants, including the fusion of romance and fantasy that is romantasy is hot. More people are reading books in those genres than anything else.

And the folks running this store, based on their social media, are doing everything right to build a community of readers through a variety of events and promotions. These people seem to be the kind who love these books and love gathering others who love them. I wish them every success.

But I wondered with my Bob on Books Facebook page about the interest in such stores. Generally, most felt as I do that they like bookstores with lots more options than one genre. Most of us have our favorites. But notice that is plural. No genre-specific store covers the breadth of our interests.

I also wonder about the long term viability of such stores. They depend on a community of interested readers regularly purchasing those books. And I suspect most won’t last long on buyers shelves. I think of a mystery bookshop that we used to visit occasionally that lasted maybe a decade. I buy mysteries as e-books at a discount, for the most part. There are ways to do that to support local stores, but I haven’t figured it out.

That also begs the question of whether the current interest in “romantasy” is a passing fad or a long term trend. Will the same readers buy these books in five years? Or will new readers come along?

There are exceptions. The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City stands out in my mind. I’m sure there are others. While I always love to see new stores, I see how hard it is for any indie store to make it, let alone ones focused more narrowly. I guess it all depends on forming a community of readers who keep supporting the store.

Five Articles Worth Reading

I’ve argued that AI doesn’t belong in publishing. “AI Is Destroying the Trust Between Writers and Readers” provides further evidence of the slop and scams that have intruded into publishing already. I laughed when Rachel Kadish, the article author interacted with an AI scammer named “Rachel Kadish.” That is, I laughed to avoid crying.

David Lehman, the editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry, writes about the role of an editor of anthologies, in “Notes on Making a Canonical Anthology: The Oxford Book of American Poetry.” He maintains that “All anthologies perform an evaluative function.”

Janet Malcolm’s 1990 book The Journalist and the Murderer begins with the statement: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.” “Janet Malcolm, Master of Unsparing Profiles, Was Nicer Than You’d Think” reviews Eve Sneider’s The Absent Woman, a new biography on this imposing journalist.

Ian Marcus Corbin’s To Arrive Where We Started: Belonging in the Modern World, explores the connection between the search for roots and finding a sense of belonging. In “Digging for Roots,” Alan Jacobs reviews the book. In the review, he observes: “It seems obvious, then, that we do not need belonging as such, a sense of being at home in the world as such; we need, rather, to belong in the right ways, in ways that help us and those around us to achieve true flourishing, not a corrupted perversion of it that depends for its coherence on exclusion.”

Finally, poet Malcolm Guite is in the midst of a re-telling of the Arthurian legends. “21st Century Inklings: Malcolm Guite’s Arthurian Cycle” reviews the first two installments of the cycle, Galahad and the Grail and The Coming of Arthur.

Quote of the Week

Novelist Robert Louis Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850. He observed:

“That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.”

I like that measure of success.

Miscellaneous Musings

This has been a week of tech collapses. Market freezers in Europe hacked and food spoiled. Jensen Huang of Nvidia’s moral collapse, followed by the crash of its stock. Microsoft’s worldwide outage of Outlook and other applications (boy am I glad I’m retired!). And the ground stop of all flights in the U.S. At least when the tech apocalypse comes, there are still candles, matches, and print books.

One of the books I’ll be reviewing next week is Christ in the Abyss by Jean L. Neely. It is her account of living with bi-polar (1) disorder. It is extraordinary. Neely gives an honest and vulnerable account of her life, one in which she continues to struggle with times in the abyss. She doesn’t write about how God “fixed” her or the ways she beat depression. Rather, she speaks of learning that even in the abyss, God is there, of the value of a community that accepts her as a bi-polar person, and learning to be gentle with herself.

Lastly, I’ve enjoyed George MacDonald’s fantasy. I can see how he was an influence on Lewis. This week, I started Malcolm, a novel set on the coast of Scotland. I’m enjoying not only the story but the moral universe implicit beneath the story.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Paul Chamberlain, The Changing World of Atheism

Tuesday: Kevin Nye, Hope For the Mission

Wednesday: John Smed, Journey in Prayer

Thursday: Jean L. Neely, Christ in the Abyss

Friday: Barry B. Luokkala, Exploring Science Through Science Fiction

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for November 8-14.

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