Hulu Scraps Hugh Sarah J. Maas Adaptation

Hulu Drops THE COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES

If you want to pick your reason for Hulu’s decision to abandon its adaptation of Sarah J. Maas’ The Court of Thorns and Roses, you’ve got plenty of choices. Was it the writers and actors strike? Could be. The industry-wide contraction of spending on giant, expensive properties? Makes sense. Is it a lack of confidence that this the kind of property/IP (on part with Tolkien or Marvel or what have you) that could make a bet oof this size at least plausibly profitable? Hard to argue. I’ve wondered here and elsewhere if a splashy adaptation would catapult Maas into pop culture household name status, but now I wonder if we are ever going to get a chance to find out.

Barnes & Noble Opening Five New Chicagoland Bookstores—and May as Well Name Them Fox & Sons

Getting a little into the internet weeds here, but I thought this letter (or rather tweet with a screenshot of a letter) from B&N president James Daunt trying to explain how B&N would never open new stores that would threaten indies was worth a wade in. Well, as long as there are certain kinds of indies. You can have books, but if they are used or you are a nonprofit or maybe serve coffee (?) then well we feel ok about horning in on your space. Tellingly, Daunt’s example of the kinds of customers not being served in these areas are “gang[s] of teenagers pil[ing] out of school to go hang out.” BookTok has made you bold, JD.

College Students Don’t Know How to Read Anymore

It’s hard to know when to take “kids these days” articles seriously. Probably, your prior should be “probably not the case.” But also, sometimes things change. This is hard in any sphere of knowledge, the balancing of the “fewer things change as fast and as much as people think right away” with “but sometimes they do and then it matters a lot.” In this case, there are at least three reasons offered for the perception, apparently widely shared, that college students cannot handle reading longer pieces as well as they did even five years ago. They are: phones, COVID, and standardized testing in secondary schools. If you translated those things into: habit, instruction, and incentive, then the burden of proof, for me at least, shifts from “show me why this would be?” to “wait, how in the world would it be otherwise?”

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