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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
Way to Miss the Point, Bros
There are a lot of dystopian things about living in 2026, and the fact that the so-called geniuses running the world don’t understand the science fiction novels they love to cite is pretty high on the list. As Slate‘s Laura Miller puts it in an (intensely satisfying) takedown, “Why are these moguls—men whom the business media have been praising as geniuses for the past 40 years—so dumb?” These are the kinds of guys who don’t understand that Fight Club is a satire. They’re the “huge losers” Rebecca Shaw was talking about when she said, “I knew that one day we might have to watch as capitalism and greed and bigotry led to a world where powerful men, deserving or not, would burn it all down. What I didn’t expect, and don’t think I could have foreseen, is how incredibly cringe it would all be.”
It’s a wonderful irony that the thing fascists hate most is being made to look foolish, yet they make it so easy for us. These are not serious people. More coverage that emphasizes that, please.
Once Upon a Time, Book Reviews Could Change the World
Gather round, children, and let me tell you of a time before data and algorithms influenced authors’ choices. It used to be true that the right review from a high-profile critic could make or break a book with readers. It also used to be true that one critic’s words could change the way an author approached their work. David Streitfeld offers two compelling examples of how reviews in the Washington Post‘s recently-shuttered Book World led to the creation of books now considered modern classics: Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove and Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain. These are good stories, and they’re certainly good publicity for Streitfeld’s new book about McMurtry.
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I’m less nostalgic than Streitfeld is for the past when a few anointed people—most of them white men—held the keys to the literary kingdom, but I think we do share a fundamental concern about what happens to art when personal taste and “I liked it / I didn’t like it” are conflated with criticism. So many books look and sound the same now. Publishers are marketing books with checklists of the tropes they contain in lieu of details about the story or ideas. There is less incentive today for authors to swerve in the ways McMurtry and Proulx did, and historically, it’s the swerves that end up changing literary history. That’s the story we really need to tell.
Fake Dates and Mooncakes Coming to a TV Near You
Sher Lee’s queer YA coming-of-age novel Fake Dates and Mooncakes is set to become a TV series. Gearshift Films is developing the project in partnership with Steven J. Kung, whose credits include Dear White People, Fresh Off the Boat, and Leading Man. Kung will write and executive produce the adaptation, which follows “two teens of Chinese heritage, Dylan Tang and Theo Somers, who unexpectedly fall for each other while navigating identity, ambition, and belonging.” More details to come.
How to Hone Your Reading Skills
We get a lot of good mail from listeners of Zero to Well-Read. In this week’s episode, we’re answering questions about how to hone your reading skills, what makes a good read goal, how to tell when you should quit a book or push through, and more. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your podcatcher of choice.