Show & Tell: Finally Some Good Book News!!!
Unstacked Digest for the week of September 2-8
I had a pretty surreal week. I sat on stage and talked with Jesmyn Ward for an hour. She is as lovely and thoughtful as you hoped. Also it was 100+ degrees in LA for four days this week. Summer is not over. I told you.
This is Show & Tell where I tell you some things I loved from the week and the one thing I hated, plus round up everything else going on around these parts. The first half of Show & Tell is free to all. The adoration and hateration are for paid subscribers only.
This Week on Unstacked
Last week’s Show & Tell.
September starts the season of “serious” books, and here are the new books I’m more excited about this month.
For the Mega-Challenge I need your help picking a 2024 book to read. Go tell me what to do.
Books I Read This Week
The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
I was hesitant to read this contender for “book of the summer” because I don’t think of myself as a mystery reader (even though I do love plot), but I am so glad I read The God of the Woods. The book is about a girl who goes missing from summer camp in 1975, and Moore uses multiple points of view and timelines to weave her way through this story. I loved the form. I loved the character development. I didn’t see the ending coming (until she wanted us to) but it also wasn’t one of those endings that you could never predict. I did have some pacing issues with the book, not sure it needed to be almost 500 pages. I am glad I read it. I do recommend it. And that cover lives rent free in my head.
Fave of the week!
The First in the Family: A Story of Survival, Recovery, and the American Dream by Jessica Hoppe
A memoir about how the American dream and systems of racism complicate the journey toward sobriety for people of color. This is one of those books that I am glad exists because of how it deepens prevailing narratives — in this case around “quit lit” aka books about overcoming addiction, that so often feature white stories. The First in the Family overall felt disjointed and meandering. Hoppe is at her best when she is talking about AA and racism and using her own story to illustrate the issues. When she gets into heavy memoir territory the book loses focus. Unfortunately, this book is more memoir and I found myself tuning in and out, feeling disconnected from Hoppe and her bigger thesis. Perhaps an essay on the subject would’ve been the perfect form for this story (and from what I’ve gathered was where this book started). Thanks to
Housekeeping
African-American Lit professor Eve Dunbar was our guest this week on the podcast. We talk about her forthcoming book Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction: Black Women Writing Under Segregation and how she came to love books. She’ll be back on September 25th for The Stacks Book Club episode on Jazz by Toni Morrison.
In case you missed it, here is the video of the conversation I had with Jesmyn Ward. A real dream come true.
I got to talk shit about books on the You Should Read More podcast. Always a joy to talk a little shit.
I’ll be in Jackson, MS September 14th for the Mississippi Book Festival. I’m doing a panel on Saturday at 4pm with Kaveh Akbar, Rachel Khong, and Sheila Sundar. You can see the full schedule here!
Things I Love…
Book News
Big news in the book world! Franklin Leonard, founder of The Black List, an annual survey of the best unproduced screenplays, is expanding into fiction. This is such a needed addition to the publishing landscape that is notorious for being behind the times and gatekeepy. The Black List Fiction is sure to bring us some new and exciting voices and bypass some of the stodgy, racist, and unimaginative barriers that so many authors talk about in book world.
With The Black List Fiction, writers can now upload their manuscripts to the site and get discovered by agents and editors. Folks who host their manuscripts on the site pay a small fee, but what I love is that The Black List doesn’t own the rights or take a cut of any deal that may result from their service. It really is just a marketplace for uplifting writers.
Also, The Black List is proven to be a successful model in film, you can thank it for “Spotlight”, “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The Kings Speech”. Talk about track record
I’m also personally really excited about this for two reasons. One, my friend
is at the helm of this project. Randy has dedicated himself to lifting up the voices of undiscovered writers. He formerly worked as the director of writing programs at the Center for Fiction. Franklin knows talent and picking Randy for this just proves that point 10 times over. I can’t wait to see what Randy does, I know for sure it will be great.
The other reason I’m excited is The Black List is creating “The Unpublished Novel Award,” a $10,000 grant for authors of unpublished manuscripts in seven genres — children’s and young adult, mystery, horror, literary fiction, romance, science fiction and fantasy, and thriller and suspense. And your girl is judging the Romance category. I know, shocking. But what I love is that all the categories have a variety of judges, some experts in the field and some more general readers (me) so that the prize can go to a book that is both technically good but also engaging and exciting to readers, and not, again, stodgy publishing darlings.
You can read more about the whole thing here, but it is just really fucking needed and really fucking cool.
Pop Culture
We are getting a movie for The Nickel Boys this fall and the trailer is here!