There’s a fashion on social media now for authors to film themselves eagerly opening the just arrived box containing their new books. I'm not a fan of the self-congratulatory display (I’d dislike it even more if I were still searching for a publisher), and I also question the emotion. I’m familiar with the thrill of seeing one’s new book for the first time, but for me it’s coupled with the dread of opening that book and finding a typo. Often, I don’t open it. I let it sit around, sometimes for days. Eventually I crack the spine, bravely glance at a few pages, then a few more. So my cartoon shows a man looking at his smartphone and saying to his wife: “Instead of a video of an author opening a box of his new books I’d like to see a video of an author opening his new book and finding a typo.” The expression of surprise would be much more authentic.
I’m reading the memoir of Hilary Bradt, founder of Bradt travel guides – in preparation for my interview with her next week at Books & Books – and was amused to learn that, in her early days of budget travel, when rental car companies charged by the mile, she and her husband would occasionally drive on Texas country roads in reverse.
The other day I found comments people had written about my books on a book review website. And I was struck by how often the comments with the worst syntax complained about the writing.
Jayne Anne Phillip’s Night Watch, winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction, was described by Dwight Garner in the New York Times Book Review (Sept. 25, 2023) as “sludgy, claustrophobic, and pretentious.”
Tomorrow I will be speaking about my memoir with Ann Bocock at the Sun Sentinel’s PRIME Expo. It is a day of talks and seminars for people over the age of 50, which is to say: my typical audience. Even though my book is a coming-of-age story, about a young man’s quest to become a travel writer, most of the people who come to hear me talk about it are Boomers like myself. Even when I attend readings by other, younger writers, the audience is usually made up of seniors. They are, to a large extent, keeping book readings, bookstores, the book business alive.
What if on Valentine’s Day, instead of flowers, people gave books with the word “love” in their subtitles?