Book Club Spotlight: How This 20-Year-Old Book Club Connects Virtually
The group of 15 ladies successfully transitioned from over 20 years of dinner and monthly meetings at the Rancho Santa Margarita City Hall to a virtual format — and were even able to welcome back a few members! Most recently, the club held its annual holiday party on Zoom complete with holiday sweaters, a book swap, and a meaningful book discussion.
PBS to Broadcast Two Documentaries on Agatha Christie
Mark your calendar! “PBS will kick off the year 2021 with two TV documentaries focused on the life and publishing career of bestselling British crime novelist Agatha Christie.”
The broadcast dates are January 17 and January 24.
Publishing saw upheaval in 2020, but ‘books are resilient’
From the Associated Press. “Book publishing in 2020 was a story of how much an industry can change and how much it can, or wants to, remain the same.”
A Speculative Fiction Expert’s Year of Escapist Reading
Kerine Wint, a software engineering graduate who loves to read science fiction and fantasy, writes, “2020 is the year that has made having an escape a necessity.” Speculative fiction is, she says, “ a vehicle that shows us so many new worlds, allowing us to view and understand ourselves and others unlike us.”
As an added bonus, at the end of the article are links to similar links in other genres: mystery, literary fiction, romance, and young adult.
PW’s Person of the Year: The Book Business Worker
All readers think of people involved in any aspect of producing books as essential workers. Publishers Weekly agrees:
The most important people in the book business in 2020 are not the powerhouse agents or the megabestselling authors or the Big Five CEOs. They are the booksellers, debut and midlist authors, editors, librarians, printers, publicists, sales representatives, and warehouse workers, to mention just a few—the workers, who have been the most important people in the business all along.
I’m a Romance Novelist Who Writes About Politics—And I Won’t “Stay In My Lane”
An ardent argument by novelist Alyssa Cole: “Assuming the romance genre can’t be political is, well…political in itself.”
10 Literary Podcasts to Listen To if You Miss Life Before Quarantine
“Dig into these podcasts even if you don’t have the energy to dig into the stack of novels that’s been growing on your nightstand.”
The Top 10 Library Stories of 2020
Publishers Weekly “looks back at the library stories that captivated the publishing world this year—and what they portend for 2021.”
© 2020 by Mary Daniels Brown
