‘Fyre Festival of books’ in Denver
This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
This originally appeared in our Today in Books daily newsletter, where each day we round up the most interesting stories, news, essays, and other goings on in the world of books and reading. Sign up here if you want to get it.
_______________________________
‘Fyre Festival of Books’ conference descends into chaos
Now that is a moniker I never thought I would see applied to a book event. When you have a book event that people paid $300 and up to attend, you do not want to have Rebecca Yarros, the best-selling writer in America at the moment, have to say things like this on Facebook: “I’m sorry registration took hours, sorry food ran out, sorry security wasn’t tight enough at the night events, sorry some volunteers raised voices, sorry it was disorganized, sorry you felt frazzled, sorry you felt overwhelmed, sorry you did not get to bask in the overwhelming joy that spending 3 days in the book world should give you.” Sounds like it was a fun time in Denver.
Colm Tóibín’s Long Island is Oprah’s 105th Book Pick
Surprised by this one, but delighted that a whole host of readers who may never have picked up a Colm Tóibín novel will now do so. I was very nervous when I heard a sequel to Brooklyn was happening because as we all know, nothing goes wrong in sequels. And Brooklyn was such a tender, winsome, and yet not saccharine literary love story that I didn’t not want to see storm clouds on the horizon for its characters. But it sounds like Long Island is great, and I am just going to have to be ok with tough things happening to people that don’t exist.
Kristi Noem Can’t Even Admit Something Was Wrong in Her Book Right
Look, no one cares about Kristi Noem’s book. No one even really cares that she said she met Kim Jong Un when she actually did not. And people don’t care that she is changing the book because someone said hey wait you didn’t actually meet him. But they should care, and not because something untrue was in the book (this happens a lot). It’s the double-speak, non-apology, no accountability, “actually it wasn’t a mistake everyone is just out to get me” posturing that so many politicians, particularly those of a certain stripe, have made commonplace. Orwell worried that Big Brother would manipulate language to distort and minimize the truth. He needn’t have. We would all just tap the Big Brother inside of us to do it ourselves.
