Monthly archive - October 2019

If you spend much time on the internet, you may have heard that mystery novelist and former prosecutor Linda Fairstein was officially canceled earlier this year, when Ava DuVernay's miniseries When They See Us exposed her role in the railroading of the Central Park Five.  Read more

About 10 years ago, as the anxiety and hype around digital publishing began to build, I had a lot of conversations about the future. Publishers looked up from the constant churn of new books and projects to examine the far horizon. Big, existential questions were raised and, at least in part, addressed.  Read more

There was a spat the other week about a children's book, Equal to Everything: Judge Brenda and the Supreme Court, which is about an encounter between a little girl called Ama and the nation's pin-up, Brenda Hale. The book's author is the Guardian columnist Afua Hirsch. It's written in vague rhyming couplets with the worst illustrations I've ever seen in a book for children.

Asked to explain "Why the novel matters", my first question is: "Well, does it?" As soon as I typed that sentence, I then thought that the second logical question would probably have to be "Has it?" But, after typing that, I opened my browser and went to look at the news because I was a little concerned that tanks might be rolling down the Mall in order to disperse pro-democracy protesters.  Read more