Many books that were delayed last spring and this summer have been rescheduled for release this fall. On top of that, there has been, over the summer, a 12 percent spike in print-book sales. Now, Alexandra Alter reports at the New York Times, publishers are facing a significant challenge: “how to print all those books.” “Knopf and Pantheon are shifting the release of more than a dozen fall titles, including a memoir by the cookbook author Deborah Madison and a biography of Sylvia Plath, due to ‘severe capacity issues with our printing partners.’ The imprints are also delaying fiction by Robert Harris, Martin Amis, Jo Nesbo, Alexander McCall Smith and Tom Bissell, whose story collection, Creative Types, is being bumped to 2021.”
Thelma Young-Lutunatabua is launching a new online space and newsletter called Radical Reimaginings, which will offer an exchange of views that look “beyond dystopia.” “What the history of the world will look like is up to us to create,” Young-Lutunatabua writes. “In the face of the climate crisis and other social injustices, the future looks uncertain. Radical Reimagining, though, believes we can hold off the abyss of a techno-dystopian future. . . . People are hungry for new mythologies, more accurate histories. They’re tearing down statues and proclaiming that the truths we’ve been told are not the ones we need to pass on. This is a time when the stories we tell each other matter. Our imaginations can act as compasses to help us point the way forward.”
According to a study conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Informed Democracy & Social Cybersecurity, bots may account for almost half of the Twitter accounts advocating for the reopening of America.
The second season of Hulu’s adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity, which was recently canceled, “was going to make Cherise [played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph] the main character.” Zoe Kravitz, one of the show’s stars, has commented: “It’s cool. At least Hulu has a ton of other shows starring women of color we can watch. Oh wait.”
Elizabeth Egan gives you the “seven takeaways” from Melania and Me, an “epic tell-all” memoir by the First Lady’s ex-friend Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, which will be released on Tuesday.