What are you currently reading?

[Henk]

Finished reading this one. Good read. Recommended.

[Henk]

Currently reading:

[Brian]

I think you might have misunderstood. A sensitivity reader is not overly sensitive; they are a professional editor who rewrites passages of older books for a modern audience.  Please see the wiki:

I know it's weeks later, but I attended a professional seminar with sensitivity readers back in 2022 and want to correct this. A majority of their work is helping current authors avoid mistakes in describing characters who aren't like them. They make suggestions but they do not rewrite or take charge of the text.

The examples they gave were often quite mundane. For example, a reader could correct a male writer who incorrectly describes a woman's health issue. There are even readers for certain countries or regions, so that if you are a writer from Boston who has a Texan character, they can make sure the character's slang is correct. Of course, some examples were much more dramatic too, and one of the readers said their job can be quite stressful if the author's story involves lots of trauma or racial/sexual conflict.

These readers are usually hired by the authors directly, out of their advance payment from the publisher, if the authors choose to seek that kind of editing input.

[Florestan]

I know it's weeks later, but I attended a professional seminar with sensitivity readers back in 2022 and want to correct this. A majority of their work is helping current authors avoid mistakes in describing characters who aren't like them. They make suggestions but they do not rewrite or take charge of the text.

The examples they gave were often quite mundane. For example, a reader could correct a male writer who incorrectly describes a woman's health issue. There are even readers for certain countries or regions, so that if you are a writer from Boston who has a Texan character, they can make sure the character's slang is correct. Of course, some examples were much more dramatic too, and one of the readers said their job can be quite stressful if the author's story involves lots of trauma or racial/sexual conflict.

These readers are usually hired by the authors directly, out of their advance payment from the publisher, if the authors choose to seek that kind of editing input.

I'm sure Balzac, Tolstoy and Thomas Mann would have greatly benefited for such help.     

[DavidW]

I couldn't imagine there would be much work for those types of sensitivity readers. Authors can't afford to pay for such services. Most bestselling writers don't even make enough to quit their day job.

A bestselling writer, Mark Lawrence, talked about it on his blog and his YT channel:
http://mark---lawrence.blogspot.com/2022/09/money-how-much-are-authors-paid.html

You can see that most advances end up being, on average, well below minimum wage. Even though the data on the plot is anonymous, in his corresponding YT video, he said that they were all New York Times bestselling writers and that you would find their books stocked in your local Barnes and Noble.

Even if it is not overall fair to them, most people will associate sensitivity readers with the explicit changes to Fleming, Dahl and Christie novels, which is what makes the news.

[Florestan]

There was a time when writers needed no assistance concerning women's health issues or a particular slang, because that was the time when writers wrote novels, novellas or short stories, not treatises on medicine or linguistics. And that was the time of such writers as Dickens, Flaubert and Turgenev.

Now it's the time when writers need help with details concerning menstruation or the New Orleans slang for drug addict. And it's the time of such writers as... as... no, wait... as... ummmm, never mind, actually.

[Brian]

Even if it is not overall fair to them, most people will associate sensitivity readers with the explicit changes to Fleming, Dahl and Christie novels, which is what makes the news.

Yep, this is of course true for every profession: most people associate them with the news-makers, not the multitude of folks doing everyday boring work.

My perception was many of these readers are working for small sums (mid-to-high 3 figures) on a freelance basis as second jobs. Also it seemed to be most common among young adult fiction, one of the few sectors of publishing that is still relatively healthy.

[ShineyMcShineShine]

I know it's weeks later, but I attended a professional seminar with sensitivity readers back in 2022 and want to correct this. A majority of their work is helping current authors avoid mistakes in describing characters who aren't like them. They make suggestions but they do not rewrite or take charge of the text.

The examples they gave were often quite mundane. For example, a reader could correct a male writer who incorrectly describes a woman's health issue. There are even readers for certain countries or regions, so that if you are a writer from Boston who has a Texan character, they can make sure the character's slang is correct. Of course, some examples were much more dramatic too, and one of the readers said their job can be quite stressful if the author's story involves lots of trauma or racial/sexual conflict.

These readers are usually hired by the authors directly, out of their advance payment from the publisher, if the authors choose to seek that kind of editing input.

[SimonNZ]

This year's longlist for the Baillie Gifford prize just announced.

https://www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/inside-the-covers/news/the-prize-announces-2024-longlist

 I did all but three from last years list and found that project so rewarding that I'm going to try for the lot over the next months.

Probably starting with the biography of Frantz Fanon.

[DavidW]

I read Something Wicked This Way Comes, which many read in middle school, but my assigned Bradbury back then was Dandelion Wine. Wild and weird, a perfect childhood read. This came off the back of Fairy Tail by Stephen King, which had a grand opening and then petered off to the most awful, generic fantasy I've ever read. His one conceit was blatantly stealing Bradbury's plot device.



Bradbury insightfully realized that being able to roll forward or backward in age magically would lead to body dysphoria and a rejection of your own life.

[AnotherSpin]

I read Something Wicked This Way Comes, which many read in middle school, but my assigned Bradbury back then was Dandelion Wine. Wild and weird, a perfect childhood read. This came off the back of Fairy Tail by Stephen King, which had a grand opening and then petered off to the most awful, generic fantasy I've ever read. His one conceit was blatantly stealing Bradbury's plot device.



Bradbury insightfully realized that being able to roll forward or backward in age magically would lead to body dysphoria and a rejection of your own life.

An imposed habit of constantly shifting through space and time in our thoughts leads to a sense of dysphoria and a rejection of one's own life.

[Bachtoven]

While enjoyable and entertaining enough, he borrows heavily from Blake Crouch's Dark Matter and PK Dick's The Man in the High Castle.

[ritter]

Starting Jean Genet's recently rediscovered play Héliogabale.



This work, written in prison in 1942, predates all Genet plays or novels we knew. It was thought lost, but the manuscript —which had been given to Paul Morihien, publisher and secretary to Jean Cocteau— resurfaced in Harvard University's Houghton Library a couple of years ago.

The young Genet, probably inspired by Antonin Artaud's book on the same subject, writes a full-fledged tragédie, in the classical mode so in vogue in French theatre in the 1930s and under the occupation (Cocteau, Giraudoux, Anouilh, even Sartre). The play of course is not set in the slummy milieus of many of its author's works, but the Palatine Hill is no stranger, given the leading role of the play, to the themes Genet would develop in his later work.

[AnotherSpin]

A very dense text that I had to push through with almost physical effort. It was much harder effort than the recent reading of Death with Interruptions. Still, I made myself finish it.

[NumberSix]

Just placed orders for these two 90's books used, on Biblio.com.

Inside Early Music: Conversations with Performers
The Vintage Guide to Classical Music

I have quite a few classical music books, but they're all Kindle purchases. Guidebooks don't work so well for that purpose, I have found. You want to be able to flip around in them. Plus, the Inside book is VERY expensive on Kindle but quite affordable on the used market. (The Vintage book isn't even available as an e-book.)

[SimonNZ]

Inside Early Music: Conversations with Performers

I was VERY impressed by that. Some parts I've reread a number of times.

That reminds me that I've been meaning to track down a copy of Taruskin's essay collection Text And Act which they quote/debate extensively throughout.

TD:

along with the Fannon biography on the go I've started this:

[LKB]

I read Something Wicked This Way Comes, which many read in middle school, but my assigned Bradbury back then was Dandelion Wine. Wild and weird, a perfect childhood read. This came off the back of Fairy Tail by Stephen King, which had a grand opening and then petered off to the most awful, generic fantasy I've ever read. His one conceit was blatantly stealing Bradbury's plot device.



Bradbury insightfully realized that being able to roll forward or backward in age magically would lead to body dysphoria and a rejection of your own life.

Methinks Messrs. Cooger and Dark would approve. 

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting. Lisa Genova.

[ritter]

As a complement to the biography of Alfred H. Barr Jr. I read a couple of months ago.



The dissemination and acceptance of avant-garde painting in the US in the 30s and 40s is a topic I find rather interesting, and this book on the subject by Hugh Eakin has received very good reviews (even if the title may be misleading).

[Florestan]

As a complement to the biography of Alfred H. Barr Jr. I read a couple of months ago.



The dissemination and acceptance of avant-garde painting in the US in the 30s and 40s is a topic I find rather interesting, and this book on the subject by Hugh Eakin has received very good reviews (even if the title may be misleading).

Indeed, I was expecting a book about Picasso and the Spanish Civil War.