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Nonfiction Views: The week's new nonfiction; book bans and sensitivity edits; publishing in Ukraine [1]

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Date: 2023-03-28

Good evening, all. I know, I know, I’ve been very lax about getting a new book review up each week. My schedule isn’t making it easy. I do hope to be posting reviews again soon, and thank you for your forbearance. Meanwhile, here is my selection of the top nonfiction being published this week.

In book news, bestselling novelist Jodi Picoult continues denouncing the book banning Republicans around the country. Under DeSantis’ law greenlighting schools to ban books, Martin County announced the removal of 96 titles from its high school libraries. Twenty of those 96 were Jodi Picoult novels. In this linked interview, Picoult says:

BENITEZ: Why do you think your books are getting banned, especially there in Florida? PICOULT: That is an excellent question. But unfortunately, in Martin County, Florida, and in many places in Florida, one parent can decide to pull a book from a shelf without even giving a reason for that. And the one parent who wanted to ban all 20 of my books said on her form that she had not read the book, she admitted to that. And she said that some of them were adult romance, which is really interesting because I don't write adult romance. And, in fact, half of the books she pulled do not even have a single kiss in them. But they do have topics like gun rights and women's reproductive health rights and gay rights and things that make— BENITEZ: Because all of your books are very topical. It's like what's happening in the moment. PICOULT: Yeah, so they're books that are to encourage kids to think for themselves. They're at a high school library. It's worth saying that. This is not an elementary school library. And the modus operandi is to get the books pulled off the shelves, because the process for review is very muddy. And so the books stay off the shelves, away from kids, until they actually manage to figure out a way to review them. There are some libraries in Florida, actually, school libraries, where they have not had any books in elementary school libraries since Christmas.

On the other end of the spectrum, the sensitivity edits of new editions of old popular books continues. I’m not as outraged as I am by book banning, of course, but I do admit to a bit of annoyed ambivalence about it. A few weeks ago I posted about the edits of Roald Dahl’s books to remove words and references that might be construed as offensive nowadays (and, in a shrewd marketing move, Penguin Random House announced they will be publishing a 20-volume classic set of the original books.) Ian Fleming’s James Bond series has gotten similar treatment. Now, HarperCollins has decided to hire some ‘sensitivity readers’ to go through Agatha Christie’s mysteries to weed out words and descriptions offensive to modern mores.

On the one hand, I feel this is akin to the whitewashing of history. I would rather the original books continue to be available, but with additional material describing the social mores of the time in which the books were written. Along similar lines, I appreciate Turner Classic Movies for showing the unedited versions of movies, and discussing the problematical material before and after.

On the other hand, this really isn’t new. As the article about Agatha Christie points out, the famous Christie mystery And Then There Were None was originally widely published as Ten Little Indians, and most infamously, as Ten Little Niggers in Britain. I loved the Hardy Boys mystery book series in my 1960s boyhood, but I’m fully aware that the versions kids read today are substantially different from the ones I read. More recently, I’ve learned that the versions I read in the 1960s were themselves substantially rewritten from the originals written in the 1920s through 1950s. The originals not only had occasional distasteful references, but also darker plots in which law enforcement wasn’t always the good guys, and in which people drank and smoked.

The copyright infringement lawsuit against the Internet Archive, which I mentioned last week, ended with federal judge John G. Koeltl swiftly and emphatically ruling against the Archive:

“At bottom, IA’s fair use defense rests on the notion that lawfully acquiring a copyrighted print book entitles the recipient to make an unauthorized copy and distribute it in place of the print book, so long as it does not simultaneously lend the print book. But no case or legal principle supports that notion. Every authority points the other direction.”

Finally, this article offers a look at the current state of book publishing in Ukraine:

It’s now been more than a year since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, killing hundreds of thousands, sending millions into exile, and throwing the country’s publishing industry into disarray. The number of titles published in Ukraine was cut almost in half last year, dropping from 17,000 in 2021 to just under 9,000, according to the Ukrainian Book Institute (UBI), which collects data on the industry. The war has been especially difficult on the printing sector, which is centered in Kharkiv and had a significant amount of infrastructure destroyed. As a result, the total number of books printed in Ukraine fell from 25.7 million in 2021 to 9.2 million in 2022.

THIS WEEK’S NEW HARDCOVERS

All book links in this diary are to my online bookstore The Literate Lizard. If you already have a favorite indie bookstore, please keep supporting them. If you’re able to throw a little business my way, that would be appreciated. Use the coupon code DAILYKOS for 15% off your order, in gratitude for your support (an ever-changing smattering of new releases are already discounted 15% each week). We also partner Libro.fm for audiobooks. Libro.fm is similar to Amazon’s Audible, with a la carte audiobooks, or a $14.99 monthly membership which includes the audiobook of your choice and 20% off subsequent purchases during the month.

READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2023/3/28/2159912/-Nonfiction-Views-The-week-s-new-nonfiction-book-bans-and-sensitivity-edits-publishing-in-Ukraine

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