It's probably impossible to determine how many books are published each year. You go looking for the answer, you're likely to find widely divergent guesses -- but it's likely more than a million books were published in the United States in 2017.
And sometimes it seems as if every one of them winds up on my desk.
I'm explaining, not complaining -- my point is there's no way to keep up. I get through a book or two a week while reading just enough of five or six others to decide whether I want to read them or not. At any given time I have a stack or five or six that I genuinely mean to get to. Of those, I might read one or two.
There's no way anyone can familiarize himself with most of the major titles released by big publishing houses every year, much less books published by small and university presses.
Then there are self-published titles, which while often dismissed as vanity projects (when I was reviewing books in the 1980s most publications had rules against writing about them), sometimes turn out to be works of substantial merit. I'm not sure why we reflexively stigmatize these authors while valorizing outsider artists and independent filmmakers. (I get that a movie is necessarily an expensive collaborative product, while any obsessed crank with time to burn can type up a few hundred pages, but we should judge books on a case-by-case basis.)
Let's be generous and say I read 100 books in a year. So I legitimately have a handle on about .01 percent of the books published in a year. I've dipped a cup in a lake.
On the other hand, it's not unusual for a movie critic to see 300 films in a year. And while more than 700 movies open somewhere in the United States every year, it is certainly possible to see every film that opens in a theater in your city. It is possible to keep up with cinema, especially if you don't have to pay for your tickets out of your own pocket.
Meanwhile, important books are published, read and even hit best-seller lists and get short-listed for literary prizes without blipping on my radar. Case in point, a buddy recommended Smith Henderson's debut novel Fourth of July Creek (Ecco/Harper Collins) late last year. I was thrilled by it, and thoroughly embarrassed by the fact I knew nothing about it, even though it had been met with some pretty sensational reviews when it was published back in 2014. (For instance, in The New York Times, novelist Jonathan Ames compared Henderson's work to Cormac McCarthy's and William Faulkner's. And in the Guardian, Jeff VanderMeer wrote: "Here, at the beginning of his career, Henderson has come within shouting distance of writing a great American novel.")
But it slipped by me. Even though I pay attention to book reviews.
Still, I'm proud that this column doesn't always take after the next big thing in publishing. And while the politic thing to say about any newspaper feature is that it's designed to serve the interests of our readers, I'm not much on focus group-driven journalism. Ideally newspapers (and politicians) should be opinion leaders, not followers. Young adult fiction and topical books such as Michael Wolf's Fire and Fury are what sell, but I've little interest in writing about those books. I write about what strikes my imagination.
In fact, looking at this week's New York Times hardcover fiction best-seller list, there's only one title in the top 15 that I'm considering writing about: Tayari Jones' An American Marriage (Algonquin, $26.95), which I have every intention of reading as soon as I finish British writer Ned Beauman's Madness Is Better Than Defeat (Knopf, $27.95). Which I just started last night after finishing Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop's The Mercy Seat (coming in May from Grove Atlantic, $26). Which shouldn't be confused with Rilla Askew's 1997 novel of the same name.
Oh, and save your cards and letters, I realize I've mentioned John Grisham's The Rooster Bar in this space, but saying I enjoyed it doesn't count as a review. I wish it did.
And I don't have the time or space to write about every book that falls into that small subset of what I'm interested in writing about and what I've read. I meant to write about the Library of America's Wendel Berry: Novels and Port William Stories. I meant to write about Tom Perrotta's Mrs. Fletcher. I meant to write about James Lee Burke's Louisiana-set mysteries, pegged to January's publication of Robicheaux: A Novel (Simon & Schuster, $27.99).
I've missed some obvious opportunities. So what? I've also reviewed books no one else has. Not that that's hard to do -- by and large most books go begging for reviews.
I know, because I'm one of the people who gets begged. So if you are a struggling author who has sent your book this way, God bless you. I'll look at it, but no promises.
Email:
pmartin@arkansasonline.com
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Style on 03/18/2018