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150m Shades of Grey: how the decade's runaway bestseller changed our sex lives [15 Jan 2020|06:00am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/15/150m-shades-of-grey-how-the-decades-runaway-bestseller-changed-our-sex-lives Fifty Shades of Grey and its sequels were by far the bestselling books of the 2010s, kickstarting an erotica and kink boom. But did it lead to lasting change? I was working as a bookseller when Fifty Shades of Grey was published and spent weeks stacking shelves with the glossy tomes, only for them to be whisked away as soon as they arrived. I soon amassed a range of excuses from customers who so often seemed to be embarrassed to be buying what everyone else was buying. “I’m getting it for my wife,” men announced, unprompted, while women – often younger than the label “mummy porn” suggested – would recount whole conversations with unnamed friends who had deemed the erotic thriller “quite good”. The trilogy by EL James, the writing moniker of the British author Erika Leonard, was published between 2011 and 2012. Late last year it was announced that they had been the runaway bestselling books of the decade. In the UK alone, Fifty Shades of Grey sold 4.7m print copies, Fifty Shades Darker sold 3.3m and Fifty Shades Freed sold 3.1m. (The fourth biggest-selling book, Jamie’s 30-Minute Meals, sold 1.8m.) At its peak, two copies of the first book sold every second; for a time, the UK ran out of silver ink, thanks to its use on the books’ covers. Worldwide, by 2015, more than 150m copies had sold, with millions more ebooks on top. But alongside the huge number of copies sold, was there a lasting cultural influence? Continue reading... post comment

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Wiener review – beggars and tech billionaires [15 Jan 2020|07:30am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/15/uncanny-valley-memoir-anna-wiener-silicon-valley An account of life among the young and wealthy of Silicon Valley, and how it became unbearable When Anna Wiener first moved to San Francisco for a job at a web analytics startup, she rented a room on Airbnb and found herself captivated by the idea of living amid another person’s belongings – their toothpaste, their soap. “I liked examining someone else’s product selections, judging their clutter,” she writes of her brief stay in an apartment that, she learns, was owned by one of Airbnb’s founders. “I wasn’t thinking about how the home-sharing platform might also be driving up rents, displacing residents, or undermining the very authenticity that it purported to sell.” Related: 'I want this book to be politically useful’: the explosive memoir exposing Silicon Valley Continue reading... post comment

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins review – a desperate Odyssey [15 Jan 2020|09:00am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/15/american-dirt-by-jeanine-cummins-review This gripping story of a mother and son on Mexico’s migrant trail combines humane intentions with propulsive, action-movie execution Lydia Quixano Pérez owns a bookshop in downtown Acapulco, where she is teetering on the edge of an emotional affair with her favourite customer, the alluringly well-read Javier. Lydia’s husband, Sebastián, is an investigative journalist, working to unmask “The Owl”, the leader of an inventively gruesome new narcotics cartel whose grab for power has left the city ravaged and fearful. There are few places on the planet more deadly to be a journalist, and the integrity that attracted Lydia to Sebastián terrifies her now that they have a child – it seems “sanctimonious, selfish”. When Sebastián publishes his exposé, Lydia’s darkest fears come to pass. Jeanine Cummins’s immoderately hyped third novel, American Dirt, opens with blood-sodden terror as The Owl takes revenge: a machine-gun slaughter at a family barbecue. “There are 16 bodies in the backyard, almost everyone Lydia loved in the world.” Only Lydia and her eight-year-old son, Luca, have survived, but there will be no justice, no protection: the police “do nothing, because that’s precisely what the cartel pays them to do”. A distant cousin in Colorado offers the only hope of escape from the cartel’s reach, so Lydia and Luca head for el norte with a threadbare plan to reach the border by freight train (the infamous La Bestia), and then bribe a people smuggler to help them cross the desert to US soil. But The Owl has eyes everywhere. Continue reading... post comment

In the Dream House review – a raw account of an abusive lesbian relationship [15 Jan 2020|12:00pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/15/in-the-dream-house-by-carmen-maria-machado-review Carmen Maria Machado’s book is a tour de force. In writing into the silence, she regains her power “Memory itself is a form of architecture”: the American writer Carmen Maria Machado quotes Louise Bourgeois at the beginning of this book. How then do we pile up the bricks that we need to make a house? A “dream house” at that. And what if the dream house is no longer where you feel safe? What language do you use as the dreams start to crumble and you feel you are disintegrating and disgusting? Once you were an object of desire and a desiring subject, and now you are nothing. You can only speak one language – “the language of giving yourself up”. This is a memoir about abuse, a book that speaks into the silence of abuse between queer women (“domestic abuse”, as it’s ineptly called). Sometimes the author uses “lesbian”, sometimes “queer”, but most of the work and activism she references is that of out lesbian writers. Continue reading... post comment

Top 10 books about trouble in Los Angeles | Steph Cha [15 Jan 2020|12:27pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/15/top-10-books-about-trouble-in-los-angeles-steph-cha Novelist Steph Cha chooses books that reflect the tensions and flashpoints of her diverse, uncontainable home town The literature of Los Angeles is inextricable from the tradition of noir – from Raymond Chandler to Walter Mosley and Michael Connelly, the writers of this city have gravitated towards grit and darkness, turmoil and crime. I was born and raised in LA, and I am fiercely loyal to my home town. I love its depth and its sprawl, the neighbourhoods and communities that give it its diverse, uncontainable character. But it’s not all sunshine and harmony – LA is home to almost four million people, and inevitably people clash. Related: Unusual suspects: the writers diversifying detective fiction Continue reading... post comment

Tom Watson’s betrayal thriller – and other politicians who vent in fiction [15 Jan 2020|01:57pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/jan/15/tom-watsons-betrayal-thriller-politicians-fiction-the-house After quitting parliament over its ‘brutality’, Watson is co-writing thriller The House. Can we expect a tale about a deputy leader righting wrongs? Fresh from publishing his guide to weight loss, Downsizing, the former deputy leader of the Labour party, Tom Watson, is set to write a political thriller set in “a world where virtue is seen as a rare commodity”. Watson, who quit his position in November because of the “brutality and hostility” within Labour ranks, will co-write The House with historical novelist Imogen Robertson. Watson said it would “explore the themes that lubricate our political system: ambition and failure, trust and betrayal”, and introduce its readers to “heroes and villains engaged in a struggle for fame, power and revenge”. Continue reading... post comment

Audible settles copyright lawsuit with publishers over audiobook captions [15 Jan 2020|02:00pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/15/audible-settles-copyright-lawsuit-publishers-captions Seven publishers had sued the audiobook giant last July, claiming that its audio-to-text service Captions was unauthorised After months of back and forth, Audible has settled in a copyright lawsuit with major publishers over its plan to introduce captions to their recordings, a proposal that the publishing houses argued was simply reading. In July, the audiobook company owned by Amazon announced Captions, an additional function for the existing app that would allow customers to read the text as it was read, as well as looking up words and translating them. Captions had been slated to launch in September 2019. Continue reading... post comment

The Hidden History of Burma by Thant Myint-U review – dashed hopes [15 Jan 2020|02:00pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/15/hidden-history-of-burma-thant-myint-u-review Nearly a decade ago, Myanmar threw off its military dictatorship. But what has happened since is troubling When Thant Myint-U was eight he travelled from the US to Burma with his parents to bury his grandfather U Thant, the first non-European secretary general of the United Nations. But the funeral was not a family affair. A group of students and Buddhist monks seized Thant’s coffin and demanded a state ceremony from the country’s military overlords: the corpse became a rallying point for protests. Burmese troops overran the Rangoon University campus where Thant’s body had been held and killed many protesting students. Riots broke out against the army regime and hundreds were killed or imprisoned in the retaliatory crackdown. Myint-U’s parents were told to leave the country quickly. “I missed my fourth-grade classes,” Myint-U writes in The Hidden History of Burma, and instead “experienced firsthand a dictatorship in action”. Starker encounters followed over the years. After graduating from Harvard in 1988, Myint-U helped a group of Burmese dissidents who were planning a revolution from across the Thai border. As a historian, human rights campaigner and UN policy planner, he advocated for the brutally suppressed Burmese democracy movement through the 1990s and 2000s, while remaining undecided on the usefulness of economic sanctions. In the wake of Cyclone Nargis, he worked to convince the country’s generals to accept international aid and address the country’s abysmal poverty rates. After the dissolution of the junta in 2011, Myint-U was made an adviser in the Burmese president’s office. Continue reading... post comment

Oh what a night! Twitter brings £1,000 worth of orders to empty bookshop [15 Jan 2020|05:39pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/15/twitter-brings-1000-pounds-worth-of-orders-to-empty-bookshop Petersfield Bookshop had no customers for first time in 100-year history – until a sad tweet attracted 1,100 new followers An independent bookshop that failed to sell a single book on a rainy day this week has been inundated with customers after publishing pictures of its empty aisles on social media. The Petersfield Bookshop in Hampshire sent a melancholy tweet revealing that it had not welcomed one paying customer, probably for the first time in its 100-year history. Continue reading... post comment

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