Time to clear the saved posts and put them to good use by sharing them with all of you. Here’s a load on all things related to one of my great loves: the writing and reading and buying and selling and sharing and learning from books.

Fleet Street is colonising the American newsroom

By the time the next president of the United States is sworn in after what will be a highly contentious election, the people in charge of major American news outlets will be as follows: CNN chief Mark Thompson, Wall Street Journal editor Emma Tucker, Bloomberg News editor John Micklethwait, Associated Press chief executive Daisy Veerasingham, New York Post editor Keith Poole, Daily Beast executive editor Hugh Dougherty, and Washington Post editor, Robert Winnett. All have been given the same task: save the American news industry. All are British.

Why Christians Should Care About Good Writing

Christian writers should work at their craft, becoming excellent in their work, the same way other artists and tradesmen improve at theirs. Quality work validates the sincerity and the passion of the worker. When a Christian writer pursues excellence, he shows by the effort that he really believes this stuff!

What You Read Builds Who You Are

As we read, and encourage others to do so, including our children, may God help us to renew our minds, set our minds on things above, and love God with all our hearts and minds. May we put our roots down deep, and experience the joy of discovery and the satisfaction of mental and spiritual growth that prepares us for times of suffering.

Why the “decline by 9” in kids pleasure reading is getting more pronounced, year after year.

Most alarmingly, kids in third and fourth grade are beginning to stop reading for fun. It’s called the “Decline by 9,” and it’s reaching a crisis point for publishers and educators. According to research by the children’s publishers Scholastic, at age 8, 57 percent of kids say they read books for fun most days; at age 9, only 35 percent do.

I’d rather have an investor than a publishing contract

I’d rather own 51% of my work than none of it.

No one buys books

I think I can sum up what I’ve learned like this: The Big Five publishing houses spend most of their money on book advances for big celebrities like Britney Spears and franchise authors like James Patterson and this is the bulk of their business. They also sell a lot of Bibles, repeat best sellers like Lord of the Rings, and children’s books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Yes, People Do Buy Books

Still, books endure. Publishing is still chugging along, not just in the big 5 publishers—which is mostly what these stats are about—but also in indie and small presses where much of the best writing is published. If you want to keep the books coming, well, keeping buying them and/or checking them out at your local library.

Jane Austen for the Lads

A few weeks ago, I put out a post on X to find out whether there are any guys reading Jane Austen, and received more than a few responses indicating that not only are the lads reading her novels, they are loving them—and they are not embarrassed to say so.

To my shame, I was surprised. Without realising it, I had swallowed the Hanksian typography willingly—thinking to myself, extremely patronisingly, that I would need to persuade these philistines out of their underlying sexist attitudes to the Queen of the Comedy of Manners. As it turns out, the lads came out in force to show me how wrong I was. I came to X expecting to meet a bunch of blockheaded John Thorpes, and found a gaggle of Henry Tilneys instead. Forgive me, man-readers, I have sinned.