Welcome to Dear Head of Mine, a weekly newsletter about books and other things

Who am I. Why are you here?

Dear Head of Mine,

Should I keep reading this? As an associate editor at one of New York’s big publishing houses, this is a question I often ask myself. Book editor is, after all, a profession that requires a possibly unhealthy amount of reading and thinking about what you’ve read; what you’re going to read next; what you should be reading; and if you should abandon reading the novel you’ve spent $30 on, which is a little boring, to pick up something else that might be better. The job is to read what’s good, what’s bad, what’s great, and what’s okay. It can get tedious. But all of this reading also, crucially, allows for a clearer gaze up at the vast universe of literature. In such a subjective profession, all you have is this type of qualitative information: examining over and over again the difference between A) what do I think of this book, and why, and B) what are other people saying about this book, and why?

Whether you’ve come to this newsletter with the goal to write, absorb, edit, understand, or sell books, Stephen King’s simple advice reigns for all of us: read a lot. This will also be the guiding mantra of Dear Head of Mine. I am going to read a lot and tell you a bit about what’s going on in the book world, which books are good, which ones are just okay, which ones are interesting, and maybe impart some insider takes and recommendations you won’t find in The New York Times Book Review.

“Do I have to do the reading?”

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Unlike high school English courses and very much like your average book club, you do not have to read any of the books mentioned to participate thoughtfully in Dear Head of Mine. As any book-mad reader or editor will tell you, books are a passion without end. A Dante-like task of reading for pleasure, for research, and for work that is not unlike reaching down to fill your cup and coming up each time feeling bloated and thirsty. My hope is that sharing my reading—as well as bald-faced takes on books I haven’t read—will save you time and help guide you in this proverbial sea of words, shedding some light on how books come to be in a business sense, and what makes a book worthwhile, or popular, or both.

“Books, huh?”

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Books are the fifth wheel of where art and entertainment meet—most people spend many, many, many more hours and dollars consuming music, tv/movies, video games, and whatever collective monstrosity news, journalism, the internet, and social media are part of. Long gone are the glory days of publishing—well before I was born—when The Godfather or Peyton Place could sell millions of copies out of the gate and be the center of everyday gossip and conversation, when authors could be celebrities and books were reference points even for the people who hadn’t read them. Now, 90% of US Adults watch television weekly, while more than half of all adults read less than five books per year. At best, the non-publishing people in my life will say something like “oh, that sounds familiar” about the title of a novel that has been on the bestseller list for 127 weeks.

Readers are often surprised to learn that we measure the sales of our very successful books in the thousands, not the millions. For all of their intellectual cache, books are a low-stakes endeavor. If I ever start to feel self-important or see someone in publishing acting like they are, I remember back to when one of the most significant authors of my generation was an answer on Jeopardy and the contestants—one of them a 38-game-winning super champ—let the clock run out in dead silence (“Who is Sally Rooney?”). Books have evolved into a somewhat niche interest that connects people in groups rarely larger than two or three at a time. Even spending my days surrounded by “book people”, we invariably end up talking about White Lotus after about five minutes of saying “I loved that book, too!” back and forth.

“…then why should I read this newsletter?”

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That said, although the world of books is kind of small, they are also kind of…important? In the attention-dry world of the internet, intellectual property, endless memes, shifting inside jokes, and snippets of music, books stand out as one of the last forms of art and entertainment where original and inventive storytelling and ideas still happen by necessity. At its core, the long, cohesive form of a book (both fiction and nonfiction) is not one that lends itself to rip-offs and copycats. This font of originality means that books tend to underpin culture in significant ways even if most people have little or no awareness of them: many of the movies or television shows you watch were probably a book first, your dinner conversation about the “10,000-hour rule” originates from a book, American society’s consciousness about the criminal justice system and mass incarceration started because of a book.

While attention spans and readership have dwindled over time, the impact of books on those who do reach past digital distractions often find themselves changed in ways that other art forms are actively losing their grip on. Once a great book gets in your mind, it lives there forever. Books are not the easiest form of entertainment to consume or share or analyze, but they are arguably the most fulfilling. Like with a book itself, I will consider this newsletter successful if it connects strongly with about five dozen people. And, like any writer, I start with an audience of one: Dear Head of Mine.

The Schedule

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Subscribing is entirely free. Enter your email address below and you’ll receive weekly updates on Tuesdays (the day new books are published). Here at Dear Head of Mine we (my head and I) will be covering the “biggest” news in books, read books by their covers, explain modern classics and their influence on future generations of books, muse about editing and writing, share great sentences, read very difficult novels a little bit at a time, and think and think and think about…

This is a hat that I bought at my local bookstore Books Are Magic; it embarrasses the people I’m with sometimes; the color works in October.

Bonus Book Recommendation

The book you should read first is Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle (my second copy of the book is just out of frame to the left in the picture above).