book gossip: love island's jeremiah is a mommy...of a book club
and more!
I’m straying from my normal content today, and I’m just as confused as you are. But I love gossip and I also love books and I want to talk about both! I can't say I'm planning to make this a regular thing — and who needs it, there are seasoned, professional people doing literary news roundups already — but who knows, maybe I will! This is just for fun, for now.
So, while there was actual serious bookish news happening this week, and just actual serious news you should be paying attention to, here's some book gossip you may or may not have missed. Feel free to wade into the drama with me, or tell me what I've missed in the comments.
I'm starting with my favorite bit: Jeremiah Brown from this summer's season of Love Island, fresh out of the villa, has started a book club.
Apparently, while we were all being victimized by Peacock, Jeremiah was reading comments from some of his 2 million (!) new followers as he pondered what the hell to do with his life now that he presumably never has to do real work again. One of them suggested that he join the ranks of celebrities with a book club.
Because this was all through TikTok, the books that the 100,000+ members of his new book club — dubbed Jeremiah's Reading Room — voted to read are unsurprisingly all BookTok darlings, the meaning of which is completely lost on him. He’s collected his followers’ suggestions so earnestly, even endearingly calling them nerds. I take issue with him using "nerds" to describe people reading Colleen Hoover, but it’s okay, Jer.
I am kind of obsessed with this; the primitive side of my brain that allows the bar for men to be in hell thinks it's cute when a himbo reads, I'm sorry to admit. And because the bar is in hell, it's likely only going to be a man that can make other men read, so if Jeremiah can expand beyond his primarily female audience, he is kind of doing a public service. Particularly because the first pick is Song of Achilles, famous gay book, and I just know some men will pick it up now despite having girlfriends who have unsuccessfully gentle-parented them toward general fiction for years.
Just to highlight the influence of Love Island, Song of Achilles, already extremely successful, is benefiting from the same financial boost that other, more established celeb book clubs give their picks. According to the NYT, Song of Achilles moved from the top 500 to the top 100 in Amazon’s sales.
Even still, as of July 11, Jeremiah had yet to start the book. I’m not confident that this book club will outlive any of the relationships that have come out of the villa this season.
Forgive me if I get the details of this next one wrong — it’s kind of hard to tell what exactly the order of events is here. I am not a journalist, though I kind of felt like one when I had to recruit
, one of the last remaining people on bookstagram whom I love and bookish content creator extraordinaire, as an official on-the-record source to voice note me the facts.Everyone is mad at Ali Hazelwood, which feels like a perpetual state for her? This time it's because she's blurbed recently released novels, one by Julie Soto and the other by Brigitte Knightley, that either are Harry Potter fan fiction or are leaning into it as a marketing technique. Both are sitting comfortably atop the NYT bestsellers list with Goodreads ratings over 4.0 as we speak.
It’s a red flag within the trans community and with allies because of, obviously, the association with Supreme Leader of TERFs JK Rowling. People on instagram (and the cursed space of threads) are either upset with these women or are pointing out that they do a lot of good in their community, and then people are debating further whether an individual's positive community engagement can overshadow any harm they either create or perpetuate.
Whether we promote Harry Potter fan fic or not is a valid concern; after all, here we are, still somehow fucking talking about Harry Potter and its creator. It's impossible to say where readers’ associations will lead. Perhaps the majority of HP fan fic readers aren't then turning around and directly lining the pockets of JK Rowling, but they are keeping her relevant, which isn't insignificant in a world that would be so much better if it never had to hear from her again.
As Yasmine explained to me, the conversation online has mostly moved away from “is this harmful to the trans community” — which should be the only thing we care about here — and is now mostly just people shouting at each other about cancel culture, how we don't want authors to write anything anymore, how we are forgetting their humanity — an especially raw sentiment for her fans right now, as she was essentially bullied off of instagram last month for, drumroll, weighing in on the Hunger Games love triangle from 15 whole years ago.
But what's happening here isn't exactly canceling either. There's a difference between canceled and admonished. Hazelwood could only be truly canceled if she offended her prime audience: cisgender white women. Until the majority of this demographic feels personally victimized, Hazelwood's books will continue to do numbers.
She hasn’t spoken about this, and I'd be willing to bet that, regardless of whether she feels she needs to address it or not, it's primarily because this isn't affecting her at all. Sure, it’s a safe bet that she feels burned by the rabid users of bookstagram and booktok, but it’s also true that many of her readers are not basing their financial support of her on whether she supports trans people or not, and we see this time and time again across all genres.1
Case in point: In more Ali Hazelwood news, Lili Reinhardt has been cast in the movie adaptation of The Love Hypothesis, with exec producer credits, and has already started marketing on TikTok. See, she's going to be just fine. If this is what being canceled looks like, I'm sure you can find a lot of authors lining up to be canceled next!
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
There was a bookish edition of The NYT Magazine’s column The Ethicist this week: A Woman in My Book Club Never Reads the Books. Can I Expose Her?
Essentially, AITA for assigning moral superiority to whether someone has read a book or not and needing everyone to know that I'm one of the superior ones? And, is she the asshole for not owning up to the fact that she doesn’t read the books and instead adopts the opinions of reviews she reads online? An ethical dilemma for the modern times.
Both people in this question annoy me; who among us hasn't read the book before and showed up anyway, and also who doesn’t form opinions based off of other opinions?
However, I am also hoping I someday secure an invite to a book club in which someone is messy enough to point fingers like this. I unfortunately might need to be cast on a Real Housewives franchise first, but it’s not too late for that.
And from Elle: This Year’s Trendiest Vacation? A Reading Retreat
If you’re online in book spaces, you have no doubt seen the cool girls at reading retreats, either with their friends, at a real resort, or on sponsored trips because brands are realizing that reading is cool now.
The most trendy ones (and the ones that this Elle piece focuses on) seem more like if your corporate retreat were a literary salon instead, but I do not mean for that to be as derogatory as it sounds. They are a bit conference-y, though, because they often take place in hotels and feature speakers and group discussions.
I think these book-themed retreats are adorable, though as someone who is very good at doing nothing, I'm not sure how I feel about structured and themed vacation time. Then again, sometimes you just want someone to tell you what to do so that your brain can empty itself.
I’ve also seen some informal retreats floating around on insta and TikTok — meaning, a bunch of friends get together and decide to take an aesthetic trip where they read together and film content. If I or my friends had the wherewithal to host reading retreats with a level of planning that could rival Pinterest's best bachelorette parties, or if I could afford to fly to some affluent resort, I’d buy into it too.
I don't know! Basically what I'm saying is, someone invite me to a luxurious reading retreat so I can see what the fuss is about myself.
I'll finish up with a highlight of the book published this week that I'm most intrigued by: Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language by
(@etymologynerd on insta).
Language is ever-evolving, and there is no “right” or “wrong” (despite my day job being to enforce English usage, oops). It’s obvious that social media has changed the course of language to anyone who’s spent five minutes within a social media algorithm, but I’m excited to read an entire book dissecting just how our speech has been influenced. Etymology is just so cool, and had I gone the route of grad school instead of entering the workforce immediately as said language enforcer, I would have gotten a degree in linguistics. And what a time for it!
If you too like etymology/linguistics, please drop me some book recs!
If you liked this, let me know! If you hated it, let me know too! The likelihood of me doing this theme for a future newsletter is dependent on how large the void I’m screaming into is, and how loudly it shouts back.
If you are an Ali Hazelwood fan who does care about trans people and you’re now mad at me, let me stop you right there — this isn’t about you! I’m talking about the ones who will do NASA-level math to avoid uncomfortable discussions of public figures they love!
FWIW, I can pass on the bookish gossip.
jeremiah’s book club is actually the funniest thing to come out of this season of love island