{"id":2085,"date":"2025-02-24T20:20:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-24T20:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=2085"},"modified":"2025-02-24T20:20:00","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T20:20:00","slug":"reader-i-divorced-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=2085","title":{"rendered":"Reader, I Divorced Him"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.<\/em><\/p>\n

Reader, I Divorced Him<\/h2>\n
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In Book Forum, Hermione Hoby considers the stuffed shelf that is the contemporary novel\/memoir of divorce<\/a>. And while she doesn\u2019t inspect All Fours<\/a> directly, much, if not all, of her thinking applies there. She sets up the inquiry I think with welcome clarity:<\/p>\n

Why, when divorce in the US and the UK is at last widespread, destigmatized, and more legally unimpeded than ever, should it have this literary salience? The question becomes more puzzling when one notes that the books in question are overwhelmingly authored by a certain kind of woman: she is white, straight (or at least separated from a man), cisgender, middle class, and in her thirties or forties\u2014a professional writer before her divorce, she remains one afterward. She belongs, in other words, to one of the demographics whose members are least likely to be socially punished or economically penalized for getting out of a marriage. I\u2019m friendly with some of these women\u2014a friendliness based, in large part, on admiration for their work. But what puzzles me is that divorce has acquired increasing literary significance to the very degree that marriage has forfeited social meaning.<\/em><\/p>\n

The thing I might quibble with here is actually the prevalence and popularity of these books might suggest a lessening literary significance, which I consider distinct from popularity. That these authors want to write them, and that there seems to be a decent readership for them, doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that they are significant. Rather, that the divorce narrative, with its regular beast of early happiness, growing dissatisfaction, decisive moment of change, bumpy aftermath, and (usually) some sort of eventual recovery, is now common enough to be its own mini-genre. And like the happy ending of a romance novel, the experience of reading through the trials and tribulations of a divorce story are in their own way satisfying. The lack of introspection Hoby identifies in these books then is, as they say, a feature, not a bug. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

These Books are Absolutely Unreadable. That\u2019s the Point.<\/h2>\n

In The New York Times, Molly Young surveys an exhibition the Center for Book Arts titled, \u201cThe Best Kept Secret: 200 Years of Blooks.\u201d<\/a> And no, that is not a typo. A \u201cblook\u201d is a book-object: sometime made to look like a book, but isn\u2019t. One has a wooden snake that emerges when you open it. Many others are for storing non-book things. Certainly worth a visit if you can get there it would seem for the kind of person reading this email. I would also add that while I still subscribe to the NYT in print, seeing the little videos alongside this story on the web is a real delight. <\/p>\n

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Enjoying what you\u2019re reading? Support the work we do as an independent media resource by becoming an All Access member, and unlock our entire library of articles and a growing catalog of community features. Sign up now for only $6\/month!<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Join Us for a Live Recording of The Book Riot Podcast<\/h2>\n

Rebecca Schinksy and I (Jeff O\u2019Neal), will be at Powell\u2019s Books in Portland, Oregon on the night of March 13th for a live recording of The Book Riot Podcast<\/a>. Our topic: the most recommendable books of the 21st Century\u2026so far. We have a lot of fun with topics like this, and we hope to make a fun and informative evening for book lovers of all kinds. If that sounds like the kind of thing you (or someone you know), might be interested in, you can register here<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Book Collecting, Bibliomemoir, and JANE AUSTEN\u2019S BOOKSHELF with Rebecca Romney<\/h2>\n

Rebecca Romney joined me on the most recent episode of First Edition<\/a> to talk about her new book, Jane Austen\u2019s Bookshelf.<\/a> They talk about personal book collecting, rediscovering literary history for yourself, a few of the writers Austen admired, and more. Jane Austen\u2019s Bookshelf<\/a> is out now. Find First Edition here<\/a>, or wherever it is you get your podcasts. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Reader, I Divorced Him In Book Forum, Hermione Hoby considers the stuffed shelf that is the contemporary novel\/memoir of divorce. And while she doesn\u2019t inspect All Fours directly, much, if not all, of her thinking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}