This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
This originally appeared in our Today in Books daily newsletter, where each day we round up the most interesting stories, news, essays, and other goings on in the world of books and reading. Sign up here if you want to get it.
_____________________________
Paul Yoon wins The Story Prize for The Hive and the Honey
The Story Prize has both a very cool name and a surprisingly large purse: 20 grand for the winner and two finalists even take home 5k apiece (as much as you get for the Pulitzer). The Hive and The Honey was the short story collection I saw the most chatter about last year, so this is not a compete surprise to me. What was the last short story collection to have a bit of a breakout? 10th of December? If you asked me to name the three best-selling short story collections of the last five years, I would go 0-for-3.
Even as FOURTH WING and IRON FLAME Continue to Fly off Shelves, ONYX STORM is coming.
This will be the third book (in two years!) of Rebecca Yarros’ Empyrean saga (can we all just agree to call it The Fourth Wing series? No one knows how to spell or say Empyrean). Both of the first two book remain in the top 5 best-selling books on the charts, with little to no sign of slowing down.I don’t think it is a stretch to guess that Onyx Storm will join them there when it is published in January I can’t recall this kind of cadence in any smash book series: we are in uncharted waters here. I was talking to a publishing pro this week and they described this series as having “sucked all the oxygen” out of the book buying world. Makes me wonder if it will burn itself out faster as well.
I See That You Have Committed a Literary Allusion
Sneakily interesting column by A.O. Scott on literary allusions, both in terms of their relatively recent development in titles, though of course quoting and poetic allusions go back much further, and their murky purposes. Because other than as a demonstration of familiarity with the quoted text, what is the work of an allusion? It doesn’t elevate the new text nor does it really edify the extant one. Perhaps providing pleasure for the allusion-getter is reason enough. I got it, therefore I am.
