It’s shocking to me how little attention the proposed merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster is getting …
Break Them Up
Grand Strategery
The Canada Council is in the midst of devising a five-year strategic plan that will influence its annual distribution of …
How to Be a Disaster
I’ve always believed it’s imperative that a book publisher grow. Not everyone agrees. Some houses seem quite happy to hold …
Living With Live Wires
I sometimes wish I’d grown up in a more interesting family, the kind with ancestors shot at dawn for their …
Ted Lasso, Meet Your Father
Last week Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal had this to say about “Ted Lasso,” an AppleTV comedy he …
History and le Carré
I’ve long believed the Nobel committee should bestow its laurel, at least once, on a genre novelist. Someone like Agatha …
This Dangerous Business
One of the things they never tell you about the book business is how much sitting is involved. Reading and …
My Interview with Santa
About a decade ago, in the midst of the financial crisis, I was editing Maclean’s magazine and looking for something …
Best of the Best of ’20
Everyone’s publishing lists their best books of the pandemic year. We’ve rounded up the roundups for your convenience, concentrating, as …
All the Latest on Random Penguins: Part II
The big news in the world of publishing this week had nothing to do with Jordan Peterson. Penguin Random House, …