A mini-roundup on a niche topic

July 10, 2024 2:26 PM

Small press books about writing, publishing, and creating art: Art of the Grimoire, The Long Run: A Creative Inquiry, My Trade Is Mystery, The Philosophy of Translation, and The Untold Story of Books.

These recent books join Catapult’s succession of craft books: 2019’s Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative (Jane Alison, Amazon; Bookshop); 2020’s Before and After the Book Deal (Courtney Maum, Amazon; Bookshop); 2021’s Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping (Matthew Salesses, Amazon; Bookshop); and 2022’s Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative (Melissa Febos, Amazon; Bookshop):


Art of the Grimoire: An Illustrated History of Magic Books and Spells by Owen Davies (Yale UP, 10 Oct 2023): A copiously illustrated global history of magic books, from ancient papyri to pulp paperbacks. (Amazon; Bookshop)

The Long Run: A Creative Inquiry by Stacey D'Erasmo (Graywolf, 9 July 2024): The author of The Art of Intimacy asks eight legendary artists: What has sustained you in the long run? (Amazon; Bookshop)

My Trade Is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing by Carl Phillips (Yale UP, 8 Aug 2023): An invaluable companion for any writer seeking to make the writing life a more complex and cooperative venture. (Amazon; Bookshop)

The Philosophy of Translation by Damion Searls (Yale UP, 29 Oct 2024): A deep dive into the nature of translation from one of its most acclaimed practitioners. (Amazon; Bookshop)

The Untold Story of Books: A Writer's History of Publishing by Michael Castleman (Unnamed Press, 2 July 2024): the first and only history of publishing told from a veteran author's point of view. (Amazon; Bookshop)


Previous roundups: 1 (no theme), 2 (challenging work), 3 (no theme), 4 (Pride), 5 (Juneteenth), and 6 (beach reads).

posted by joannemerriam (6 comments total)

I love books. I love books as reading material. I love books as objects. I love bookstores. I grew up wanting to be an author. I used to design books for a living. I thought working in publishing would be romantic.

Working in publishing WAS cool. But as in most things, you don't want to know how the sausage gets made. It's depressing how many awful books by terrible and untalented authors get published. It's sad that the majority of books that sell are worthless trash. And it's bewildering and terrifying that most books that get published fail to sell many copies at all. It's an industry full of guesswork and waste, and it breaks your heart a little to be on the inside.

I also learned that being a successful author has very little to do with writing and very much to do with hustle. I found other creative outlets that satisfy my brain's need to spin out stories, and I'm much happier NOT being a writer. I don't read as much as I used to. Being sucked into the portal of a book is disorienting, and I find it harder and harder to live in two worlds: my life, and my reading material. But especially when I was younger, reading was the only escape I had from a life I often found hard to endure. Books, real books, will always be important to me.
posted by rikschell at 2:51 PM on July 10 [2 favorites]

This is great. I'm about to order a couple of these. I'll add that my father and a family friend put together a great companion piece to Art of the Grimoire called The Book of Magic, which is a gazillion excerpts from magical texts and documents/artifacts going back to prehistory, with scholarly commentary by Brian (very smart guy).
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:09 PM on July 10 [1 favorite]

W. G. Sebald’s Emigrants was the first novel to show Alison how forward momentum can be created by way of pattern, rather than the traditional arc–or, in nature, wave [gbooks]

"The high seas, the trail of smoke, the distant greyness, the lifting and falling of the ship, the fear & hope within us, all of it...i can now live through again, as if it were only yesterday"
posted by HearHere at 3:50 PM on July 10 [1 favorite]

Oh man I want that Art of the Grimoire. If I'm good, I hope Santa gets it for me. Thanks for another excellent roundup.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 4:59 PM on July 10 [1 favorite]

Thanks, joannemerriam, love this list.

I recently heard of a non-small-press craft book forthcoming that doesn't sound like any other craft book I've read: Henry Lien's Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird: The Art of Eastern Storytelling. Currently the book I'm most looking forward to in 2025, though I'm sure other things will rise up to grab my attention, too.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:10 PM on July 10 [1 favorite]

I was going to include Ta-nehisi Coates' The Message, which comes out in October, but the press, One World, is not the Oneworld I'm familiar with but a Penguin imprint. Sneaky of them. But the book looks amazing.
posted by joannemerriam at 6:12 PM on July 10