| | | | | (Scribner; Popeye drawn by cartoonist E.C. Segar; photo illustration by Ron Charles/The Washington Post) | | Farewell to Arms and Copyright. If you’ve been waiting since 1929 to publish your own edition of Hemingway’s classic war novel, happy days are here again. On Jan. 1, 2025, a shelf of famous books – and the song “Happy Days Are Here Again” – will fall into the public domain. With the copyrights finally expired, anyone can reprint William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury” or turn Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” into an opera of one’s own. For more than a decade, Jennifer Jenkins at the Duke Law School has been celebrating January 1 as Public Domain Day (details). Each year, that day marks the end of the 95-year U.S. copyright protection for another collection of works created when our grandparents were sneaking off to dance the Charleston. (The song “Ain’t Misbehavin” will lose its copyright protection on Jan. 1, too.) Agatha Christie’s “The Seven Dials Mystery” and John Steinbeck’s first novel, “Cup of Gold” grab the headlines, but most works from 1929 are now entirely forgotten. Lucia Trent’s “Children of Fire and Shadow”? Phyllis Austin’s “Small Beer”? Anyone? Anyone? For Jenkins, that’s the great tragedy of our ever-expanding copyright law. Congress originally offered just 14 years of protection (too short); now U.S. copyright law confers almost a century of exclusive use (too long). That endless lockdown period is tremendously valuable to a few corporations (I’m lookin’ at you, Mickey Mouse), but it permanently consigns the vast majority of books to some forgotten legal attic where their copyright owners often can’t be identified. And so, books that might have been reprinted or adapted while they still had a faint pulse are, instead, buried alive until no one remembers them at all. If you doubt the value of the public domain, Jenkins points to two of this year’s biggest cultural successes: the movie “Wicked,” based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel inspired by L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” and Percival Everett’s “James,” based on Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Who knows what old treasures are slowly being dissolved by the acid of time while we wait for their nonagenarian copyrights to expire? Meanwhile, 11 days from now, when you welcome in the new year, remember to congratulate the original version of Popeye: “I yam what I yam, and now I yam free!” ❖ Books to screens: - “A Complete Unknown,” starring Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, opens on Dec. 25 in theaters. This biographical drama is based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book, “Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties.” (Don’t think twice, Dylan fans: ‘A Complete Unknown’ is all right.)
- “The Count of Monte Cristo,” starring Pierre Niney, begins playing today in select U.S. theaters (trailer). The movie, in French with English subtitles, is based on Alexandre Dumas’s classic novel from the 1840s. (“The Count of Monte Cristo” marked a watershed in critic Michael Dirda’s life.)
- “Homestead,” a post-apocalyptic drama from Christian-themed Angel Studios, opens today in theaters and launches a new streaming series that looks like MAGA porn (trailer). When a nuclear bomb goes off near Los Angeles, society breaks down, and well-armed preppers finally get to rub their 300 pounds of powdered eggs in everybody’s face. The movie is based on a novel with the better title “Black Autumn,” which is the first volume in a 10-book series by former Green Beret Jeff Kirkham and Jason Ross, co-founders of ReadyMan, which promotes “time-tested man skills to help inspire members to be prepared for the unexpected in our modern era.”
- “Nosferatu,” starring Bill Skarsgård as the undead count, opens on Christmas. Weeee! The movie is the latest remake of the 1922 German film adapted from Bram Stoker’s 1897 “Dracula” (trailer). Washington Post writer Travis M. Andrews says “Nosferatu” director Robert Eggers is driving himself mad trying to drive us mad (profile).
|  | | Top 10 books checked out from the New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library and Queens Public Library in 2024. | | Check it out. The New York Public Library has provided some fascinating insight into what people have been reading in 2024. For the first time, the New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library and Queens Public Library issued a citywide list of the top 10 checkouts for the year in all formats (e-books, audiobooks, physical books): - “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,” by Gabrielle Zevin.
- “Happy Place,” by Emily Henry.
- “Fourth Wing,” by Rebecca Yarros.
- “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store,” by James McBride.
- “Demon Copperhead,” by Barbara Kingsolver.
- “Lessons in Chemistry,” by Bonnie Garmus.
- “Hello Beautiful,” by Ann Napolitano.
- “Remarkably Bright Creatures,” by Shelby Van Pelt.
- “Yellowface,” by R.F. Kuang.
- “The Covenant of Water,” by Abraham Verghese.
If you’re a guy who makes his living by reviewing new books, the first thing you notice about this list is that it contains no new books. While I’m hyperventilating, Brian Bannon tries to get me to calm down. He’s chief librarian, Merryl and James Tisch Director of the New York Public Library. He points out that four of these titles were connected to the library’s citywide book club, which makes unlimited copies available. Also, he notes, “these titles make up about one percent of the overall circulation. People were checking out all of the new stuff, too!” But Bannon raises a point I need to consider more often and more deeply: “We’re under the impression that all people are reading is the new stuff that’s coming out, that we see reviewed. But the reality is that isn’t the case. And actually, to me, as a reader and as a librarian, a list like this is actually really good news.” It demonstrates the persistence of books — which is, after all, one of their best qualities! “They can retain interest,” Bannon says. “They can retain relevance. And as someone who’s interested in the longevity of our democracy and society, the fact that people are still interested in ideas that were put out there five, 10, 20 or even two years ago is a good thing.” So how might that insight shape a newspaper book review section that wants to serve readers’ abiding priorities instead of publishers’ quarterly sales goals? I don’t know. But it’s a good question. ❖ |  | | McSweeney’s; background photo shows a torn photo of Bashar al-Assad inside the Presidential Palace on Dec. 10, 2024. (Photo by Ali Haj Suleiman/Getty Images) | | Last month, Syrian American journalist Alia Malek and her publisher were trying to figure out how to generate any interest in her upcoming anthology of contemporary Syrian fiction. They needn’t have worried. History was about to launch an uncannily well-timed publicity campaign. On Dec. 8, Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia as rebels swarmed into Damascus. Four days later, Malek’s collection “Aftershocks” was released by McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. “It is an insane coincidence,” Malek tells me, “I could have never known.” These short stories, along with excerpts from novels and short play scripts — many translated into English for the first time — provide an immersive experience of what Malek calls the “shameful normalization of horror.” As we’ve seen in China and the old Soviet Union, life under political repression and constant surveillance alters language at the genetic level. Traveling in Syria as a journalist in 2011, Malek noticed that “ordinary people have spent decades perfecting small and coded talk.” Naturally, those verbal practices shape a culture’s literature, too. Unable to speak candidly on the ground, fiction writers ascend into allegory and magical realism. In her introduction, Malek notes, “While the style may extend from the inability to write freely, the insertion of the fantastical into our plane of existence aptly mirrors the absurdity of the last thirteen years.” You can see that fantastical element running through almost every piece in “Aftershocks.” “The Man Who Is No Longer a Father,” by Ibrahim Samu’il, feels almost Poe-like with its elegantly unnerving plot: For three years, a little boy tends to a photo of his imprisoned dad, but when the man is finally released and comes home, the boy ignores him and keeps speaking to the photograph. In a Beckett-like excerpt from Maha Hassan’s novel “The Kurdish Maqam,” a woman waits in an endless line for a residency permit while a guard shouts over the loudspeaker, “No talking while waiting. You’re always under surveillance.” In “The Things That Heaven Cannot Tell People,” Mustafa Taj Aldeen Almosa describes two doctors who create a macabre kind of postal service by sewing letters and valuables into dead bodies before returning them to warring factions. “Unlike imagination,” the narrator says, “the grotesqueries of war seemed to have no limits.” Earlier this week, as notorious torture chambers and death cells near Damascus were being exposed to the world, Putin fanboy Tucker Carlson asked economist Jeffrey Sachs, “Has anyone ever explained why Americans should hate Assad?” With incredulous laughter, Carlson added, “Some ophthalmologist from London is a bloodthirsty dictator?” Efficiency expert Elon Musk responded to this moral idiocy by tweeting, “Very interesting interview.” In fact, Assad’s atrocities have been documented by journalists, human rights activists and refugees for decades. Now, “Aftershocks” offers readers the kind of insight into Syrians’ interior lives that only fine fiction can provide. (Order a copy.) ❖ |  | | I’ve spent my career trying to focus on books I can recommend. But let’s be honest: For all its bright stars, the publishing sky is filled with space junk. In a previous era, a colleague and I toyed with the idea of publishing a list of the year’s 10 Worst Books. Selecting from such vastness was one challenge, but, also, I couldn’t get over the sense that such a list would be gratuitously cruel, a fine way to spoil New Year’s Eve for a few unlucky writers. After all, at the very least, panned authors can assume that savage reviews are like grotesque mushrooms that shoot up in the yard, spark some morbid delight and then quickly molder back into slimy pulp. “Pay no attention to hostile reviewers,” the poet David Lehman writes. “Many of them are bullies who think that delivering pain is a mark of authenticity.” Nevertheless, this year I can’t help but take a little satisfaction in being included, along with my colleague Becca Rothfeld, in Literary Hub’s list of the Most Scathing Book Reviews of 2024. (Becca bravely took on Lauren Oyler’s “No Judgment”; I reviewed Kristi Noem’s “No Going Back,” which meant I was shooting fish in a barrel while Noem was shooting her dog in the head.) If I can’t bring myself to single out the 10 worst books of 2024, I can at least de-stress with a coloring book titled “Books That Should Never Exist.” This compendium of imagined duds reads like the slush pile in publishing hell. The titles are weird, tasteless, sometimes downright dangerous, e.g.: - “Things to Do With an Egg Beater”
- “It’s Not Us, It’s You: A Guide for Troublesome Threesomes”
- “Discover Your Passion for Octopus Wrestling”
- “101 Backyard Nuclear Projects”
- “Erotic Christmas Tree Decorating”
- “Never Pay a Dentist Again”
Everyone on staff at Microcosm Publisher pitched in with their ideas. Then illustrator Gerta Oparaku Egy created a mock cover for each one with the perfect retro vibe. (Order a copy.) So grab your Crayons, pull up a chair and be grateful that you can color in these books instead of reading them. ❖ |  | | A stone tablet inscribed with the Ten Commandments. (Courtesy of Sotheby’s) | | Works by God continue to command divine prices. On Wednesday in New York, a marble tablet containing the Ten Commandments was auctioned off for more than $5 million. According to the Book of Exodus, God wrote the original version of the Commandments with His own finger on two tablets and gave them to Moses on Mount Sinai. Since then, the Commandments have appeared in many reprint editions and been widely revered, if not widely adhered to. Sotheby’s presented the 115-pound marble artifact as the oldest extant stone tablet of the Ten Commandments. It dates to the Late Roman-Byzantine period (ca. 300—800 CE). During “ten minutes of intense bidding,” the price quickly ascended far beyond the expected range of $1 to $2 million. The anonymous buyer reportedly will donate the tablet to an Israeli institution. In a presale statement, Sotheby’s said the tablet had been unearthed in 1913 during construction of a railroad in the city of Yavne in the Land of Israel. For many years, it lay underfoot as a paving stone in a workman’s house. Its significance was announced in 1943 by archaeologist Jacob Kaplan (details). Curiously, the Third Commandment — “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain” — is missing from this tablet, which is good news for almost everyone I know. Also, the tablet concludes, “I am commanding you today on Mount Gerizim rise up to God.” According to Sotheby’s, that reflects the ancient Samaritans’ belief that this location — in what is now called the West Bank — is “the true and divinely ordained site for worship.” A story last week in the New York Times quoted two scholars who expressed reservations about the authenticity of the Yavne Tablet. In the words of Jeremiah, they might have asked, “To whom shall I speak, and give warning, that they may hear?” In the end, their concerns did not appear to have any effect on Wednesday’s auction. |  | | (Random House; background photo by Ron Charles/The Washington Post) | | This month marks the 80th anniversary of the only children’s book by Aldous Huxley. In 1944 while he was living in California, Huxley wrote “The Crows of Pearblossom” as a Christmas present for his little niece, Olivia. It’s a wry tale spiked with retribution — a far cry from the therapeutic empowerment books that lull children to sleep nowadays. At the start, Mrs. Crow discovers that every afternoon while she’s at the grocery store, a giant rattlesnake slithers out and eats her latest egg — 297 eggs a year! That night, she insists her husband go down into the snake’s hole and kill him, but Mr. Crow prefers to consult with Old Man Owl. Together, the two male birds cook up a deadly plan that exploits the rattlesnake’s hunger. Considering the way Mr. Crow addresses his wife — “You talk too much. Keep your beak shut” — Mrs. Crow might have been better off flying the coop, but in the final scene, she’s happily using the snake’s body as a clothesline for diapers. (As Huxley wrote in “Brave New World,” “Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery.”) “The Crows of Pearblossom” was almost lost to history — the original manuscript was destroyed in a fire — but Huxley’s neighbors had kept a copy. That eventually led to a commercial publication in 1967, four years after Huxley died, with illustrations by Barbara Cooney. In 2011, the story was republished with illustrations by Sophie Blackall, who would go on to win two Caldecott Medals. But this edition, too, has since vanished
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