Trends in Books

Happy New Year, everyone! Let's make 2026 a good one.

I frequently complain about everyone’s fixation on cell phones these days. I’m as guilty as anyone, though, and often find myself googling books I’m reading or shows I’m watching for insights.

As I wrap up the final season based on Elena Ferrante’s “Brilliant Friend” series, I stumble upon an article discussing Elena’s greatest influence—the Italian writer Elsa Morante. Both writers ignored the popular trends in writing of their day and carved their own paths.

I found this reassuring and consistent with what my daughter tells me when I complain. “I don’t care for twists at the end,” I’ll say, “but readers seem to love them.”

Or “I love to read and write about what’s going on inside my characters’ heads, but editors and publishers don’t like introspection.”

My daughter says, “Go with your gut feeling.”

I know she’s right, but rejection and criticism are hard for me to take, as much as I admire those who ignore them and forge their own way. I’m working on that, and I want to follow the lead of Elena Ferrante, whose work I so admire.

There’s a line in the tv version of The Lost Child that struck me as I watched last night. Lenu, the narrator, remarked that her last book was bad because it was too carefully structured and too organized…that she had yet to learn how to imitate the complicated, chaotic, disorganized banality (my paraphrase) that constitutes real life. This is my goal, one most likely beyond my capabilities in this lifetime. Still I can try. And keep trying…

I’ve always been a fiction reader and writer. Yet, as I age, I find I appreciate memoir more than I used to. I like to hear stories from real people, not just famous ones, about what they’ve learned in their journey through life.

I’m planning to start Matthew McConaughey’s Green Lights; and, yes, I do realize he’s a famous person. Publishers seem to prefer those, and so they are easier to find. Here, once again, we come full circle…back to current trends in the writing and publishing world. Oh, well. 

A central character in my novel, The Ticket, is fourteen, an age when most of us suffered frequent agonies over things we’d done or said, how we looked, or what other people thought of us. You can watch a two-minute trailer for The Ticket: https://vimeo.com/50187275
https://www.amazon.com/Ticket-Debra-Coleman-Jeter/dp/B0BZBB4TS8/ref=monarch_sidesheet