I recently read Beach Read by Emily Henry and Yellowface by R F Kuang.
Those are very different of course, but I loved the fact that both of those had main characters who were writing a book.
I’d love recommendations on other books like this! Where the MC is a writer, anything set in the publishing or writing world, things like that. I know about Book Lovers and have a hold at my library on that one. Thanks in advance!
by becbecbecbecbec_
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**The Plot** by Jean Hanff Korelitz. The protagonist is a teacher of a creative writing class. Mystery/suspense. It starts slow but the pace picks up after Ms. Korelitz finishes describing all the work a writer goes through to publish.
**84 Charing Cross Road** by Helene Hanff. It’s not a novel but rather a collection of twenty years of correspondence between a New York writer and a London bookseller.
Written in the 1970s, it was also turned into a movie.
*HHhH* by Laurent Binet. It is a novel about an author who is writing about Operation Anthropoid – the successful operation by the Czech resistance to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich in 1942.
The narrative of the operation itself is interlinked with the author’s researching and writing of the book.
writers and lovers by lily king
Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz.
The Dead Are Gods by Eirinie Carson was excellent!
**The Bestseller** by Olivia Goldsmith. It follows several POV characters as they complete their novels and try to get them published. It’s deep and insightful, and the POV characters include some very well done unreliable narrators.
Afterworlds by Scott Westereld, the story alternates between a new writer and the story that she is writing.
Modern classic recommendation: The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth is a tragicomic reflection on history and the Jewish American literary tradition.
{{In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri}} is her story about the process of writing in another language (Italian).
The Finlay Donovan series by Elle Cosimano. The main character is an author who gets mixed up in a murder for hire scheme.
{{The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo}} by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
A journalist is interviewing Ms. Hugo, an Old Hollywood star, so that the journalist can write her life story.
{{Younger}} by Pamala Redmond Satran which is about an editor.
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor.
{Escorted by Claire kent} Fmc is a romance writer, who hires and escort to get real experience.
{Smut by Karina Halle} fmc and mmc are writers, writing a book together. It tells alot about KU indie publishing.
{Professor by Charlotte stein} fmc is a writer student and mmc is her Professor.
{Fighting words by Rs grey} fmc is from the publishing company, mmc is the moody writer and her client.
{Book lovers by emily henry} both are literary agents and editors but it has alot more to do with the publishing industry than beach read.
Any chance you want to read something short and funny? Andre Gide’s **Marshlands** is one of the funniest novels— really a novella — that I’ve ever read. It’s a satirical send-up of a certain type of writer, and the literary scene in Paris that he inhabits. He’s supposedly writing a book called Marshlands, but he spends most of his time going to Parisian salons and dallying with his lover while talking about writing Marshlands.
Most of us have known someone like this, who is a lot better about talking about the book they’re going to write than actually sitting down and writing it. And how at a certain point you talk to yourself out of being interested… As he says despairingly at one point, after a friend gently suggests that he’s a bit bored of hearing about it, “No one will ever be bored by Marshlands as I have been bored by Marshlands.”
The Finley Donovan series is funny and twisted with the main character being an author and her life getting interwoven in hilarious ways.