Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Seven percent of Americans only read digital books. – Pew Poll
In 1950, the American Book Publishers Council, American Booksellers Association, and Book Manufacturers Institute established the National Book Awards. Since then, the National Book Foundation was created and supports the event each year. National Book Awards Week that recognizes authors across five categories who represent the best of American literature. None of the five winners of the 2020 were photography books, so even though I didn’t publish a single book last year the chances that I would win an award is zero anyway. Heck I didn’t even read any of Photo.com’s list of Best Photo Books of 2020, although some of them look really interesting.
In fact when you do an Internet search for “photo books” the overwhelming number of hits are for books that you make using your own photos. Nevertheless one of the photo books that I can enthusiastically recommend to you is Jeff Bridges: Pictures Volume Two. The first book, if you can find a copy, is pretty good as well. These books contain more than 30 years of his personal photography that were made on film sets, some of which I never heard of, with Bridge’s Widelux F8 panoramic film camera. Even if you don’t like movies, the images are always interesting and sometimes breathtaking, and if you love movies, as I do, it’s nirvana.
Even though technology adds pressure to the print world and fewer adults read as much as they did 50 years ago, books continue to be relevant. One bright spot in the reading world is young readers. More young adults and teens are reading books than older generations. Despite the release of the first e-reader in 1997, young readers still prefer printed books over digital. Interestingly, the Young People’s Literature category was added to the National Book Awards in 1996, recognizing the growing influence that young readers have on literature.
#BookAwardsWeek
If you can find it in your heart during this week of Thanksgiving, one way to support this blog is to purchase some of my books by clicking the link to BOOKS and purchasing one or more of mine from Amazon. It won’t win me any awards, but you will win my thanks.
