Sara Nelson
Sara Nelson is an American publishing industry figure who is an editor, book reviewer, consultant, and columnist. She is currently the editorial director at Amazon.com. Nelson is notable for having been editor in chief at the book industry's chief trade publication Publishers Weekly from 2005–2009 during a time of wrenching restructuring and industry downsizing. After that, she was book editor at Oprah's O Magazine. Her book So Many Books, So Little Time was published in 2003. Her views have been widely reported in numerous publications such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today, and she has appeared on television broadcasts including CBS's The Early Show. She has written for the Wall Street Journal and the Huffington Post about publishing industry trends and has been described as a "lively presence within the book publishing industry." She is an extensive reader and has been described as a lover of books.
“Why bother with other people's worlds made of words? was his philosophy.”
“Reading's ability to beam you up to a different world is a good part of the reason why people like me do it in the first place---because dollar for dollar, hour per hour, it's the most expedient way to get from our proscribed little "here" to an imagined, intriguing there". Part time machine, part Concorde, part ejector seat, books are our salvation.”
“You know you're in a bad patch when the most interesting part of the book you're reading is the acknowledgments page.”
“Clearly she knew that between book lovers, a novel is not a novel is not a novel. It's a symbol, an offering -- and sometimes a test”
“I m not about to tell him that I am just like Anna and Emma, an adulteress. My books are my secret lovers, the friends I run to to get away from the daily drudgeries of life, to try out something new, and yes, to get away, for a few hours, from him. He doesn't need to know that my books are the affairs I don't have. ”
“...if I've learned one thing in my decades on earth, it's this: Don't argue with your lizard brain; it knows you better than you know yourself.”
“When things go right, I read. When things go wrong, I read more.”
“But my subconscious mind--the part I've heard writers call the lizard brain--could and did: it told me to reach for Anne Lamott or Edith Wharton or Calvin Trillin instead. And if I've learned one thing in my decades on earth, it's this: Don't argue with your lizard brain; it knows you better than you know yourself.”
“Allowing yourself to stop reading a book - at page 25, 50, or even, less frequently, a few chapters from the end - is a rite of passage in a reader's life, the literary equivalent of a bar mitzvah or a communion, the moment at which you look at yourself and announce: Today I am an adult. I can make my own decisions.”
“Explaining the moment of connection between a reader and book to someone who's never experienced it is like trying to describe sex to a virgin.”