Ayelet Waldman Has No Idea How Non-Notable It Is to Write a Novel

Literarily famous emotion-haver and interior decorator Ayelet Waldman got mad this week at the news that the novel she'd published this year, Love & Treasure, had failed to make the New York Times Book Review's list of 100 notable books of 2014.

OK, so. Obviously this is very jarring to an author, to see a big long list of booksMANY bookson which one's own book has not been included.

But the true and terrible thing is: One hundred books is not so many books! Waldman is not fond of math, but let's do some arithmetic: The New York Times Book Review publishes weekly. There are 52 weeks in a year. So that means that fewer than two books a weekfrom the population of books that have been reviewed in the Book Review (agent, on phone: Great news! You're in the Book Review!)make the cut.

And half of those 100 Notable Books are nonfiction, which leaves only 50 slots for novels and short stories and poetry combined. So we're down to less than one novel a week.

This can be hideously depressing, if you write books. If you write one book, even. At some point in the processafter filing a first draft, maybe, or while awaiting page proofsan author walks into a bookstore and looks around at the sheer number of other books there: book after book after book, on table after table, shelf after shelf. And the same abundance that may previously have been inspiring becomes horrifying; the author senses very acutely what it means to be one grain of sand on a very large beach.

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Ayelet Waldman Has No Idea How Non-Notable It Is to Write a Novel