While I wrote almost nothing in 2025, I read incessantly. One activity feeds the other, of course, so perhaps 2026 will find me beyond the painful slump as I really would like to refer to myself as a “writer” once again, authentically. I’ll begin the road back by telling you about two books I read, with a post dedicated to each. They’re both about editors, without whom, it’s fair to say, there’d be no books to buy. Or at least no good ones.

I’m obsessed—in a good way—with the history of book publishing in 20th Century America. With all the reading I’ve done since I fell in love with books at age eight, with all the reviews and author events and book clubs and one-on-ones, with all the Instagram and Facebook posts, miscellaneous blogs, vlogs, tweets, threads and whatever… I’ve hardly ever seen or heard a reader thank, or even ask about, an editor. Yet for every book we cherish, there’s an editor (often more than one, actually) whose talent and persistence made a difference. If you read the acknowledgements when you finish a book (sometimes, I read them first), you have a sense of the editor’s importance and the teamwork it takes to get a great read to market. For every book we love, there’s an editor we ought to thank.

The first book is The Editor, subtitled How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America, by Sara Franklin. I know that many readers shy away from nonfiction, and that’s a shame, because a well done work of nonfiction will read like fiction anyway, as this one does.

In case you are unfamiliar with Judith Jones, she is widely known as Julia Child’s editor—but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Without her, Americans may never have read giants like John Updike or Sylvia Plath or Anne Tyler. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl might never have been published in the US without Judith Jones’ relentless efforts. Her interest in international gastronomy changed the culinary landscape of this country. In addition to the inimitable Julia, Judith Jones brought M. F. K. Fisher to our bookshelves and bedside tables, and the cookbooks of Madhur Jaffrey, Edna Lewis, Claudia Roden, and James Beard to our kitchens.

Thanks to Franklin, I felt as if I were walking through Judith Jones’ life with her, from her childhood to her first publishing job, to her time in Paris (a story in itself), to the roadblocks she faced in a man’s world, to the height of her career, to her final days in bucolic Vermont. I cried when I finished this elegant, captivating book. When I read the acknowledgements (don’t skip them!), I cried again.

It’s not just about the Oxford comma, you know, or an out-of-place colloquialism. Editors require more than finely tuned literary sensibilities. Judith Jones put her ego aside and focused on building trusted relationships with her authors, tolerating their highs and lows, carrying them through the disappointment of rejection and the struggle to produce a work that is not only a literary achievement but also a marketable commodity, seeing them through personal triumphs and crises. Being an editor was a commitment far beyond a career for her, and there were times when the pressure clearly took its toll. I am so grateful for her, and for the subject of my next post, Katharine Sergeant White, long-time fiction editor of The New Yorker. They have much in common.

Note: I had read The Tenth Muse, My Life in Food Jones’ memoir, some time ago. I liked but didn’t love it—if I am remembering correctly, something about it fell a bit flat with me. I probably owe it a second try.

Note: I’m a huge proponent of independent book stores; thus, my links are to bookshop.org. If you don’t have a local book store, this link is a great way to support independent booksellers.

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