The students are trickling back into Boston and Cambridge. The light is shifting – gently but inexorably – toward fall. And (sniff) I’ve hugged two of my favorite baristas good-bye in the last two weeks.
Change is in the air, as it always is at this time of year. I’m writing this post, belatedly, to tell you about another change: we’ve decided to let the sun set on Great New Books.
My friend Jennifer, the site’s founder and our fearless leader, invited me to be part of the GNB team three summers ago, and I said yes right away. I knew several of the women who wrote reviews for GNB, and I loved its mission: sharing the best new books we could find with the world.
I enjoyed writing my quarterly-ish reviews and reading my colleagues’ writing. I quickly fell in love with the smart, honest, well-read, funny group emails we’d all exchange every week, trading book recommendations and keeping each other updated on our lives. And I eventually took over the site’s Instagram account, which was a fun outlet for the #bookstagram photos I love to snap.
This spring and summer, several of my fellow reviewers decided to step down: new jobs, urgent writing projects and shifting family priorities meant they needed to rearrange, reevaluate. I was thinking of stepping down, myself: I’m also spinning a lot of plates these days. We were approaching the five-year anniversary of GNB, and it felt like the right time to decide: revamp and rev up for the next five years, or let it go?
We decided, as you know by now, to let it go. It was a bittersweet decision: I love books and I love community, and GNB has provided a lot of both for me. Those friendships won’t disappear because the site is going quiet, but this is still the end of something that’s meant a lot to me. I’m writing this post to name that: to mark an ending, and to give thanks for what has been.
Check out the final GNB post for the links to our various homes on the Internet, and you can still browse the site for our past book recs of all kinds. And as always, if you have great books to recommend, I’d love to hear.
cakes, tea and dreams 
I am so sorry to learn of the demise of Great New Books. It was such a beautifully written blog and always featured the best new books. Thank you to all involved. And good luck to all.
Thank you, Dorothy. It is bittersweet. I’m glad to know you enjoyed GNB.