Archive - Jansplaining

Too much humor in novels isn't funny—it's just cutesy

5 comic novels by Nancy Mitford and others that treat you like an adult

Jun 17 • Jan Harayda

Letter from a Reader 6.15.25

The New Yorker magazine stumbles in its new book-recommendation newsletter, how Britain became 'as poor as Mississippi,' and an answer to: 'How many…

Jun 15 • Jan Harayda

New York Times Book Review Leads: The good, the bad, and the ugly #5

5 winners and sinners among the openers for reviews in the NYTBR

Jun 13 • Jan Harayda

Letter from a Reader 6.12.26

The genius of Gay Talese's classic 'Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,' how a bestselling author kept the joy in his stories for children, and a book-review…

Jun 12 • Jan Harayda

The trouble with 'The Book Club for Troublesome Women'

Women's lives change after reading 'The Feminine Mystique' in Marie Bostwick's soap-operatic fairy tale that co-opts the life of the publisher Katharine…

Jun 10 • Jan Harayda

Letter from a Reader 6.6.26

Gilbert Cruz is out as editor of the New York Times Book Review, and nobody should weep

Jun 6 • Jan Harayda

Letter from a Reader 6.4.26

Did The New Yorker magazine get played by a leaker hoping to sink the movie of Belle Burden's bestselling 'Strangers' with Gwyneth Paltrow?

Jun 4 • Jan Harayda

Letter from a Reader 6.1.26

Why first ladies' memoirs outsell their husbands', the water bottle as status symbol, and it's unfair to sum up Barbara Pym as a writer of novels about…

Jun 1 • Jan Harayda

May 2026

Letter from a Reader 5.29.26

A mailman says dogs aren't the worst problem, 3 journalism and publishing clichés to avoid, it's time to stop mangling Jane Austen, and Belle Burden…

May 29 • Jan Harayda

New York Times Book Review Leads: The good, the bad, and the ugly #4

Special anecdote-leads edition: 5 winners and sinners in a series intended as both media criticism and an entertaining source of ideas on how to write…

May 27 • Jan Harayda

Letter from a Reader 5.25.26

How tone-deaf is 'Strangers' author Belle Burden? She had $63 million in 'assets' and 'interests' but claims she feared losing her homes. Now she says…

May 25 • Jan Harayda

Letter from a Reader 5.23.26

A writer for The New Yorker exposes dubious claims in Belle Burden's 'Strangers,' a hit memoir set to become a movie with Gwyneth Paltrow

May 24 • Jan Harayda