Come In From the Cold! Nota Bene 2019 Reviews

Salami tactics loom for Brexit trade talks Politico

Fascist vs Fascist in Israel Yasha Levine

The Secret Israel-Soviet Union War Nobody Knew About Haaretz 

Hundreds of Millions of Cable Modems Are Vulnerable To New Cable Haunt Vulnerability ZDNet

WELL: “President and the pimp”: Sun launches US edition with Clinton photos on Epstein’s “Lolita Express.”
       2019 in review at the complete review 

       The year that was at the site, in (some) numbers: 

       In 2019, 209 books were reviewed at the complete review, slightly down from 2018 (217). (The soft target each year is 200.) 

       You can find the 50 most popular reviews, 2019 here. (I've mentioned these previously, here.) 

       The most popular (of the not particularly popular) author pages were:

1. Amélie Nothomb
2. Patrick White
3. Murakami Haruki
4. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
5. Roberto Bolaño

       Just like last year, the top four were also the previous year's top four -- though in different order, with Nothomb coming out number one this year. 

       The most popular review-indices were for:

1. Far East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) literature
2. Books from selected Imprints and Publishers
3. French literature
4. Erotic, Pornographic, and Sex-related books
5. Eastern European literature
6. Mysteries and Thrillers
7. German literature
8. Books Written Before 1900
9. Latin and South American literature
10. Scandinavian literature

       The erotic index was the most popular in 2018, but it plunged to fourth in 2019; surprisingly, the index to Indianliterature fell all the way out of the top 10. 

       I received 437 review copies in 2019, a considerable (and very welcome) increase from the 384 received the previous year and the most since 2016. 
       The leading providers of review copies were mostly the usual suspects, with a particularly strong showing from university presses; Harvard University Press was propelled to the top spot in large measure by their various excellent bilingual classical series, beating out last year's leader New York Review Books, even though I received considerably more NYR titles in 2019 than 2018 (30, versus 23). 
       Big-five imprints contributed a fairly small number of titles -- though it was good to finally receive at least a decent selection of Pengun Classics (even if a considerable percentage were Simenons ...); World Editions was also a basically new source. 
       The top ten providers of review copies in 2019 were:

• 1. Harvard University Press (40)
• 2. New York Review Books (30)
• 3. Other Press (25)
• 4. Penguin Classics (19)
• 5. Oxford University Press (16)
• 6. Columbia University Press (14)
• -. New Directions (14)
• -. World Editions (14)
• -. Yale University Press (14)
• 10. Dalkey Archive Press (13)