We’re giving away our favorite Books of 2018…so far. Go here to enter for a chance to win, or just click the image below. Good luck!
Happy 38th, Harry!
Snapchat wished Harry Potter a happy 38th birthday with a Bitmoji lens. Snapchatters hopped onto their broomsticks for rounds of Quidditch through the new augmented reality feature. It looks like it’s still available, so choose your House, and catch that Golden Snitch!
The Rise of “Brainy Books”
The Guardian wrote about the rise of “brainy books,” that is, “’long-tail’ nonfiction titles, often works on politics, economics, history or medicine that attempted to synthesise or challenge received thinking on the subject.” The Bookseller was the first to notice the publishing phenomenon, which it called the “brainy backlist,” and the piece notes the enduring success of Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari as an example. Here’s their list of the best brainy books of this decade, led by Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge.
Asian Authors Challenge the West’s Dominance of Fantasy
OZY explored the rise in interest in epic fantasy centered around East Asia written by Asian authors. The article pointed to Jin Yong’s Legends of the Condor Heroes trilogy, which is getting its first English translation, as well as Ken Liu’s The Grace of Kings and JY Yang’s Tensorate series, among other books that have found recent success in the West. And it notes some factors that may be encouraging the publication of these works, including the shift from paper to digital submissions, which makes it easier for international authors to submit their work, according to Carl Engle-Laird, associate editor at Tor Publishing.