Author: Rebecca Joines Schinsky

Uncle Joe is On the Way

Following in the footsteps of their presidential partners, Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, have secured a joint book deal with Macmillan imprint Flatiron Books. The contract reportedly went into at least seven figures and will include two books from the former veep and one from Jill. No release dates have been set. If you need us, we’ll be over here hoping for a the Bidens will team up with the Obamas for a joint book tour of unspeakable coolness. (Do it for the memes, Joe!)

First “Official” Black Lives Matter Memoir in the Works

Speaking of exciting developments at Macmillan! Patrisse Cullors, a cofounder of the Black Lives Matter movement, has inked a high-six-figure deal (with cowriter and journalist asha bandele) for her memoir, When They Call You a Terrorist. St. Martin’s Press executive editor Monique Patterson won the book at auction, competing against six other houses. Angela Davis will write the foreword.

For the hat trick: This week, Macmillan launched Reading Without Walls, an initiative to encourage kids and their parents, teachers, and librarians to expand their literary horizons. If you’ve seen Book Riot’s own Read Harder Challenge, you know we love this idea.

A Map of Aural Tendencies

This week in Cool Interactive Tech with Questionable Methodology: Audible released data (kind of) about the relative popularity of various audiobook genres across the U.S. Have a scroll and see how much your state digs horror, sci-fi, humor, and more. We’d love to have a peek at the raw data that went into this, but given Amazon’s notorious reluctance to release actual numbers for, well, anything, we’ll have to be content with interesting approximations.

Thanks to Strong is the New Pretty by Kate T. Parker for sponsoring This Week in Books.

Girls being fearless. Girls being silly. Girls being wild, stubborn, and proud. Girls whose faces are smeared with dirt and lit up with joy. Strong Is the New Pretty celebrates, through more than 175 memorable photographs, the strength and spirit of girls being 100% themselves. Real beauty isn’t about being a certain size, acting a certain way, wearing the right clothes, or having your hair done (or even brushed). Real beauty is about being your authentic self and owning it.

The Kids Are All Right

What began as a first-grade class project has become a best-selling book! Last year, Nia Mya Reese of Birmingham, Alabama wrote a book about how to deal with an troublesome sibling. She and her parents turned it into a summer project and recently published the finished product, How to Deal With and Care For Your Annoying Little Brother, and it has flown up the charts. At this writing, Nia Mya holds the #1 and #3 spots in the “siblings” and “school-age children” categories respectively. We’re not sure how many copies have sold, but we do know this: Nia Mya, you’re our hero of the week.

Black Eyed Peas to Publish Original Graphic Novel

Entertainment Weekly reported this week that the Black Eyed Peas (yes, Fergie and the gang) have partnered with Marvel to write an original graphic novel. Masters of the Sun – The Zombie Chronicles follows hip-hop fan Zulu-X and his crew as they take on an alien God who attacks Los Angeles and turns the residents into zombies. Aside from the fact that this whole shebang sounds like it was spit out of the Comics Industry Mad Libs Engine (and Marvel Editor in Chief Axel Alonso’s dubious claim that “Few artists have done more to embed hip-hop in popular culture than will.i.am and the Black Eyed Peas”), this one is weird and interesting enough that my curiosity might overwhelm my extreme side-eye. The cover is pretty rad, too.

Pride and Prejudice and Neo-Nazis

Speaking of unexpected combinations and extreme side-eye! Members of the alt-right movement have begun quoting Jane Austen and referring to her novels as “blueprints for a white nationalist “ethno-state.” (Whatever the hell that means.) Anyone who has actually read Austen knows that she wasn’t really about that white male patriarchal system, so I guess the real headline here is (shocker) neo-Nazis don’t read.

Thanks to Things I Should Have Known by Claire LaZebnik for sponsoring This Week in Books.

From the author of Epic Fail comes the story of Chloe Mitchell: a girl on a quest to find love for her autistic sister, Ivy. Ethan, Ivy’s classmate, seems like the perfect match. It’s unfortunate that his older brother, David, is one of Chloe’s least favorite people but Chloe can deal, especially when she realizes that David is as devoted to Ethan as she is to Ivy. Winsome and witty, this is a novel about sisterhood, autism, and first love. Things I Should Have Known will steal readers’ hearts and remind us all of a different kind of normal.