Author: Rebecca Joines Schinsky

Pretty wild week in the news of the world, so let’s look at some good stuff, okay?

National Book Foundation Launches Book Rich Environment Initiative

Furthering its efforts to promote literacy and expand access to books, the National Book Foundation has launched the Book Rich Environment Initiative to provide books to underserved communities, colloquially known as “book deserts.” In partnership with the US Department of Education, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Urban Libraries Council, and the Campaign for Grade Level Reading, the NBF has secured more than 250,000 donated books from Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, and Macmillan, among others. Between the BRE Initiative and other programs, the NBF will have given away more than 300,000 books by the end of 2017.

4-Year-Old Power Reader is LoC’s “Librarian for a Day”

Daliyah Marie Arana was reading whole books on her own before her third birthday. Now, at four years old, she has read more than 1,000 books, including some college-level texts. This week, Daliyah and her family traveled from their home in Gainesville, GA to the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, where Daliyah spent a day with Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, and was named “Librarian for a Day.” It’s pretty incredible to see Hayden, the first woman and first black person to serve in the position, interact with a young girl who not only might want her job someday but who can now see that it is a real possibility. Representation matters.

2017 Tournament of Books Shortlist & Judges Announced

For the 13th year running, the Rooster prepares to crow! The Morning News has revealed the shortlist and judging panel for the 2017 Tournament of Books. As always, the list is a mix of literary bestsellers, critical darlings, and a few surprises. It’s hard to imagine anything beating Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad, but in a tournament where subjectivity and idiosyncrasy reign (to glorious effect), anything can happen. Things really start get interesting when the brackets and book-judge pairings are revealed, so stay tuned.

Thanks to Two Days Gone by Randall Silvis for sponsoring This Week in Books.

What could cause a man to suddenly snap and destroy everything he has built? This is the question that haunts Sergeant Ryan DeMarco after the wife and children of beloved college professor and bestselling author Thomas Huston are found slaughtered in their home. Huston himself has disappeared and so is immediately cast as the prime suspect.

DeMarco knows—or thinks he knows—that Huston couldn’t have been capable of murdering his family. But if Huston is innocent, why is he on the run? And does the half-finished manuscript he left behind contain clues to the mystery of his family’s killer?

Out-of-office notifications are the name of the game this week in publishing. With most offices closed for the holidays, news has been slower than slow. Let’s see what we can find.

Book Sales Get Christmas Week Bump

The holiday season started slowly for books – sales between Thanksgiving and December 18th were down 6% from last year – but last-minute shoppers came through to the tune of a 21% increase in unit sales in the week leading up to Christmas. Leading the bounce were juvenile fiction (perhaps thanks in part to the “something to read” part of the want/need/wear/read gift-giving trend this year?) and adult nonfiction (all hail the dad books!). Surprising absolutely no one, four of the six bestselling kids/YA titles were by J.K. Rowling.

NYPL Reveals Most Checked-Out Books of 2016

With more than 25 million (!) items checked out each year, the New York Public Library’s circulation data make for a fascinating peek into reading habits. Paula Hawkins’s Girl on the Train leads the NYPL’s top 10, which is, notably, dominated by backlist. Only one of the most checked-out books (When Breath Becomes Air) was published in 2016. This is interesting, as it may reflect a difference between what people are buying and what they are actually reading. Bonus: the NYPL staff have included readalike recommendations for each of the most popular titles!

Milo Yiannopoulos Gets $250K Deal from Simon & Schuster

Nothing like the last week of the year for dumping news you hope no one will notice. Simon and Schuster has brokered a $250K book deal with infamous white nationalist and Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos, because when someone is so offensive that even Twitter bans them, giving them a new platform for their dumpster fire is a super great idea!

Thanks to The Girl in Green by Derek B. Miller for sponsoring This Week in Books.

From the author of Norwegian by Night, a novel about two men on a misbegotten quest to save the girl they failed to save decades before.

“The Girl in Green is a Catch-22 for the twenty-first century. You’ll laugh so hard you’ll cry tears of blood.”—Madison Smartt Bell

Bit of a light news week as temperatures fall and the holidays turn up. Enjoy some potpourri!

Master List of “Best Books of 2016” Lists

For nine years running now, David Gutowski is aggregating every ‘best of’ list he can find at his beloved site Largehearted Boy. At writing, the list is more than 400 lists strong, with entries ranging from the usual suspects (best fiction, best memoirs, etc.) to the unexpected and esoteric (best historical geology books, for example). The breadth and depth of Gutowski’s collected lists is always stunning, and it serves as a nice reminder that in any given year, even the most voracious of readers only cracks the surface of the available and deserving material.

New Program Offers Croatian Readers 100,000 Free eBooks

A group of government agencies and private donors have partnered with ebook platform Total Boox to create Croatia Reads, a new program built on that offers Croatian residents and tourists alike free unlimited access to the 100,000 bestselling ebooks in the world. Details about how the list was compiled are few, and I would love to know more. This is the first experiment of this size and scope I’ve seen, and if it works, what amazing potential for making more books more available to more people!

NYPL Transforms Former Apartment into Teen Tech Center

In the early twentieth century, many branches of the New York Public Library contained hidden apartments to house custodians charged with shoveling coal to keep the furnaces running overnight. Thirty-two of the current branches once contained these apartments, though only a few remain, and the venerable institution has done all kinds of cool things with them. Most recently, the apartment in the Washington Heights branch was turned into a (now-open) center for after-school activities, media and computer programs, and more for teen patrons. Hard to think of a better way to bring a glorious old building into the present. (And here’s a free idea for the romance writers in the house: an early-20th-century romp between a bookish beauty and a library custodian who invites her up for a closer look at his….shelves.)

Book Riot Reveals 2017 Read Harder Challenge

This update is coming from inside the house! Book Riot has revealed the third annual Read Harder Challenge, created by founding contributor Rachel Manwill. As always, the challenge contains 24 tasks intended to help you expand your reading life and explore new genres, subjects, and perspectives. New this year are six tasks contributed by some of the Riot’s favorite authors, including Roxane Gay, Celeste Ng, and Daniel José Older. If you’re looking for a readerly resolution for the new year, look no further.

We’re giving away a $250 Barnes & Noble shopping spree. Go here to enter.