This is the first test email. I’m setting it to publish at 11:30am Eastern, and will schedule Sailthru to send at noon.
Wheeee!
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Big Books in Busy Fall Publishing Season
It’s the biggest time of year in books. Most of the book-buying happens in the fall, and there are always major titles coming out in anticipation of holiday buying. Many media outlets are rounding up their picks, so I’ve gathered a few of them here for your perusal. A round-up of round-ups, if you will.
The Wall Street Journal’s Books Every Geek Should Read This Fall
Amazon’s Big Fall Books Preview
The Huffington Post’s 20 Books You Need on Your Shelf This Fall
BuzzFeed’s What Book Should You Read This Fall? Quiz
Entertainment Weekly’s 55 Books to Read This Fall
You might also be interested in the Fall Books episode of our own All the Books! podcast.
What Will Obama Write?
President Obama is already of course a best-selling writer, but it seems that his most interesting days as an author will likely come after he leaves the White House. Apparently, President Obama still has one book left on his existing contract with Crown (an imprint of Penguin Random House), though that contract was from before he was elected, and it seems unlikely that those terms will be met (either ripped up, re-negotiated, or otherwise altered to reflect his enormous sales potential). But the most intriguing detail here is that President Obama has always wanted to write a novel. Books by former presidents are nothing new, but a literary novel by one is news indeed. Here’s keeping our fingers crossed.
Alabama Willing to Put People in Jail for Library Fines
Under funding pressure, the Athens-Limestone Public Library in Athens, Alabama will begin enforcing an ordinance in which patrons who “fail or refuse to return” library materials are subject to up to $100 in fines and/or up to 30-days in jail.
The library reports that it has over $200,000 in overdue library materials outstanding and that it would much rather receive the overdue materials than enforce the ordinance. The ALPL’s move runs counter to many recent amnesty efforts from some public libraries to combat the same problem.
Thanks to Still a Work in Progress by Jo Knowles for sponsoring This Week in Books.
In a return to middle-grade fiction, master of perspectives Jo Knowles depicts a younger sibling struggling to maintain his everyday life when his older sister is in crisis.
Noah is just trying to make it through seventh grade. The girls are confusing, the homework is boring, and even his friends are starting to bug him. Not to mention that his older sister, Emma, has been acting pretty strange, even though Noah thought she’d been doing better ever since the Thing They Don’t Talk About. The only place he really feels at peace is in art class, with a block of clay in his hands. As it becomes clear through Emma’s ever-stricter food rules and regulations that she’s not really doing better at all, the normal seventh-grade year Noah was hoping for begins to seem pretty unattainable. In an affecting and realistic novel with bright spots of humor, Jo Knowles captures the complexities of navigating middle school while feeling helpless in the face of a family crisis.
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September New Books Megalist
It may technically be September, but it’s still sunny and 80 degrees out here, so as far as I’m concerned, it’s still summer reading weather. And there are so many amazing books being released today that are perfect for outdoor reading! It’s an embarrassment of book riches (plus the new Ransom Riggs just came out!!!) And on this week’s episode of the All the Books! Rebecca and I talked about some more great new releases out today, such as The Story of a Brief Marriage, Mischling, and Hidden Figures.
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Angel Catbird Volume 1 by Margaret Atwood, Johnnie Christmas, and Tamara Bonvillain.
Margaret Atwood’s first original graphic novel!
Internationally best-selling and respected novelist Margaret Atwood and acclaimed artist Johnnie Christmas collaborate for one of the most highly anticipated comic book and literary events of 2016!
A young genetic engineer is accidentally mutated by his own experiment when his DNA is merged with that of a cat and an owl. What follows is a humorous, action-driven, pulp-inspired superhero adventure—with a lot of cat puns.
Features bonus content by David Mack, Matt Kindt, Tyler Crook, and more!
Lady Cop Makes Trouble by Amy Stewart
Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer
Perfume River by Robert Olen Butler
Nicolas by Pascal Girard
Mischling by Affinty Konar
One Half from the East by Nadia Hashimi
The Graces by Laure Eve
The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood by Belle Boggs
Leave Me by Gayle Forman
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
To Be or Not to Be: That is the Adventure by Ryan North
Closed Casket: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery by Sophie Hannah and Agatha Christie
The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters by Laura Thompson
Razor Girl by Carl Hiaasen
Girl Mans Up by M-E Girard
Fire in My Eyes: An American Warrior’s Journey from Being Blinded on the Battlefield to Gold Medal Victory by Brad Snyder and Tom Sileo
Best. State. Ever.: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland by Dave Barry
Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids by Nicholson Baker
Against Everything: Essays by Mark Greif
Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy
Part Wild: A Writer’s Guide to Harnessing the Creative Power of Resistance by Deb Norton
Into the Sun by Deni Ellis Béchard
The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life by John le Carré
A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age by Daniel J. Levitin
The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies
Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies by Ross King
Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly
His Final Battle: The Last Months of Franklin Roosevelt by Joseph Lelyveld
The Revolutionaries Try Again by Mauro Javier Cardenas
Everfair by Nisi Shawl
Revolution’s End: The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control, and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA by Brad Schreiber
Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace by Jessica Bennett
She Made Me Laugh: My Friend Nora Ephron by Richard Cohen
The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam
Dear Mr. M by Herman Koch (Author), Sam Garrett (Translator)
Death’s End by Cixin Liu
Blackacre: Poems by Monica Youn
Cloudbound by Fran Wilde
The Perfect Girl by Gilly Macmillan
Swimming in the Sink: An Episode of the Heart by Lynne Cox
Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine by Damon Tweedy (paperback)
A House of My Own: Stories from My Life by Sandra Cisneros (paperback)
Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick (paperback)
Loving Day by Mat Johnson (paperback)
Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder
The Strange Case of Rachel K by Rachel Kushner (paperback)
YAY, BOOKS! That’s it for me. If you want to learn more about books (and see lots of pictures of my cats), or tell me about books you’re reading, you can find me on Twitter at MissLiberty, on Instagram at FranzenComesAlive, or Litsy under ‘Liberty’!
Stay rad!
Liberty
Welcome to September, YA fans!
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Ghostly Echoes by William Ritter.
In the third volume of the highly addictive New York Times bestselling Jackaby series, Jenny Cavanaugh, the ghostly lady of 926 Augur Lane, has enlisted the services of her fellow residents to solve a decade-old murder—her own. Abigail Rook and her eccentric employer, R. F. Jackaby, dive into the cold case, starting with a search for Jenny’s fiancé, who went missing the night she died. EW.com calls the series “fast-paced and full of intrigue.” It’s “Sherlock Holmes crossed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” says the Chicago Tribune.
As you’re reading this, your newsletter writer is deep in the desert, soaking in the last few weeks of summer….and uninterrupted reading time. That means this week’s newsletter is dedicated to catching up on the links of interest. Dig in!
- First: did you know that we have a new YA-based tote bag in the Book Riot Store? This rad tote, with a quote from Nova Ren Suma’s The Walls Around Us was created for the first YA Book Mail Box, but we decided we’d put it in the store, too. Check it out and snag one. If you’re curious, it’s very big and has a nice pocket inside — it’s perfect for toting your library or bookstore hauls, some notebooks, pens, your phone, and other goods.
- A Monster Calls, the film based on the book by Patrick Ness (which might lean more middle grade than YA), is getting pushed back by a couple of months. Here’s info on the new release date and the latest trailer.
- Jennifer Yuh Nelson is on as the director for the adaptation of The Darkest Minds. Yeah lady director! Yeah lady director who is a woman of color!
- Speaking of female directors, Lumberjanes has one, too.
- Remember the announcement of YA X-Files books? Here are the covers for what will be hitting shelves early next year.
- In Italy, their young adults are getting nearly $600 to spend on books. This is awesome.
- Itching for some nostalgia reading? Here’s a piece from Broadly about our collective obsession with The Baby-Sitters Club. One of our Book Riot contributors just wrote a piece of interest, too, recommending books to the members of the BSC.
- Malorie Blackman’s Naughts and Crosses is being adapted by the BBC. This is a huge deal for UK YA — Blackman has a massive and devoted following. (It’s always fascinating to me to see how different the reception is in the UK or in Australia as opposed to the US and vice versa!).
- There are two more books slated for the wildly popular “Ember in the Ashes” series.
- 20,000 copies of Jason Reynolds’s books will be given out to kids. So great.
- There are more questions to be asked about this than answers to be had, so stay with me here. There is a proposal — not a written book yet — for the YA audience about The Donner Party which has already had its rights snapped for film? And it’s from Paper Lantern Lit (in basic terms, a book packager like Alloy that comes up with ideas and hires writers for them…think going for “Pretty Little Liars” type popularity and ubiquity). I don’t know how I feel about such a tragic, horrifying event being…commodified like that? And it’s not even a book yet! But the movie rights have been sold? “The Hunger?” Like I said, questions.
- Getting ready for the spring 2017 YA books? Here’s a preview from Publishers Weekly (& hey! I spot a familiar name there!).
- Marvel’s Runaways is getting a Netflix deal. This series was always hugely popular in my libraries.
- YA author Corinne Duyvis is writing a Guardians of the Galaxy novel.
And because we’ve had a lot of YA writing over on Book Riot recently, let’s catch up with it:
- YA book recommendations for fans of Stranger Things. This was such a fun list to write!
- YA book covers worth loving….especially because they feature girls of color on ‘em!
- A wee bit biting but also not incorrect (& also clearly written with love!), here’s a look at fandom according to YA fiction.
- 25 YA paperbacks for your fall reading pleasure. That’s backlist, baby.
- YA books with shifting POVs.
- A round-up of YA authors who literally rock . . . since they’re musicians.
- An early peek at some intersectional YA hitting shelves in 2017.
- And finally, an interview and look behind the scenes of cover design with Dave Caplan, Creative Director at Little, Brown. This entire series of interviews is outstanding for cover and design nerds.
May your books be fantastic and your end-of-summer delightful. We’ll be back with another installment of “What’s Up in YA?” in two weeks!
We invited our speakers to tell us a little bit more about themselves in a brief interview, and the answers have started coming in. We can now report that of responding speakers, the majority are very open in their peanut butter preferences, but split down the middle on writing style. Who is the peanut butter hater? Find out here. Don’t have your tickets yet? Get them for $20 off!
Atticus told Scout to delete the adjectives and she’d have the facts, so we’ll skip the “awesome” and “rad” this time around and give you just the facts too. Our new limited-edition tees inspired by To Kill a Mockingbird are here, and they are truly limited-run. Get one before they’re gone.
And don’t forget! The next Book Mail boxes will ship out in September. See the contents of previous boxes and join the waiting lists now.
This week is full of Book Riot Live action. We’ve revealed our first batch of panels, and what a fine bunch they are! We’ve got live podcasts and discussions about humor, writing craft, making change, and more. And today is your last shot at VIP tickets. If you haven’t gotten your ticket yet, GO FORTH — you have through midnight tonight, August 31, to grab the VIP passes with all their lovely perks (including first crack at RSVPs to limited-seating panels), and you can get $20 off on top of that using code BOOKNERD.
Baton Rouge School Library Destroyed in Historic Floods
There are many heart-breaking, jaw-dropping stories coming out of Louisiana in the wake of recent destructive flooding there. As is often the case in these kinds of situations, there is destruction of many kinds and help needed in many ways.
Glen Oaks Elementary lost its entire library collection. The school librarian there, Trey Veazy, is asking for donations to help refill the shelves for the new school year. They’ve set up an Amazon wishlist and are open to receiving mailed books as well:
Glen Oaks Park Elementary School
Attn: Trey Veazey
2401 72nd Avenue
Baton Rouge, LA 70807
Drive to Turn Langston Hughes Home into Cultural Center
The brownstone where Langston Hughes lived the last decades of his life is a national historic landmark, but that doesn’t mean it is insulated from a still-gentrifying real estate market in Harlem. Worried that his house would be turned into high-end condos, Rene Watson, director of the I, Too, Arts Collective, decided to try to do something about it.
After speaking with the owner of the building, she has launched a fund-raising drive to turn the the townhouse into a cultural center for the neighborhood. Under a lease agreement, the center would renovate and outfit the building for public use and sign an initial three-year agreement. The drive’s goal in $150,000 and there are a few days left in the campaign.
Penguin Random House Opens “Penguin Shop”
Penguin Random House Canada is opening a small (158 square feet, small) store on the first floor of its Toronto office tower. Featuring Penguin-branded merchandise and a rotating selection of about 300 titles, PRH Canada imagines the store as part reader-engagement and part R&D lab.
The store’s concept seems to me part and parcel of other company stores located in corporate buildings (the NBC store in Rockefeller Center comes immediately to mind). These outlets are there to sell stuff, to be sure, but as much as anything they are about establishing a brand and identity. And in publishing, Penguin’s iconic logo and classics series comes just about as close to a real consumer brand as exists.
There are always more books that need buying, so we have another $100 of spending money on Amazon to giveaway. Go here to enter, or just click the image below…
Well, August, it’s been fun. I’m sad to see you go. But the arrival of fall means BFB: big fall books! On this week’s episode of the All the Books! Rebecca and I talked about some of the books coming out in the last half of 2016 that we are excited about, including I’m Judging You, The Mothers, and Children of the New World. As for this, the second-to-last day in August, it’s exciting because the sequel to An Ember in the Ashes, A Torch Against the Night, is finally here! And there are these other books I’m going to tell you about it 3…2…1…
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Portugal by Cyril Pedrosa.
Comics creator Simon Muchat is struggling to find purpose in his existence. Bitter and apathetic towards everything, he gets a chance to travel to Portugal where the roots of his family lie. After an absence of more than 20 years Simon finds himself rediscovering the sounds and smells of his childhood, the radiant warmth of something forgotten. Having soaked up the atmosphere of his fatherland, and driven by the desire to find out the secret behind his family name, Simon sets on a melancholic quest for identity that helps him rediscover his passion for life.
Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown
Joanna Gordon has been out and proud for most of her years in high school. But when her radio evangelist father moves the family to Rome, Georgia, he asks her something unfair: lay low in her new school and pretend to be straight. Though she reluctantly promises, that agreement is tested when she meets Mary, the friend of a sister. This is a fabulous read! It’s a smart, sexy, funny book at queerness and teens and religion, and a refreshing take on what it means to be yourself. More, please.
Backlist bump: Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan
The Nix by Nathan Hill
One of the year’s biggest debuts, both literally and figuratively, The Nix is a sprawling, funny (and sad) story about the relationship between a college professor and his mother. Samuel hasn’t seen his radical hippie mother since he was a young boy, but when she shows up in his life, asking for help, he decides to give it to her. Helping her means revisiting both their pasts, and learning things about his mother and himself he never realized. If you love big, occasionally self-indulgent literary fiction (and I mean that in a good way), this is perfect for you!
Backlist bump: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Tell Me Something Real by Calla Devlin
At first you think this is a novel about three beautiful sisters helping their sick mother as she is treated for cancer, narrated by the middle sister. BUT THEN IT TURNS INTO SOMETHING ELSE. Explaining it would give it away, so let me just say: READ IT, READ IT, READ IT! This book is another example, like A.S. King novels, where I feel books shouldn’t be labeled as ‘young adult’ but ‘books for humans’ instead. PS – Don’t forget tissues.
Backlist bump: The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
The Subsidiary by Matías Celedón (author), Samuel Ritter (translator)
When the subsidiary offices of a major company suddenly lose power, the employees are locked inside. But a loud speaker message inexplicably tells them to keep working in the total darkness. One worker uses his rubber stamp to keep a record of the ordeal and the horrors that occur as the days go on and no one comes to rescue them. The book itself is told with a stamp, a clever gimmick. I read that Celedón hand-designed this book with a stamp he bought in a bookstore, but I don’t know if it gave him the idea, or if he bought it to bring the idea to life. I’m soooooo curious!
Backlist bump: Multiple Choice by Alejandro Zambra (author), Megan McDowell (translator)
YAY, BOOKS! That’s it for me today – time to get back to reading! If you want to learn more about books (and see lots of pictures of my cats, Millay and Steinbeck), or tell me about books you’re reading, you can find me on Twitter at MissLiberty, on Instagram at FranzenComesAlive, or Litsy under ‘Liberty’!
Stay rad!
Liberty
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Audiobooks!: August 25, 2016
This week’s Audiobooks! newsletter is sponsored by Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty.
Six responsible adults. Three cute kids. One small dog. It’s just a normal weekend. What could possibly go wrong? In Truly Madly Guilty, #1 New York Times bestselling author Liane Moriarty takes on the foundations of our lives: marriage, sex, parenthood, and friendship. She shows how guilt can expose the fault lines in the most seemingly strong relationships, how what we don’t say can be more powerful than what we do, and how sometimes it is the most innocent of moments that can do the greatest harm. This can’t miss audiobook is read by Caroline Lee.
Hello, bookworms! I’ve been all over the map with my listening this summer, and it’s gotten me thinking about the interplay between story and narrator. I’ve abandoned several great stories with ho hum narrators, as well as ho hum stories with great narrators. But then sometimes you hit the jackpot with a spectacular book read by a spectacular narrator, like Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers, read by Prentice Onayemi.
In Behold the Dreamers, it’s 2008 and Jende and Neni have immigrated to New York from Cameroon to grab their little piece of the American dream. Jende gets work as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers, and Neni is in night school to become a pharmacist. As Jende and Neni watch Clark’s work and home life start to crack, so too does their idea of what it means to be an American.
As narrator, Prentice Onayemi shows a fantastic range that’s so necessary for this book, seamlessly shifting from Cameroonian chauffeur to wealthy financial executive; Eastern European housekeeper to trust fund hippie; Harlem mother to white church lady. Onayemi nails it, and I’m so excited to listen to more of his work. (I hear 
he kills on The Sellout.)
Speaking of spectacular books read by spectacular narrators, Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn promises to be another jackpot listen. It’s her first adult novel in 20 years, and this excerpt read by Robin Miles is amazing.
15 Audiobooks That Will Transport You Around the World
A few weeks ago we had a little chat here about the need for diverse voices on audiobooks. Listening to different accents, rhythms, music, and soundscapes is such an excellent way to become immersed in someone else’s world. Jamie at Book Riot has rounded up 15 books that do just that — from Mexico to Australia, Nigeria to Korea, these stellar authors and narrators will transport you all over the globe.
Your Brain Doesn’t Get Any Gold Stars for Reading Print Instead of Audio
“I’ve been asked this question a lot and I hate it,” writes University of Virginia psychologist Daniel Willingham about whether or not listening to audiobooks is “cheating.” In a fascinating blog post, he unpacks this idea of “cheating” itself: it assumes that the listener got some reward without putting in enough effort. He goes on to explain why, from a cognitive perspective, there’s no real difference in the work it takes to read a book versus listen to it once you become an adult.
Dr. Willingham describes the two basic processes involved in reading: “decoding” (interpreting strings of letters as words that have meaning), and “comprehension” (understanding the context and story). Researchers have known for years that reading comprehension and listening comprehension are highly correlated. The decoding process, on the other hand, is specific to reading print, and is, in fact, an extra step for your brain. But by the time you’re around 10 years old, decoding has become so second-nature that it’s essentially automatic and isn’t any extra “work.”
For more on the science behind why your brain doesn’t get any gold stars for skipping audio, check out this great piece by Melissa Dahl at New York Magazine.
Things You Can Do While Listening to Audiobooks
Scooping the cat litter, drowning out office gossip, repairing fences, showering, playing Pokemon Go — these are just a few of the excuses we’ve found to squeeze in a bit more listening! Sarah D. asked everyone at Book Riot what we do while listening to audiobooks, and she’s put the answers together in a handy rundown. Here’s what we do while listening, what about you?