‘Tis the week for giving thanks and we are most thankful for you, dear readers. We are also thankful for a relatively quiet week in publishing so we can enjoy our food coma, read, and convalesce with our loved ones. Our holiday menus might not have been light, but the book news is. Happy reading!
Is the Texas book rating law too big for its britches? This week Barnes and Noble and Penguin Random House joined with bookstores in an amicus brief to argue that rating books sold to schools is best left to teachers and librarians–not booksellers. The highly contested law (which has yet to go into effect), requires booksellers to rate books they sell to schools based on their level of sexually explicit content. Failure to comply will result in the bookseller losing their license to sell to schools. Clearly we have learned nothing from the lessons Kevin Bacon taught us in Footloose. While the adults are busy banning things, the kids are scrolling TikTok, dancing to sea shanties, and reading Osama Bin Laden’s “Letter to America.”
NPR’s Best Books of 2023: NPR released a list of their best books of the year. With over 380 titles, there’s something for everyone. Keen-eyed readers will spy The Book Tide co-founder, Ariel Lawhon’s, The Frozen River, as one of them!! We approve of this list, NPR.
A pig and a prize. Bob Mortimer wins the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for his debut novel The Satsuma Complex. The yearly award honors the writer who can capture the wit and comedic timing of the illustrious PG Wodehouse (where are my Jeeves and Wooster fans?). In addition to the award, Mortimer also received the honor of a pig being named for his book, some fancy adult beverages, and the entire PG Wodehouse collection. Booze with a side of bacon? Now you’re talking about our kind of literary prize!
More Slow Horses headed your way! The show, based on Mic Herron’s novel Slow Horses (and subsequent sequels) has been renewed. The New York Times published a great profile on Herron this week and we can’t help but cheer him on. It’s always a pleasure to see the underdog (er, slow horse) win!
Nora Roberts is still the Queen of Romance. There’s a reason romance is the top-selling genre in the world. And no one has written or sold more romance novels than Nora Roberts (that we’re aware of). Roberts is the definition of prolific. Even when critics dismissed the genre and the media made fun of her for being plagiarized, she never stopped writing. To the tune of almost 250 books! That’s roughly six books a year. A YEAR. (Meanwhile, I still haven’t put away the laundry from last week). Success is clearly the best revenge. Well played, Nora.
The OG Fixer: Masterpiece announced that they will begin filming Wolf Hall: The Mirror and The Light, finishing out their adaptations of the award winning trilogy of books by Hilary Mantel. The series centers around the infamous Thomas Cromwell and his rise from poverty to power as the advisor to King Henry VIII. Mantel created a historically accurate, richly nuanced saga that won the Booker Prize twice. If you’ve not read Wolf Hall but want to dive in, Footnotes and Tangents will be hosting a yearlong slow read of all three books with weekly resources, discussion threads, and more. This promises to be a fun way to work your way through the literary trilogy. And then you can sit back and enjoy the Masterpiece adaptation. Wins all the way around.
High School Freshmen Opens Independent Bookstore: As the youngest member of the American Booksellers Association, fourteen year old bookstore owner, Haley Vincent, isn’t waiting for her dreams to come true. She’s working on them now. Vincent recently opened a new independent bookstore in Shawnee, Kansas called Seven Stories. At a time when independent bookstores are struggling, we have a high school Freshman boldly claiming her future and building up her community. We salute you, Haley! Now, if we could only bottle some of that moxie.
Snowed by Coriolanus: The villain that you love to hate is back in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. The prequel to the bestselling Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, was adapted to film and released this last week. Despite his awkwardly long name and the fact that you know he will be the villain of the future games, Collins was able to make you root for Coriolanus Snow. The film seems to be quite the hit at the box office and we couldn’t be more pleased for Collins and Hunger Games fans everywhere. May the odds be ever in your favor.
No (Big Little) Lie: Actress and producer Nicole Kidman just revealed that there will be a third season of Big Little Lies. Only Liane Moriarty could write a book so gripping that HBO adapted it with a star studded cast, then optioned a second, and now a third season just to keep the story going. The real question is who they’ll add to the cast? How can you top Meryl Streep? And why is the answer Helen Mirren?
We Can’t Just Quit the Classics: It’s been a good year for dusty old tomes. The first ever film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland has been found and restored, The Count of Monte Cristo will be adapted to the small screen, and Chaucer went digital with the British Library digitizing their collection of his works. We don’t hate any of this. Give us all the books and all the stories in all the formats.
Tweet of the Week: Well here’s a fun literary puzzle! Caroline Overington brought our attention to the novel, Cain’s Jawbone, by Edward Powys Mathers. It’s a 100-page literary mystery containing six murders, but–PLOT TWIST–all of the pages are printed out of order. So you have to cut them out and arrange them on your wall in order to make any sense of the story. The puzzle has only been solved three times but if you’re the lucky fourth, you’ll win a prize. We love a book that forces us to become the detective and you better believe that we’ll be handing out copies of Cain’s Jawbone like candy this Christmas. (No actual bones will make their way into stockings).
Catch Up with Ariel over at I’m So Glad You Asked.
See what Marybeth is up to at I Will Tell You This.
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