This Week In Books
May 17, Edition
May 17, 2024 Edition
The book sale of your dreams, the book event of your nightmares, prize winners, revenge for bad reviews, and more in this edition of the TWIB.
Amazon Book Sale: By the time you read this Amazon will be three days into a new sale: The Book Sale Of Your Dreams. From May 15 - 20 the online giant is offering discounts on thousands of books from their catalog. If you book shop at Amazon, now might be the time to stock up your TBR, especially if you are a Kindle reader where most of the best deals seem to be. Happy shopping, book friends!
Pulitzer Prize Winners: Last week the Pulitzer committee announced the 2024 prize winners for journalism, drama, music, and (our favorite) books. This year’s fiction winner is Jane Anne Phillips for her novel, Night Watch. The book is the story of a 12 year old girl and her mute mother who are attempting to reclaim their lives while recovering in a lunatic asylum after the Civil War. Congratulations to all the winners and especially Ms. Phillips!
Revenge Of The Panned: New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Weiner recently joined Substack with her newsletter The Inevitable Substack (go give her a follow). Last week she wrote a wonderful post on what authors have done in the face of a bad review. From clapping back to turning the other cheek to ignoring reviews altogether, she explores all the ways authors can get revenge on their critics. Perhaps our favorite is what Weiner leads with: after Jane Anne Phillips got brutally panned in the New York Times last autumn, she won the mother-flippin Pulitzer. Revenge is a dish best served with $15,000 cash and a certificate – which somehow doesn’t sound all that impressive but tastes oh so sweet.
CoHo’s Writing Drought: Colleen Hoover has reached the level of fame other authors merely dream about. With over 50 million copies sold and a rabid fan base on socials she is at the peak of her career. But Hoover, who regularly writes two books per year, hasn’t written anything in the last year and half. Texas Monthly visited the mega-star author at her home near Dallas,Texas to ask her why. Hoover recounted the difference between where she began in self-publishing writing for a devoted fan base to where she is now: a global BookTok phenomenon. The fact is, when you stick your head above the crowd, people will take shots. For every rabid CoHort, there is a hater waiting to tear her books apart online. Because it’s sure to get a lot of views. Turns out even wildly famous authors are also humans and they can get bogged down in the floodgates of online hate. Our hearts go out to an obviously lovely author who just wants to write good books for her fans. As readers, we support her taking time off from writing to heal and rest. In the meantime, we can enjoy her collab with home manicure company Olive & June and the release of the movie adaptation of It Ends With Us starring Blake Lively, not to mention her impressive backlist.
The Garden of Irony: The Met Gala has become the most exclusive costume party/fundraiser for the celebrity elite. The invitation only event raises millions of dollars each year for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The invitees are required to dress according to a specific theme, and it has become the red carpet to end all red carpets with social media pictures of our favorite celebs in beautiful–albeit often bizarre–dress. This year’s theme was The Garden Of Time based on a short story by JG Ballard. It’s our particular favorite pastime to see Bookstagram get involved and match books to celebrity costumes. Crazy fashion aside, The BBC pointed out the irony of basing the theme of an exclusive event for the most fashionable and famous on a dystopian story where the ultra-rich hide away from a “great unwashed” riot. What was the purpose of choosing that particular theme? (Alas, Anna Wintour didn’t return our calls). Did the celebrities read the story before choosing their costumes? (We could make an argument either way). Is the BBC reading too much into this? (We doubt it). Do we just want to keep looking at books matched to crazy costumes? (Absolutely yes).
BookTok Bookshelves: TikTok is partnering with the National Literacy Trust in the UK to place bookshelves laden with books in 11 different locations throughout the UK. The plan is to work with youth volunteers to stock the bookshelves and encourage their peers to borrow and return. This comes after a NLT report that says “one in 12 children aged five to 18 in the UK do not own a book of their own, and that fewer than three in ten children aged eight to 18 read daily.” Tiktok might be brainwashing our youth, but it also sells them books and now is working to increase literacy and the love of reading. You win some, you lose some.
Book Event Goes Awry: Readers Take Denver went horribly awry last month when multitude logistical issues produced a chaotic event that left readers and authors angry and disappointed. Next year’s event has been canceled as a result. While blame is being laid at the organizers feet, on the hotel, or on diva authors the end result is that an event that was billed as a book lover’s paradise is now being called ‘The Fyre Festival of Books.’ All of this makes us sad because book people are the best people and whatever the cause, readers walked away unhappy with the book world and in the case of one attendee–a black eye. Well, this is certainly a black mark on book events in general.
Harry Potter Watercolor: Harry Potter continues to be a big money maker with the original watercolor for The Philosopher’s Stone going to auction. It is expected to set the record for the sale of a Harry Potter item, even beating out a first edition copy that sold for $421,000 earlier this year. Here is a podcast with the illustrator, Thomas Taylor, where he talks about painting this as a 23 year old recent art school graduate as his first piece of professional work. We love everything about this! It’s almost as though the plot of The Wishing Game came to life.
Adult Read-Alouds: Journalist Sarah Manavais wrote an article for The Guardian on how she and her partner began the habit of reading out loud to each other. She explored the benefits it has brought into her own life as well as talked to experts on the science behind what reading aloud does for its listeners. While most research into reading aloud focuses on the benefits for children, Manavais is a huge proponent for this being an adult activity as well. Here at The Book Tide we couldn’t agree more. More reading. More read-alouds. The End.
From Book To Broadway to Big Screen: Wicked, the Broadway musical loosely based on Gregory Macguires novel Wicked: The Life and Times Of The Wicked Witch Of The West, has spent 20 years thrilling audiences. Now we can enjoy this story in a whole new way as Universal has released the trailer for their movie adaptation. Who else is clicking their heels together in excitement?
The Font That Took A Swim With The Fishes: Over a hundred years ago the owners of Dove’s Press in London got into a major argument about finances. One of the owners dumped all the pieces of their popular typeface “Doves” into the river Thames as an act of revenge toward the other. Doves typeface has been missing ever since. Then in the early 2000s, Robert Green began scanning old texts printed in this font to see if he could recreate it. He released a digital version in 2013 bringing the type to life for the first time in over a century. But Green took it a step farther and began searching the Thames for missing pieces of the original typeface. Using the historical record and the owner’s diary he was able to pinpoint exactly where the font had been chucked into the river and almost immediately began locating pieces. After enlisting the help of Mudlarks–people who search riverbanks for lost treasure–he has been able to recover 151 pieces of the possible 500,000, helping him to (eventually) recreate the text. All in all, it’s a fascinating look into a little piece of font history.
Bridgerton Season 3: Part One of Bridgerton Season 3 hit Netflix yesterday. The wildly popular adaptation of Julia Quinn’s romance series, is back with a new couple to root for. BookTrib gave us a rundown of how the book differs from the show (although we vehemently disagree with their offhand dismissal of Queen Charlotte–it was phenomenal. We die on that hill). All we know is that our favorite diverse regency era romance show set to string quartet versions of Taylor Swift songs is back and we couldn’t be more excited.
Deep Dive: See below for all the extra deep cuts of this week’s book news.
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls: new novel from Grady Hendrix, author of How To Sell A Haunted House
AppleTV trailer for Presumed Innocent based on the novel by Scott Turow
Nobel award winning author, Alice Munro, has passed away.
Kiera Knightley to star in movie of The Woman in Cabin 10
Celebrity Book Club Picks for May: Jenna, GMA, Reese, Oprah
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oprah-winfrey-selects-long-island-as-newest-book-club-pick/
Ben Fountain wins Joyce Carol Oates prize
Universal to adapt Hearts of Darkness by Jana Monroe
Tomorrow Tomorrow & Tomorrow adaptation
Catch Up with Ariel over at I’m So Glad You Asked where you can read one of her short stories.
Marybeth just revealed the beautiful cover for her new novel at I Will Tell You This.
Just had to come and say I’m standing on the Queen Charlotte hill with y’all. I’ll never get over how that show UTTERLY broke me. I mean… I thought I’d never stop crying.
I love not having to go looking for book news!
I'm excited about Jayne Ann Phillips Night Watch. I'm currently rereading Machine Dreams, one of my fave books.