Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
What are the Best-Selling Books by Black Authors?
Book sales data is hard to get (unless you pay a lot for it). The proxy data we get in the form of best-seller lists usually top out at 10-20 titles per. And as we have noted in our weekly tracking of what books make these lists, they are stunningly, consistently, and intractable very, very non-diverse. So what books beyond the tops of the charts are selling? And where do you start to see some different voices charting? I have said, I think both here and on various BR podcasts, that publishing has made great strides towards inclusivity. There is still much to be done. But publishing cannot control which books readers buy ultimately (trust me, they would if they could). The buy side of the buy-sell equation isn’t keeping up. Tools like this might help us see where some movement might be happening and give some books that are getting some traction a little extra juice.
Close Reading is For Everyone
Wonderful appreciation, defense, advocation, and demonstration of the virtues and and pleasures of close reading by Dan Sinykin in Defector. It is deep, nerdy, satisfying, and dare I say inspirational. There are many things to lament about the state of book discourse, especially in the social media age, but maybe detailed explication could trend someday. I will watch your TikTok’s about Homeric narration, whoever you are out there thinking about doing them. I will watch.
And You Thought Fake AI-Book Lists Were Bad
I do not even understand how this is happening. The news this week about a fake AI-generated book list appearing in the Chicago Sun-Times reminded Lisa Ko that she has her own whacked out story of fake book coverage to share. Somehow, she has become the source of misattributed, mislabeled, and seemingly downright fabricated book blurbs. Hundreds of them. How is unclear. And so ripping out the source root and stem is impossible. A frustrating mini-Kafka story from the snowglobe world of book publishing.
Power Ranking the Books of 2005
Rebecca Schinsky and I went back twenty years to power-rank the 10 most influential, important, and memorable books from 2005. It was the year of Twilight and The Year of Magical Thinking and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and so many others. Go here to hear what made our top 10 and why.
