Welcome to Today in Books. Grab your coffee and catch up with the week’s biggest stories.
All the Cool Kids Are Doing It
I am studiously avoiding reviews of Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo—inarguably the It Book of the season—until Jeff and I discuss it for a podcast episode this week (you listen to the Book Riot Podcast, right?), which leaves me a lot of time to get into the Sally Rooney Discourse instead. It’s been quite a ride, and I am at turns baffled and frustrated by pieces like this one that lament the way that early copies of the book have become a status symbol.
In an attention economy where books, which require hours of focused engagement, compete with short-form video and endless streaming media, the publishing industry and everyone who loves books should rejoice any time the must-have signifier of coolness is a book. People are so excited about Intermezzo that hundreds of bookstores are holding midnight release parties—typically reserved for major genre series and YA trends—for a 464-page work of literary fiction! Let’s take the W, folks. They’re way too few and far between.
The Tide May Be Turning on Book Bans
Data from a preliminary report released by the American Library Association this week shows a sharp decline in attempts to ban materials in public, school, and academic libraries year-to-date. From January 1 to August 31 of this year, the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 414 challenges addressing 1,128 titles, down from 695 challenges to 1,915 titles in the same period last year. That’s a decrease of about 40% in both cases and challenged titles, a welcome indicator that the tide may be turning after several years of steady increases in book banning resulted in 2023’s all-time high. The ALA attributes the shift to advocacy efforts, anti-censorship programming, and wins in key lawsuits.
It’s not time to take our feet off the gas yet, though. As Publishers Weekly notes:
While the decline in tracked challenges in the first part of 2024 is welcome news, the ALA’s statistics stand in contrast to a report also released this week by PEN America, which found that censorship in school libraries nearly tripled in the 2023-2024 school year, surpassing 10,000 book bans in public schools, up from 3,362 bans in the previous school year.
Want to do get involved? Run For Something‘s Amanda Litman joined us on this week’s Book Riot Podcast to share information about how to run for important local offices—like school and library boards—that have the power to impact policy and protect intellectual freedom.
Does Intermezzo Deserve the Hype?
The hype machine has done its thing for Sally Rooney’s new novel Intermezzo, but is it actually good? Jeff O’Neal and I answer the question on a special episode of the Book Riot Podcast.
Guess Who’s Back
Jeanine Cummins, who was widely criticized for cultural appropriation and misrepresenting her identity in promotion of her 2020 novel American Dirt, will be back on shelves next year with a novel called Speak to Me of Home. Predictable? Yes. Disappointing? Also yes.
Though Flatiron apologized for making “serious mistakes” in its marketing of American Dirt, they continued to support the title; after canceling some of Cummins’s tour events due to safety concerns, the publisher pivoted to a series of town hall meetings in which Cummins spoke with readers who had expressed concerns about the book. Oprah, who had selected American Dirt as a book club title, followed suit, offering Cummins a platform to discuss the controversy in a two-part interview. It’s a strategy for which they were handsomely rewarded—to date, American Dirt has sold more than 3 million copies—but Flatiron does seem to have learned something from the experience, as they are not involved in the new project. Can’t say the same for parent company Macmillan, though; Speak to Me of Home will be published by its Henry Holt imprint.