What Caught My Eye Online #71
Fake books, republishing YA, and more
Welcome to this week’s roundup! Here’s what I’ve been loving:
Daylight. It’s staying light outside so much later now, and I love it. I also love that my morning commute is now in the daylight. Driving to work at 6:30 a.m. when it’s dark outside is not my favorite thing. Daylight makes a big difference!
Having a bookish job. I always love my job, but parts of it have been stressful recently. Still, yesterday I spent my workday putting together themed book lists for a teacher and researching books to purchase for their classes. One of my schools just received a huge book donation, so I’ve been looking through those and cataloging all the ones we’re keeping. I get to process books, shop for books, make lists of books, and (when the libraries aren’t closed for testing) get to put books in students’ hands. I’m grateful I get to do something I care about.
And now for this week’s links!
Hanif Abdurraqib is defending despair in The New Yorker. The whole essay is wonderful, but this part stood out to me:
“My past indifference to my own living has afforded me a kind of hard-earned inventiveness. I know how to get through a hard hour, a hard day, a hard week. I know how to pull myself from one minute to the next, in large part because I find that my depths of despair have afforded me a newfound curiosity. I am no longer wired to catalogue and sift through only my own internal horrors, and so, by the mercy of simply looking up and looking around, I can see that there are people willing to love me, and that I am willing to love them, and, yes, I cannot believe that this is the world we’ve got, but I am chasing the tail of the world’s end, imagining that if I catch it (by way of tidying up my own spirit, my own heart, and also my own material communities), there might be something better than the present.”
Check out these five best food scenes in literature.
I’m often interested in books and TV shows set in workplaces. If you are, too, you might like these seven workplace novels.
The Atlantic shares 24 books to get lost in this summer.
NPR shares “how an AI-generated summer reading list got published in major newspapers.” Most of the books listed don’t even exist! (Side note: if any newspapers would like to hire me to put together real book lists, I’m available.)
I wrote this book list all by myself for last Saturday’s Substack: 20 Books That Showcase the Power of Friendship. All the books are real!
I love partaking in some armchair travel. These six mysteries are set in international destinations.
Claire Legrand is a popular author whose YA Empirium series is being republished for adults, with added content. I’m fascinated by this and could easily see it becoming a new trend. Romantasy is hot right now, so if the adult versions of these books sell, I bet we’ll see more republishing.
The Pulitzer Prizes were recently announced, and James by Percival Everett won for fiction. It seems like the nonfiction categories don’t get as much attention, so I was happy to see Five Books share the winners here.
The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) recommends these graphic novels for teens.
Parents suggest the best books to read aloud to kids.
Here’s an important reminder from the Chicago Review of Books: Read Your Resistance: Support Independent Presses and Literary Magazines.
I’m intrigued by these 11 books about the peculiar miseries of wealth.
I just read and loved Kevin Wilson’s new novel, Run for the Hills. He talked with Barnes and Noble about parenting and PT Cruisers.
Publishers Weekly offers a book list for those of us who have “millennial nostalgia for 1990s and 2000s indie rock and megastar pop singers.”
Anne Bogel of Modern Mrs. Darcy just released her popular summer reading guide. She’s offering a free minimalist version, too. I was thrilled to see What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown on her shortlist. It’s fantastic and I want it to be a huge hit this summer.
Speaking of secrets, CrimeReads shares seven novels built on the weight of a shared secret.
Conan O’Brien is one of my favorite comedians. I enjoyed this interview in which he was a bit more serious than normal.
John Green talked about his new book, Everything Is Tuberculosis, on The Daily Show.
This is a fun interview between Amy Poehler and Michelle Obama. I resonated with the part where they discuss their shared love for bedtime. Bedtime is the best!
Ocean Vuong and Oprah talk for nearly an hour. Everything Vuong says sounds poetic and insightful. I’ve always rolled my eyes a bit at celebrity book clubs, but the way Vuong talks about how they make reading and literacy accessible is right on. I can’t wait to read his new novel, The Emperor of Gladness.
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What catches your eye this week? What resonates with you? Leave your thoughts in the comments. As always, thanks for reading!
I think the way you present this round-up is really effective and easy to use. It must take a lot of hard work, so thank you!
I’m curious about Kevin Wilson’s new novel, it’s getting lots of press. I didn’t love Nothing to See Here…should I give this new one a try?