Month: November 2016

Harry Potter Yoga Exists

Texan yoga instructors designed a Harry Potter-themed yoga class to boost attendance (which worked, the class sold out). It’s complete with Harry Potter-renamed posts like Slytherin Cobra and Downward Fluffy. Also, there are wands. And “invisibility cloaks” for savasana (those are just regular blankets). Yoga already has cultural appropriation issues, and this feels like taking that to a whole new level.

A Bookstore “Scream Room”

Bab Aldonia, a Cairo bookstore, is now providing a sound-proof Scream Room where customers can go and yell away the stress of daily life and of living in a large city (there’s also a drum set in the room, if banging on a thing makes you feel better). This is an excellent idea, and it seems like tomorrow is a good day for American bookstores to install something similar. We all have some stress to scream out.

The Most Valuable First Editions of 20th Century Literature

Keep your eyes peeled when you’re at used bookstores–these five books are the most valuable first editions of 20th century literature in existence. There aren’t many surprises here, though I would count the presence of the first James Bond novel and the absence of any books by women at all as a little eyebrow-raising. None of Virginia Woolf’s books are more valuable than a James Bond novel? Really? Ok then.

Thanks to Swoon Reads for sponsoring This Week in Books.

Swoon Reads publishes the latest and greatest in YA fiction with the help of readers and writers like you. We’re dedicated to the undiscovered, and we seek out the very best in bright, new bookish talent. From heroic epics, to alien adventures, to all-the-feels romance—if you’re loving it, we’ll publish it. We involve our community in every step of the publishing process, and work closely with selected writers to get their book ready for publication. Together, we bring new stories to life, because we believe that great books are better shared.

Statistics About the “Girl” Book Title Trend

Over at FiveThirtyEight (take a break from election stats, y’all!), novelist Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven) takes a deep dive into the numbers–courtesy of Goodreads–to find out what, exactly, is going on with all these books with “girl” in the title. You’re not imagining it; they really are proliferating. Up from about 0.4% in 2008, when Lisbeth kicked off the trend with the US publication of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, nearly 1% (that’s a lot!) of all book titles this year will contain “girl.” Mandel presents several interesting findings, most notable among them the fact that the titular girl is three times more likely to be dead at the end of the book if the author is a man.

New Pricing Structure in Amazon’s Physical Bookstores

When Amazon first opened bricks-and-mortar bookstores last year, book prices in-store matched the discounts available at amazon.com. Now, though, Amazon’s discounts are available in-store only to Prime members, while non-members are charged the book’s full list price. It’s clear that Amazon wants to sell more Prime memberships, but any increase this in-store change yields will be a barely detectable drop in the bucket for the behemoth company. So what remains unclear is: what larger strategy are they trying to clarify with this small experiment?

Voting Opens for Goodreads Choice Awards

The first of three rounds of voting in the 2016 Goodreads Choice Awards launched November 1. Each of the twenty categories includes fifteen books identified by Goodreads’ undisclosed statistical analysis method, and the results are indicative of not only trends in reading but ongoing systemic problems in publishing. At Book Riot, Jamie Canaves examines why not a single title in the Best Mystery & Thriller category is by a person of color.

A Party Game for the “Rude and Well-Read”

Electric Literature has launched a Kickstarter to fund Papercuts, a Cards Against Humanity-style party game for the bookish set. The deck contains prompt and answer cards, and when the Editor reveals a prompt, each player selects an answer from the eight cards in their hand. A random draw from the deck we received at Riot HQ revealed references to literary characters and events, industry trends, jokes about authors’ bad behavior (“incendiary Facebook post from Anne Rice,” LOL forever), and some deep cuts from the world of MFAs and writers’ colonies. Get your book club to chip in for a shared deck.

Thanks to Swoon Reads for sponsoring This Week in Books.

Swoon Reads publishes the latest and greatest in YA fiction with the help of readers and writers like you. We’re dedicated to the undiscovered, and we seek out the very best in bright, new bookish talent. From heroic epics, to alien adventures, to all-the-feels romance—if you’re loving it, we’ll publish it. We involve our community in every step of the publishing process, and work closely with selected writers to get their book ready for publication. Together, we bring new stories to life, because we believe that great books are better shared.