This Today in Books is brought to you by: the 20th Annual World Voices Festival, a celebration of literature & storytelling, starting May 8
Get your tickets today: 100+ writers. 35+ talks. 20+ countries. The 20th Annual World Voices Festival starts 5/8.
Now in its twentieth year, the 2024 World Voices Festival is an international celebration of literature and storytelling. Founded in the wake of 9/11 to counter isolationism and broaden the channels of dialogue between the United States and the world, the festival will host more than 100 writers from more than 20 countries. Taking place from May 8-11 in New York, and May 11-18 in Los Angeles. Get your tickets today at PEN.org/Festival. Find out more about the 20th Annual World Voices Festival, a celebration of literature & storytelling, starting May 8 here!
Americans Buy Over a Billion Books a Year
If you are reading this newsletter, you care about books and reading. And you probably also care about how healthy, or not, the books business is. This is actually much harder to get your arms around than you might think, largely because the statistics about book sales are both fragmented and proprietary. So it’s hard to have anything like a clear picture of how books, writ large are doing. This piece from Lincoln Michel
is as a good of an overview as you are ever likely to see. The good news is that books are sort of doing what they have been doing for awhile. The bad news is that books are also sort of what they have beend doing for awhile. I think we all wish that more people bought books, but enough do that there are still more interesting books to me than I can ever read in one lifetime. I think for most readers, that is the ultimate vital stat.Which books are going to go TikTok famous this year
I both love and hate this list. I love the idea of surveying BookTokers about what’s on their radar a) because that is just generally interesting to me and b) it would be fascinating to see how right they turn out to be. So I definitely got a list too look at. The frustrating thing is there is no why these selections? I am dying to know why someone thing The Golden Notebook is primed to be put on a pile of books that is quickly unpiled. There are of course Maas and Hazelwood mentions, but then there is Beloved sitting there. Tell me more!
We Might Not Have Letters, But We Have Email Chains
I am not going to pretend I knew who Helen Vendler was before a few days ago when remembrances of her life starting appearing. She sounds like a real one. And among the stories and celebrations and elegies, this exchange she had with Rita Dove at the end of her life brought a tear to me eye. I found it both moving for what it was and reassuring for what it foretells: that email might be just as preservative of literary history as letter writing ever was.
The House on Mango Street at 40
40 years ago, Sandra Cisneros published what would become a contemporary classic: The House on Mango Street. To mark the occasion, Everyman’s Library has released a new edition. The introduction to that edition was written by Professor John Philip Santos, a fellow writer and long-time friend of Cisneros. He joins me on this episode to talk about the origin, meaning, and legacy of this modern masterpiece.