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Welcome to the Sunday edition of Today in Books. Settling in with a nice beverage and catch up on the stories readers were most interested in this week.
Big Book Season Has Officially Begun
The race for Book of the Year is R.F. Kuang’s to lose. With its August 26 release date, Katabasis is either the last heavily anticipated book of summer to hit shelves or the first Big Book of Fall—why not both?—and this wide-ranging New Yorker profile confirms my suspicion that the 29-year-old author, who is publishing her sixth novel while she completes a PhD at Yale, is one of the most dynamic figures in the world of books and reading. Everything about Katabasis is interesting. It’s a Dante-inspired adventure infused with magic, and it’s a satire of academia. It’s packaged like a BookTok romantasy hit complete with stenciled edges and illustrated endpapers, but the writing leans literary and rewards some familiarity with the classical canon. If anybody has a shot at crossover success that pleases the algorithm and the literati alike, it’s Kuang. This one’s going to be fun to watch.
Update: Katabasis is set to be adapted for TV at Amazon MGM Studios.
Fewer Americans Are Reading for Fun
Drawing on data from the American Time Use Survey, researchers at University College London and the University of Florida have found that the number of Americans who reported reading for pleasure dropped from a high of 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023. Put another way: over a period of twenty years, the number of Americans who read for fun dropped by forty percent, a decrease the researchers call “surprising” even though pleasure reading has been declining steadily since the 1940s. While the researchers don’t offer an explanation for the decline, we can do some educated guessing. 2004, the peak year of this study, was the last year before Facebook went wide on college campuses. It was followed by YouTube in 2005, Twitter in 2006, the iPhone in 2007. You know the rest of this song.
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I generally resist alarmist interpretations, but I can’t stop thinking about Politico‘s characterization of the Trump-Newsom meme wars as a glimpse of what “the first post-literate presidential campaign might look like.” And how about this: if the number of Americans who read for pleasure drops another forty percent by 2044, we’ll be looking at a nation where less than 10% of people read books, magazines, or newspapers in any format. Literacy matters.
Polari Book Prize Canceled After Authors Withdraw in Protest
Organizers of the Polari Prize, which confers the only book awards honoring LGBTQ+ authors in the UK, have canceled this year’s prizes after more than a dozen nominees and two judges withdrew to protest the inclusion of John Boyne. Boyne, who has publicly expressed anti-trans ideas and come out in support of J.K. Rowling’s virulent transphobia, has only doubled down in response. The Polari will be back in 2026, and organizers have committed to “increase the representation of trans and gender non-conforming judges on the panels.” Strategic resistance and thoughtful response are exactly what you want in a situation like this, and I hope to see Polari follow through with greater care and consideration for their community.
Coming to a Screen Near You
This fall is stacked with literary adaptations hitting streamers and the big screen. You want a cozy British murder mystery? We’ve got you. A campy divorce comedy? Check. Leonard DiCaprio having the time of his life in a Paul Thomas Anderson spin on a Pynchon novel? Boy oh boy. Tessa Thompson in Hedda Gabler? Hell yeah. And yes, you can even see Sydney Sweeney star in the adaptation of a BookTok fave.