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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
In Case You Needed One More Reason to Vote
A new report from PEN America covering the full 2023-2024 school year shows a 200% increase—that’s a tripling—in school book bans. The report analyzes 10,046 bans nationwide that sought to pull more than four thousand unique titles from school shelves. This data lands in sharp contrast to the ALA’s report in September that attempts to ban books in public, school, and academic libraries declined significantly in the first eight months of this year. Which is right? Let’s go with both and neither. The reports address different samples and different time frames, and it is possible for both narratives to be true.
The PEN America report captures data through the end of the 2023-2024 school year, so it maybe goes through June of this year at the latest, while the ALA report runs through August 31. If overall banning attempts decreased after the school year ended and/or decreased in the public sector enough to offset an increase in schools, these findings can exist side-by-side. There may also be some political strategy at work. Book banning is a wildly unpopular, losing issue for the right—most Americans oppose book bans—and if book banning attempts are actually declining so far in this school year, it is more likely because Republicans recognize that a bunch of high-profile book banning attempts will not help their electoral chances than because some sea change has already occurred. Don’t let up your efforts just yet.
Bookstores Offer Readers Blind Dates with Books
I’m not sure anyone knows where or when the “blind date with a book” concept originated, but my first experience of it was at Asheville, NC’s terrific indie, Malaprop’s Bookstore in 2015. I bought a hardcover that was wrapped in plain brown paper and had adjectives like “luscious,” “elegant,” “bewitching,” and “uncanny” written on it in Sharpie. It was a fun experiment, and I remember that I enjoyed the book (Erika Swyler’s The Book of Speculation), though I couldn’t tell you much else about it now. Not bad for a blind date! This was vibes-based handselling nearly a decade before we talked about anything as being vibes-based, and it’s a trick that seems to work because it has hung on and, as the New York Times reports, spread to some of the biggest indie bookstores in the country. Jeff O’Neal and I got to see the Strand’s blind date display in person during a business trip back in September, and it was pretty great.
