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Here’s a look back at the news stories Today in Books readers were most interested in this week.
The New York Times Picks Its 10 Best Books of 2024
If there is a list you want to be on at the end of the year as an author, it is this one. Less expansive than the 100 Notable books lists, which is arguably more interesting just for the range, the 10 best list is the NYT’s real stamp of approval. It can help sometimes in the course of reading the NYT’s book reviews to have a sense of how good the reviewer themselves thinks the book is, but this list leaves no doubt. Quite humorously, or maddeningly depending on your angle, the list includes a couple of books we confessed to not loving on the Book Riot podcast (All Fours and Good Material), but taste is subjective of course. And I think if there were a single, last-work standing award, it goes to James. Why not go the extra mile, NYT?
What Will Enter the Public Domain in 2025?: A Festive Countdown
Works by Matisse, Faulkner, Woolf and bunch of others. Well-packaged resource that is now in my bookmarks.
Taylor Swift’s Book is a Sales Smash
Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour book is far and away the fast-selling book of the year according to Circana, and is the second fastest non-fiction title in their records, outpaced only by Barack Obama’s A Promised Land in 2020. Two notes even on that. First, Swift’s book was only available at Target, and that surely cost Swift some first-week copies. The harder-core folks clearly went to Target, but there are a lot of sales floating around for people in B&N and Wal-Mart and indies, etc. Second, as far as I am aware, there was no pre-ordering available for The Eras Tour. Giant releases like this often bank a significant number of first-week sales as pre-orders, since those pre-orders are not “realized” until the book is actually out. Combined, I wonder what these two factors mean for what the book’s first-week ceiling actually was. Could it have been twice as big? 1.6 million? I think so.
The Best Gifts for Readers This Year
Not a book to behold, as the safest way to go when giving a book lover a gift is to….give them a book you know they want. Short of that, a book-related gift can be more fun and surprising. So if you have a reader on your list (or have need of a list to forward would-be givers), Book Riot’s 2024 gift guide is for you.
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