Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
The Books New York Times Readers Loved in 2024
The NYT continues to slice and dice best-of coverage in 2024, from all-century selection all the way today to reader choices for favorite books of 2024. I always wonder if slight difference in adjectival choice would yield noticeably different results or not? Do readers clock favorites all that differently than best? What about fun? Recommendable? Memorable? Dare I say notable? The selections here are not weighted or tallied, but rather anecdata and pull-quote. Which is honestly fine. Hearing directly why pretty serious readers liked the books they like from 2024 is a welcome break from another list.
Manuscript for Pope Francis’ Autobiography Leaks…And It Feels a Little Familiar
I am in no position to judge whether or not we have a wet bandit situation here with Filippo Bernardini. Whether or not the confessed manuscript con man has relapsed is of course interesting, but seriously what do we have to do to get people with these manuscripts to practice just a scooch more info-sec? Are they also giving their credit card numbers out to people who say there is a UPS package that can’t be delivered and we need your vital stats to get it to you? What are we doing here?
Book Sales Entered the Fall Strong, with October Sales up 8%
Adult fiction up more than 17% over October 2023 and religious titles up even more than that (why would this be?). Non-fiction, both adult and young adult/kids actually shrank. Seems like there might be some other story here around college-related buying: both university press and higher education course materials were up 14%+. If my recent trips to bookstores are any indication (and my own gifting too), looks like it is going to be a terrific holiday season as well. Glad to see it.