The Biggest Book News of the Week
Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Here are the biggest stories from this week.
Neil Gaiman Accused of Sexual Assault by Two More Women
In an exclusive four-part podcast series last month, Tortoise Media reported that two women, who were 20 and 23 at the time of the alleged events, had accused Neil Gaiman of sexual assault. The story was picked up in a few places but didn’t go wide in the way you’d expect when a famous writer with a huge and devoted fandom is the subject of a #metoo report. Now, two more women have come forward with similar allegations, and one of them has receipts in the form of a $275,000 settlement that was accompanied by an NDA. Gaiman has denied all allegations.
Project 2025’s Impact on Education, Books, & Reading
Nine hundred pages of Make America Gilead Again1 is a lot to comb through, and the good folks at EveryLibrary have done just that. This week, they released a statement outlining Project 2025’s impact on education and libraries, noting that it “would dismantle important parts of how public libraries build communities, how schools support students and families, and how higher education supports the next generation of scholars.” Here’s just a taste of the plans.
A Bittersweet Farewell
Francine Pascal, a legend of millennial YA literature, has died at the age of 92. If you’re under the age of 30 or so, you came of age in a book world with robust YA offerings, and I sincerely love that for you. For those of us who grew up in the late ’80s and early ’90s, though, young adult literature wasn’t really a thing. Back then, the library had a “teen” section, and it was mostly populated with thrillers by Lois Duncan and R.L. Stine (where my Fear Street girlies at?) and Francine Pascal’s Sweet Valley High series, which was what you graduated to reading when you decided you were too old to admit that you still loved The Baby-Sitters Club.
Pascal created the SVH series “after a friend remarked to Pascal there was no teen version of 1980s soap “Dallas.”” Teen readers ate it up. The extended SVH universe, which grew to contain hundreds of titles including spin-off prequel and sequel series, ultimately sold more than 200 million copies (that’s about 10x Colleen Hoover’s total book sales, for scale), inspired a 4-season TV series, and arguably paved the way for a generation-defining wave of teen entertainment like Beverly Hills 90210 and Dawson’s Creek. For this elder millennial, Sweet Valley High was a bridge between kids’ books and adult fiction and fodder for dreaming of a near-future filled with adolescent shenanigans, cool friends, kissing, and adventure. We should all be so lucky, even if we grow up to realize that no one is actually cool until at least their mid-thirties. Thanks for the memories, Francine Pascal. Fare thee well.
The Booker Prize Longlist is Here
The longlist for the Booker Prize, which honors “the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland,” has been revealed, and American writers are repping hard. Judges chose the 13 titles from a pool of 156 books published between October 1, 2023 and September 30, 2024—I am once again pleading with literary awards to please for the love of god sync your calendars with the actual calendar—and 6 of them are by authors from the US. I’m pulling hard for James by Percival Everett and would be equally delighted to see Tommy Orange recognized for Wandering Stars, which seems to have gotten a bit lost in the year’s discourse. The shortlist will be announced September 16, and the award will be given on November 12.
Horror is Heating Up
I’m a weenie, so I probably won’t be reading any of these 10 new horror books coming out in August, but if you’re made of sturdier stuff, you should check out that list.
Leave a comment
Become an All Access subscriber to add comments.