TikTok's Publishing Imprint Folds, BookCon Returns, and More Book News
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This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Rebecca Shinsky. I'm here with Vanessa Diaz this week while Jeff is running around somewhere on the East Coast. And I think we're going to be up to our usual shenanigans. Vanessa, always a delight to have you. Thank you. I'm here for the shenan and again. It's great.

There is some TV show where the bar is called like Shanann again or something like that. And I've just always thought that that would be. Yeah. One of my favorite pieces of random TikTok advice I ever got was it was about dating. But it was like, if that man Shanann once, he will Shanann again. And it's the thing I say to people. So I had to work that in somehow. I would just like to go down as a person who was always willing to Shanann again. Let this be my legacy. Your legacy.

So, yeah, going to be up to our usual business around these parts. Yeah. And interesting weekend books. I think we're kind of in a like early midsummer season.

the news doldrum. There hasn't been a whole lot going on in publishing. And then yesterday, there was a big story. And today, there's a little more news. So we're just going to see where the agenda takes us today. And I believe that we are introducing a new feature that you are calling Vanessa's Social Media Rabbit Hole Corner. We've done it a few times. So I figured, let's just keep it going. And it felt like because it just served itself up on a platter to me this week. And it is of interest, I think, to book people. So we have worked

We're going to keep going. Might as well make it official. Yes. You can be the social media correspondent. The shenanigan. The social media shenanigan correspondent. Absolutely. Before we get into the news, just want to remind folks that we, well, you and I and Jeff will be at Powell's talking about the best books of the year so far on July 9th at 7 p.m. Tickets are 10 bucks.

And that also gets you 10% off the purchases you make that night. We'll each be presenting five favorite books. We'll be joined by Powell's book buyer extraordinaire, Keith Mossman, who will be presenting five of his favorites. And then just like we did with our most recommendable books of the century so far live show, if there's time, we will invite...

folks who are hanging out and who want to share to share some of their favorites of the year as well. So click the link in the show notes. Come hang out with us on July 9th. We would love to meet you all in person. And again, we so appreciate the calls that we've gotten in response on social media for like, when are you going to come to LA? When are you going to come to New York? We would love to explore those things. It helps to have a bookstore partnership or a great event space that we don't have to spend a million dollars for. So if you're connected

to something like that or a book festival, a literary event where a live recording of the show would be a good addition to what you're doing, holler at us, podcast at bookriot.com. Put something about live events in the subject line so that we know to prioritize that. We get a whole lot of email.

And speaking of email, the inbox is open for our summer Ask Us Anything. Can be life advice, can be work stuff, can be about books or movies or hobbies or whatever. Just don't make it weird. Again, that's podcast at bookriot.com and put mail back.

in the subject line. If you're catching up on Patreon, you can join us there at patreon.com slash bookriotpodcast. We've done some recent reading check-ins. We've talked about recent big book deals. And most recently, Jeff and I talked about our shared love of Richard Linklater's Before movie trilogy, which now I'm feeling like kind of ahead of the headlines on because I've seen some other big coverage coming out recently about Before Sunset particularly. So if you haven't seen those,

Give it a listen. If you have seen them and you want to quibble with us, give it a listen. There's always good stuff there. And I mean, that really sums it up. We will be talking about best, not best, but the books like newsworthy books of the year so far in the feed later in this week.

And then when Jeff returns, we'll get into the It Books of July and a reflection of how we did on It Books in the first six months of this year. So that's all the coming attractions. And let's take a quick sponsor break before we get into the news. If like me, you love travel as much as you love books, you're into stories that sweep you away and stay with you like a favorite souvenir, check out Strong Sense of Place.

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Today's episode is brought to you by Bloomsbury Publishing, publishers of House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J. Moss. Bryce never expected to see a world other than Midgard, but now that she has, all she wants is to get back. Everything she loves is there. Her family, her friends, her mate.

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Today's episode is brought to you by Sourcebooks Landmark, publisher of The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark. Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has spent her life hiding the fact that she is the only child of legendary horror author Vincent Taylor, famous not only for his novels, but for being the prime suspect in the brutal slaying of his older brother and younger sister in 1975. Now, Olivia, Miss Olivia is on the brink of financial ruin when she's called back to Ojai to ghostwrite her father's last book.

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Make sure to check out The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark. And thanks again to Sourcebooks Landmark for sponsoring this episode. Vanessa, where do you want to start?

Oof. Wow. Let's start with some good news for the people, at least. I know a lot of people have been clamoring for this sort of thing to happen, and it is indeed. And that is about BookCon. Yay! I have never been to BookCon, but I know a lot of you love BookCon, and BookCon is back is the big news here. It was just announced that it will return in 2026, and it's going back to its stomping grounds over at the Javits Center in New York City. It is scheduled for April 18th to 19th of 2026.

I had to kind of brush up on this for myself because I was like, wait, Book Expo, Book Con, which is which? And so Book Expo is much more the like trade version of this giant exposition. But Book Con is a consumer facing show. And book lovers all around, at least according to my social media feeds, are rejoicing and just having a great old time about the fact that this is going to make its return because it was canceled once COVID made it a non-reality back

Yes. Yeah. So Book Expo had been happening in one form or another in the industry for decades. It initially began as the American Booksellers Association's annual conference where they, you know, did professional development, met up with publishers to hear about their big titles coming up for the year. And then as the industry grew, you know, media people started going, bloggers started going, it became bigger than just independent booksellers. And then I think for a couple of years, like 2012 and 2013, Book Expo had allowed

readers to just come in for some events. That didn't go super well, like mixing in the fan convention elements with the professional conference elements. So in 2014, they launched BookCon as a standalone event, and it ran through 2019. Then, as you said, in 2020, they canceled both BookCon and Book Expo. ReadPop is the convention company.

read expositions or exhibitions that runs all of these big events, but they are bringing it back. I have to admit, I was surprised to see the email land in my inbox just because we haven't been talking about BookCon, but this makes a ton of sense to me right now in the moment of TikTok content creation. My money is on a bunch of BookTok favorites,

a bunch of photo friendly special editions probably some like i hate to say the phrase but influencer activations oh 100 will happen um and i've even seen this already start to roll out like book con got influencers involved in announcing the launch of this um

This is a huge expense for publishers to pay to participate, to produce a bunch of swag that they're going to give away. We will get to see like the running of the bulls when the book con show floor opens and people, I don't know, compete to see how many free tote bags they can pick up in like supermarket sweep stores.

style it's going to be really interesting to see um none of the programming has been announced yet but if you're interested in attending it's going to be april 18th and 19th next spring at the javits center as vanessa was saying and you can sign up at the book con website now to receive their email newsletter with all of the future announcements um v are you is this the thing you want to go to

I think I may not be the target audience for this anymore because I'm on the industry side of it. Like, and I say that again, I try to be team like don't yuck people's yuck. I think it's a really cool thing for people who have been looking for something like this. You know, in the piece that we'll link to, I did at first kind of side with the person who was like, oh, is this going to make like a meaningful because it is going to be like a massive expense.

I was like, is this going to be something that's going to move the needle forward meaningfully for like sales, et cetera. But I do think that we're in such a different place now with like influencer culture around books that this is a good thing that people are going to like plan their lives around and like be really jazzed about in a way that I don't know that I am the target for anymore being a person who has access to all these books, et cetera. Like it could be fun to fan out, but there is a portion of me that's like, let the

people have this. This may not be for me. I agree. I did want to point out though that two reasons why I'm very glad that it's me that's here today is even though the programming itself has not been announced, of course they gave just some like, oh, we're going to have book club meetups and book signings and two of the things that I cackled out loud is that there's going to be a fantasy ball. Oh, there is. I missed that detail. And sprayed edge workshops, otherwise known as spreadge workshops. And I was like, aha. I'm going to

Oh, well, Jeff will be very excited. Yes. But yeah, what are your thoughts on it? I was just telling someone yesterday about the fire fest of book talk ball and the existence of shadow daddy. Yes. I think this is really smart. It's a smart move. There are and I

I mean, there are a lot of readers who their entire community around loving books exists online. So I imagine that this will be not just a cool opportunity to get together and see an author speak that you love or do something like spray your own edges, but meet other people who are doing the same kind of fandom that you're doing. When I was early in my book blogging, it was really fun to get together with other folks who were creating content and excited about books.

Yeah.

It's this all it seems like they're trying to throw in everything and the kitchen sink. And I worry about that with any event, especially when it's coming back for the first time, like trying to make absolutely everybody happy. But if like Javits is huge. So there's no reason that they can't have a fantasy ball and then a spread workshop in the next room and then a book club meetup and then a panel. So it'll be, I think, interesting to just watch.

who's excited about this. And the thing that I'm particularly curious about will be once they start rolling out the list of books and authors that are going to be there, I think that will give us some insight into what publishers are prioritizing and also how publishers are conceiving of what they think readers are interested in and excited about right now.

Whether those are the things that readers actually are interested in and excited about or they're the things that publishers wish readers would be interested and excited about. It's sort of always the question with a big advertising opportunity like this, but I'm going to be paying attention to that one pretty closely. Absolutely.

All right. So BookCon next April, let us know if that's a thing you'll be going to. And we will continue to just pay attention as the news rolls out. While we're talking about influencers, pretty big news is just sort of

creeping out this week that ByteDance appears to be closing Eighth Note Press, which is the publishing imprint that they launched in 2023. ByteDance is, of course, the owner of TikTok. And this was a huge deal when they announced it because, of course, TikTok moves a ton of units.

And shortly before the announcement about 8th Note Press came out, TikTok had admitted to, I think it was Forbes that originally reported it, that they basically had a button they could press to decide what would go viral. So like when BookTok is selling a ton of units and you know that they can change what the algorithm is serving to people, why wouldn't you want a shot at like an inside track on

on that. Eighth Note Press was built around a philosophy that they called building backwards, where they were selecting titles to publish based on what was already trending. They had acquired more than 30 novels. And now the book

Seller, which will have a link in the show notes, has information that authors and agents are negotiating the return of rights to titles that the publisher acquired. They've also noticed that all of the digital presence for Eighth Note Press has been quietly deleted. Nobody from Eighth Note Press or ByteDance or TikTok has confirmed that

any of this on the record to the bookseller. Jane Friedman is covering it as well. She's been linking in her newsletter, which is paywalled and is worth the money if you're in the industry, to stories from authors about the lack of support they received and about how this is going. So really unfortunate to see that happen to authors who thought that they were getting in on something that might be a huge advantage.

Some of them were self-published and had quite a track record of success. And now this has really derailed their careers. But also the bigger note of not even a company that has an inside track on the TikTok algorithm.

can make a successful go of this like the post-mortem here is going to be fascinating that's what i was going to say is like i would really really love to be around for some kind of debrief that i will never get access to um because yeah knowing that you have the power to do the virality thing and yet still not being able not not once like not not even once according to the piece and not that i've noticed in my because i do spend a fair amount of time on tiktok um

Were they able to replicate any of that virality, let alone actual success with any of their titles? It's just like proof that this backwards engineering doesn't necessarily work out the way you think it's going to, at least not at this kind of investment point. But I would love to know, yeah, the inside baseball here that, like I said, I don't think I'm ever going to get. I really feel bad for all of those authors who had so much invested in this that are now like, well, we're waiting to hear what's going to happen with our stuff. Yeah.

I would imagine the NDAs from the employee side are pretty ironclad. The bookseller noticed that the person who had been the senior editor for 8th Note Press, according to their LinkedIn page, left that position in April and has moved on somewhere else. So it does seem that these changes are afoot. Someone will confirm something at some point. Yeah. But...

What that is or how juicy it'll be remains to be seen. I think a real note of caution about the appeal of trying to ride the dragon of the algorithm or try to get an inside edge on something that is controlled by...

People you don't know who don't have your best interest at heart, they have their own company's best interest at heart. So a word, man, that's a complicated one. I really hate it for the authors who were involved. I totally understand how if you were, you know, self-published and choosing between a couple different traditional publishing options, like, you know, going with one of the big five or going with the new outfit that had an inside line on TikTok supposedly would have been really compelling. Yeah.

Yeah, especially when you're seeing the virality of like so many other I can't imagine that wasn't tempting. And so I don't put it on them in any way. But that's why I feel so awful to like now know that they're stuck because they're the ones that are I mean, everybody's losing on this, but they really are. So

Yeah. Do you want to take us down social media rabbit hole corner while we were talking about TikTok? May as well, because we're here. So I admit I've never read Allie Hazelwood, but she's an author that I notice a lot of my favorite authors really, really ride hard for. She, of course, writes this very STEM-informed romance. She herself is a scientist. And this

This news was starting to percolate. All I saw initially was just a bunch of tweets or whatever the threads versions are called that were like, look, like Allie Hazelwood is my girl and y'all need to like touch grass. So I'm of course like, well, let me click on this. I don't know anything about this. I'm so chin hands right now. Great. Because it's ridiculous because it is all about shipping information.

Like, PETA versus Gale with Katniss in The Hunger Games. So you heard me right. This was because Allie Hazelwood expressed, like, a total throwaway and, like, funny, meant to be funny opinion about The Hunger Games, a book that was published in 2008. Yeah. This is a social media controversy from, like, 2010. Except that it's current in the fact that it has. So, okay. So what happened is Allie Hazelwood was one of a couple different authors at a panel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at USC back in, I think this was in April or

And somebody recently, though, uploaded a clip of that panel where she was with Taylor Capozola, I think was the moderator. And then the other authors were, I think, Megan Quinn and like Nana Malone. And I don't I didn't see the whole, you know, chunks because only this chunk was little piece was uploaded. But effectively, somehow the conversation had drifted to discussions of the Hunger Games. And the moderator was saying how she's Team PETA and she doesn't understand how anybody could not be Team PETA in 2025. And Ali was like.

Sorry, but like PETA was useless. Team Gale, like all day kind of thing. And maybe he says like one other sentence about it, but they're all laughing, right? Like it's clear that everybody's having a good time. Taylor, the moderator, does say at one point, OK, guys, I need y'all to start like a cancel Allie Hazelwood hashtag. Like I'm going to be out here creating lots of fake accounts. But it's very clear that this is all like hyperbolic good fun. Yeah.

Well, this clip gets uploaded again, I think something like eight days ago at this point, maybe more. And people lost their ever loving minds. There is a whole sub thread that like a sub subreddit, pardon me, that erupted with people just ripping Ali to shreds. And then they took it to Instagram and started commenting on a post that was really just it's like a collaborative post between Ali and somebody else for an upcoming, I think, Kauai based writers conference where people were like.

Just doing everything you know people who have not indeed touched grass in a very long time to do. About, like, how could you fundamentally don't understand the books. How dare you choose him over her. Don't you know? I mean, it was just wild. Wow. The long and short of it is that it ended up running Allie Hazelwood off of Instagram. At least in theory. The, like, update has been that Allie was so inundated by the comments. And which, unfortunately, this is not the first time she goes through something like this. Yeah. But that she just didn't. She meant to hit, like, the.

closed comments button and instead deleted or deactivated it but that it wasn't her intention at least that's what a friend of hers has come forward to say in the aftermath that she's fine but that it was like too much

Yeah. So that's where we're at. People just losing their mind because of this, again, just like fun little exchange. Let's call this what it is. Like that's harassment and cyberbullying. Correct. That's all it is. And it was I don't I won't repeat some of the things I saw, but it was it is the biggest case I've seen for Go Touch Grass in a very long time. Yeah. For someone having an opinion about a book. About a book that came out last year.

when I was, you know, like fresh out of college. What are we doing? We need to really come back to first principles that people having opinions that are different from yours. It's not an attack on you, on books, on the book, on anything. It was just again, if you watch the clip, it is such just like a clear exchange of, you know, authors having a good time on a panel and y'all made it weird. You know, being a little bit critical of things like people are allowed to have opinions. Correct.

That's the way this goes. People are allowed to have opinions, period. This is so shitty and unfortunate. I'm so sorry that that happened to her and over something completely absurd. Yeah, that's the part that really just takes me out because, again, unfortunately people have come for her for a variety of reasons that I'm not grasping onto the specifics of right now, but I know that she's not new to online harassment because sometimes people are awful. But this time, you know, again, when I saw people coming for her, I thought, okay, like, it's going to be something...

really divisive or you know and I don't know what I when I saw Peeta and Gale I was like there's no way there's no

there's no way, there's no way, but there was a way. Yeah, you don't just need to like touch grass if you're participating in something like this. You need to have your internet taken away. Correct. Privileges revoked. We've gone around the bend. Yeah. So that is what's been happening. It has inspired me to go and buy some Ali Hazelwood books to like finally go read her STEM romance. Yes, let's do that. Support Ali Hazelwood because people are allowed to have opinions about books. And not be weird. But yeah, that's Vanessa's social opinion around the whole corner. I mean,

She does appear to be some of your favorite author's favorite author. So, again, she seems like an all-around cool human from what I could tell and writes, again, really cool, like, steamy stem romance. Yeah. I've been meaning to read her forever. I know Jeff's partner, Michelle, is a huge Ali Hazelwood fan. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. I'm going to have to – I have been intending to get a rec from her about which one to start with. So maybe we can loop in a real – Yeah. Like –

We just need to have a conversation about this as the bookish community in general, that like people are allowed to have opinions and expressing an opinion is not an attack. And also like having a critical or a negative opinion is a thing that's acceptable. And actually, really, I want to spend too much more time on this. But the piece that I linked in our agenda that I hope will make it to the notes here that's originally about what happened is actually a piece from Smart Bitches Trashy Books, which I love.

And it's a piece that resonated a ton with me, which is that the authors of the actual post are talking about how hard they relate to what happened and how it has made internet discourse feel so scary. And I'll confess that I'm in the same camp, that sometimes I...

feel like I am holding back how I feel about a thing or like just I'm afraid to engage in certain kinds of discourse because of that fear that something I say, however well intentioned, will be so misconstrued that this would happen. And we're not talking about like that you're holding back what you know to be like spicy political opinions or something. We're talking about books here. Books. And that's the part that I thought that when like, again, because I have no problem saying how I mean, if you read any of my content, you'll be very clear about how I feel about stuff. But it's

silly how something like this is what I will sometimes hold back on because it just feels like all you have to do is again come out in favor of like a love interest in a dystopian YA book between imaginary people yes like to suddenly have people launching for like me to cut off your head like what are we doing yeah this is not the kids are not okay I'm concerned and I

And I feel the same way. I'm looking forward to reading this Smart Bitches Trashy Books piece. Like last week in one of the social videos that I made for Book Riot, I mentioned Kevin Wilson's new book, Run for the Hills, which Jeff and Sharifa and I had a detailed conversation about here in this feed where we liked it but didn't love it. And that's basically what I said. Like I said, I usually love him. This one didn't quite deliver for me. Like, no.

that is almost verbatim the content of it and there were a couple folks who were really upset about like how dare I tear someone down like I would love for you to be present for an actual teardown of mine in Spanish right then come for like this is not a teardown if you want to tear down I invite you to read Katie Waldman's review of the new James Frey in the New Yorker this week that's a real fun

And smart. It's a real thing of beauty. It seems that the new James Frey book is quite bad. And Katie Waldman did us all a public service by reading and reviewing it. But she also seems to have had a good time doing that. Correct. And you know what? She's allowed to have that opinion. And she's not doing something mean to James Frey. Criticism is acceptable.

You know, one of the things Jeff was responding to folks on Instagram and saying, like, some people do want to know, like, when we don't like something. There's a bunch of us here. People know if they if their taste aligns with yours or mine or Jeff's or Sharifa's. And it's helpful to hear when someone doesn't like something just as much as when they do. Also, like, we are not so powerful that me saying Kevin Wilson's new book didn't quite deliver for me is going to do anything to Kevin Wilson. Like, he has a great career. He's doing just fine. Yeah, we don't really do it about like debut novels. Right.

But that's more of an etiquette thing than a concern that will tank somebody's career. But this is a conversation I just don't have any room for at this point. Like, if you're coming to the internet to talk about a piece of media, a book, a TV show, a movie, an album, whatever, and you cannot stand anyone's expression that they just happen to not like that thing and they have reasons for not liking that thing, that doesn't mean they think you're bad.

Or that they think about you at all. I don't care if you like Kevin Wilson's new book. Like, I'm happy for you. Go to town.

But this should not be happening to people. People should not. Allie Hazelwood should still be on Instagram. Good Lord. Like, look what you did. It makes me so cranky. Look what you did. So cranky. So yeah, do something better with your time. Again, those people definitely need to be put on internet timeout, although I doubt that will happen. But around these parts. In the court of rightness, they would be on internet timeout. Correct. All right. Well, let's, man, let's take a little break, a little ad break here and we'll recover.

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Okay, how about some good news from the fight against book banning because we got to take our wins where we can get them. This week, voters in Huntington Beach, California, which has an all MAGA city council, they call themselves the MAGA-nificent seven. Okay.

I hate that so much. That is really a thing that is happening. But voters outvoted them to the tune of almost 60% of voters repealing a community review board that has been allowed to decide which children's books are appropriate for the city's libraries and which are not.

And then they also voted against a city council proposal that would have allowed the city to privatize and sell the public libraries. Mm-hmm.

Big wins. There are still some votes remaining to be counted, but it's not enough that could sway the decision into any kind of different direction. So as soon as the results are official, that community review board will be repealed and librarians will once again be responsible for determining what books go on to public library shelves. Novel idea. Yeah.

I cannot believe it referred to as the Magnificent Seven. I was vomited when I read that part. There's like a photo of them all wearing their red hats and posing. This is, it's not just like a moniker from the local paper. No. They are proud of this. It's a thing. But yes. Yeah. It's...

Sorry. Go ahead, Vanessa. I was just about to make a very, no, I was like, what I was going to say was not very charitable, but I'm glad that both of these measures were passed. I do love that they straight up were like, no, we would like to dissolve everything that you're doing. Like, great. That is wonderful. Like, a real majority, almost 60%, like, that's a pretty

close to having a mandate, I would say. And this is, I also just want to call attention to it because there has been a lot of like, oh my God, elections are over in the wake of the Trump administration. So let's notice that, you know, elections still happen. Most of our elections are administered at the city and state level, you know,

the Trump administration can't do that much about them and that these kinds of MAGA focused initiatives, especially book banning initiatives, continue to be deeply unpopular, even with conservative voters and even in conservative areas. There's been a lot of data Kelly Jensen has reported on over the last five years that the vast majority of citizens, the vast majority of parents don't support book bans. And so if you need to put some data onto your political panic, this is a good place to start. Yeah.

It's a great place to start. What I was going to say, but in a more charitable, tamped-down way, is that as a resident of California, or a former, I should say, resident of Southern California, California,

you know, there is some perception depending on folks level of being informed that like it's completely blue everywhere you go. And that is very much not the case specifically in these kinds of pockets of like Orange County and even like South or like certain beach cities in L.A. even. And so it's it's important to like not feel like just because you live in a blue

blue state that everywhere is safe and it's really important to show up to these local elections because there's plenty of MAGA influence, especially in places like Orange County. And it's important to show up for that stuff to make those impacts that they're just, they're monumental. Like they start small, but this is a huge deal that this entire thing was, you know, dissolved and they won't have the, the

ability to control books that are in public libraries. Like that is hugely important. We talk about that. You know, Kelly talks about that all the time, the importance of these local elections. So again, it's you're not safe just because you're in a blue state per se. Like, please show up to this kind of thing and make your vote heard. Elections are happening all the time. Yes. Elections are happening all the time and your vote still matters. This was like 62,000 votes total, something like that. Yeah. So show up.

Pay attention to what's on the ballot because I guarantee you the other side is doing that as well. Sure. Let's talk about Reese Witherspoon. She's been making moves this week. The Reese's Book Club just turned eight this year and it was announced earlier this week that Hello Sunshine has partnered with iHeartMedia to launch a companion podcast.

Witherspoon won't be hosting it herself. She will be one of the executive producers. But the weekly show, which is going to be an iHeart podcast production, is called Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club. It's going to be anchored by journalist and TV host Danielle Robay. It'll bring together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers, and of course, authors that have been featured on Reese's Book Club to talk about books. The first one comes out next week on the 24th or

or this week, as most of you are listening to it. And we'll feature Queen of the Rom-Com, Emily Henry, and Yulin Kwong, who also has a Rom-Com book out and is directing the adaptation of one of Emily Henry's books. So that should, yeah, that should be pretty interesting. What do you think about this eight years in to the Reese journey?

I've been sitting with this one for a couple days now. So obviously we are in the business of book podcasts and I know what it takes to make a podcast and like how to keep it interesting and how so many of your efforts that you put into a thing may or may not translate. Obviously she's got quite the machine. I mean, this is a giant, you know, Hello Sunshine and Reese Witherspoon in general are just like a very much a household name. So I'm interested to see how popular this ends up being and like what people's appetite is. Because obviously like the

the stuff, the ingredients are there, right? She's got all of these huge names. She's got the backing of the fact that she's been around for so long and the popularity of the book club, really cool people participating. I just, I'm interested to see if that translates in the same way to, to

to podcasts. It would be great if it does, but I have questions. Yeah, I mean, always good for books and reading when someone with this high of a profile wants to launch a big new thing. I think my primary question is similar to yours. The kinds of authors that get featured in Reese's Book Club are not generally hurting for exposure. Exactly. If you want to hear a conversation with Emily Henry, you can find a billion of those. Many.

online already. So whether this is just an easiest, easier place for folks to go, like they can just find them directly in the Reese's Book Club feed or bookmarked feed, maybe that is the idea here. I'm sure publishers are stoked.

Of course. Yeah. No, I mean, again, on paper, this is like a great idea. I just really do hope that at some point, like I understand why you would open with like this banger of combo, right? Of like Emily Henry and Yulin Kwong. I hope at some point that they were to translate all of that book power they have into potentially highlighting some new voices, which in theory is what Hello Sunshine has been like trying to do.

to do. Yeah, you know, like, it would be great to see that because in theory, the audience is like semi built. And, you know, I'm always curious about really how much appetite readers have for the like, yes, where do you get your ideas from flavor of author interview? Publishers have tried to launch or have launched a bunch of author interview podcasts that are intended to do a similar kind of thing, you know, promote authors, new books, give them platforms,

for those. And to me, they always feel like just a canned version of what you would get if you went to the author's event at a bookstore. Most author events are fine. Very few author events are really great or interesting. It's hard to do that well. And I think it's hard to do a good, consistently engaging author interview podcast. So I don't know anything about Danielle Robay, but she's had a pretty

pretty colorful and long career. She hosts some other shows for I Heart Podcast already and has a lot of experience. So probably a good bet for somebody who could attempt that. But the programming, I think, could be really challenging here. So I'm going to be with you following what they do and how it goes. May their efforts succeed. We need books to keep doing well. More book things. Yes, always. Yes. Okay. Okay.

We got to talk about this right wing see you at the library event. I'm sorry. I just need a moment to barf again. But yeah, fine. I did make you say magnificent seven. So I'll cover this one as well. I will chime in. I promise.

Kirk Cameron, everybody.

It's a nationwide story hour that the right wing publisher hosts at local public libraries. Kurt Cameron, as you just mentioned, and other Brave Books authors have been the face of the event since it started in 2023. But this year, there's a twist. The U.S. Department of Education at the Library of Congress has partnered with the event.

At this time, there is no event scheduled at the actual Library of Congress. Also, the Department of Education is not part of the Library of Congress and it doesn't have authority to.

Over the Library of Congress, as we have said recently, repeatedly on this show, the Library of Congress is not a lending library that deals with like publicly available books. Rebecca, I just in my soul feel this is a Four Seasons landscaping shit. 100%! But that somebody was like, dude, we're going to have a reading at the Library of Congress. Yeah, yeah, do that, do that. And then somebody at some point was like, um...

And it was too late. They really don't know that that's not what the Library of Congress does. Yeah, it really isn't. And if you look at the website, of course, it's all super, super vague. Like the involvement is quite and it's intentional, as Kelly points out in this piece here. But it's there's there's no you know, there can't be any readings. It can't be story times in the Library of Congress or anywhere in DC.

Yeah, I mean, like, it's, you know, not out of the question that they will roll some out. There are many currently listed, but the Trump administration has taken over and really gutted the Department of Education. The press release about this includes quotes from Moms for Liberty. Yeah.

who, as Kelly notes in this piece, were especially excited about the DEI snitch line that was intended to intimidate educators from doing their jobs. And the Department of Education's social media presence hosts currently a lot of conspiracy theories and right-wing partisan junk. Yeah.

Just two years ago, you know, when it was still under Biden, Brave Books was claiming that the Department of Education had funded public school transitioning programs, which it absolutely does not did not do. Yeah. Yeah.

So if you wish to see where these are happening locally for you and protest or contact the organizations that are hosting them, maybe there are local businesses that are hosting them, that's certainly an activism opportunity.

you know, First Amendment rights apply here and they can host these events, but they can also reap the consequences of it. The piece also, I will say, does give a pretty good primer for folks who work in the libraries, as well as like Rebecca just said, ways to get involved. But like the one of the bigger issues here is that because they're so loud and proud and have been really vocal about breaking into lots of different public library spaces for the

public, especially if you're not as well informed about it, it looks very much like these libraries are co-signing and are in partnership with these events, where that is very much not the case. It's these Brave Books going out and essentially demanding, because of their First Amendment rights, access to their rooms to rent them for this, and it's not

They're not in cahoots in that way, but it looks that way. So anyway, there's a lot of really good primers in the piece for like how to prepare if you are the person working at the library that day or just in general or getting questions or like how to yourself go interrogate why this is happening at your library. So as always, Kelly loves to give us, you know, all the juice and the meat of the story and then resources for how to potentially get involved. So go check out.

Yes, links will be included. And I'll just say, again, at every possible opportunity, if you're not subscribed to our literary activism newsletter that Kelly heads up, that is just such a consistently incredible resource for staying on top of the news and really understanding what is happening, especially when a lot of misinformation tends to fly around the bookish internet about these things.

Right. I think that's the news this week, Vanessa. I think we did. We're all over the map. Let's take a little journey into Frontlist Foyer, which is brought to us by Thrift Books, which you all know at this point has an endless selection of books and videos, music, games.

gifts, games, and they're all available at prices that fill your imagination and your library. Childhood classics, new worlds of adventure. There is something for everyone and every budget. And with the Thrift Books Reading Rewards program, every purchase gets you closer to free book rewards. Read more, spend less at thriftbooks.com.

for free shipping in the US of books over or of book orders over $15. And you can visit thriftbooks.com slash BR podcast to see a running list of the titles that we talk about.

On the show. What have you been reading and how many of them are about the Golden Girls this week? I'm not kidding. I had a different pick that I hadn't finished. So I didn't feel. And then I was like, wait, I recently read an old lady sleuth book. I have to keep the train going. And so I put it back in. And anyway, so I'm going to start with my other pick first, which is The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, which I think comes out the week that this show goes live. I think it's the 25th.

Yeah, anyway, it's soon. You won't have to wait too long. She's one of my auto-reads. I love me some Celia Bonanno-Garcia, especially because she appears to have a genre wheel that she just spins and then wherever it lands, she's like, I'm going to write that now. Seriously, she does all kinds of things. All kinds. And this one is catnip for me. It's called, again, The Bewitching, so we know it's a little witchy. And it is a story of a college student who is...

She's kind of an obsession, a healthy one, but still with this kind of obscure horror writer whose best friend went missing from the very school that she now attends. And so she's trying to kind of do her big project, her thesis, I believe, about this author and is like running into issues there.

The side note to that, and it's another timeline that we're also getting the story, is that this person's grandmother was very much well-versed in brujería and witchcraft. And at first you don't see how those two storylines are connecting. And then slowly they do in a really interesting, juicy way that's a little bit witchy. It's a little bit... It's obviously got historical fiction in there. It's got academia. It's a mystery. It's a little bit paranormal. There's just a whole lot going on in a way that Silvia Madonogarcia knows. She just...

she just does this stuff so well. And it was a great time. I, I had a really good time with this read. Um,

So if you're craving a little bit of that witchy academia stuff, I think that's a home run. And then going to my old lady's noose corner, or elderly. Another recurring segment here on the show. Exactly. The two things I can be confidently relied upon. A Murder for Miss Hortense by Mel Pennant, which is basically a cozy that is set in the 2000s in England. But the cool part about it really is that it's set...

It also flashes back to the 60s, and it's the person that made Miss Hortense is of the Windrush generation, which is a term I know I had heard a lot, but I don't think I had quite known the definition of. Yeah, it is essentially...

In the late 1940s, so after World War II, the British Nationality Act gave people from the colonies the right to live and work in Britain, which was basically their way of being like, oh, we had done all these wars and colonized all these places. Come help rebuild our economy. And so a whole bunch of Caribbean people ended up in the UK by the nature of this act. There's even like a giant boat. One of the ships was called the Windrush, and that's why it's their label of that.

of that. But so this person is of the Windrush generation and is solving a crime that has to do with like this investor group that she was once a part of in her community, an investor group that looked to rebuild this community of migrants and of just people of color when it was clear that no one else was going to. And in the many years that have passed, something shady has gone down there as much as I think I want to say about the

plot but it's really really great on audio the person who does this narration is fantastic just this really great mixture of accents that are both caribbean and english and it's just a it's a good time and i haven't read this flavor of cozy in a bit that um yeah it was just a really fun time and again the person is of a certain age and i think that's apparently what i like to read in mysteries these days so yeah you'll learn a lot about the windrush generation about um

British colonial practices and just have a good mystery. So yeah, that's A Murder for Miss Hortense. I'm delighted that you had a good experience with author accents on audio after what happened for your experience with Barry Harbones in the Midnight Soil. Yeah, I had a great time. Somebody sent me, Danica actually, a screenshot that somebody was like, gosh, audio performance, A++. And I was like, oh.

I was like, oh, I mean, granted, again, they did a great job in the parts that were not a Spanish accent. But anyway, this one is great. This one is a lot of fantastic, again, like Caribbean accents that were just super fun. It's a great time. Awesome.

I love that for you. I've been on a pretty good roll, too. I just read Bed and Breakup by Suzy Dumond, Book Riot's own Suzy Dumond. She writes great queer romance. This one is coming out in early July. It's about two women who were married, are technically still married to each other, but it's been like seven years since they broke up. They just haven't actually gotten divorced.

They used to own a bed and breakfast in a charming little town called Eureka Springs, Arkansas, which like is a delightfully queer place in a really red state. And it really is that way in real life. In real life, yeah. Yeah. One of them is kind of has become a celebrity chef. The other one is an artist.

and for different reasons each of them decides at you know very coincidentally the same time that the thing that they should do at this crossroads they've each found in their lives is go back to the bed and breakfast because they um they still own it but they have been working with a management company who's been running it and they're just gonna each one of them thinks that they're gonna spend the summer like

having some time alone to figure out the next part of their life, living in this building. But of course, one gets there and the other one is already there. And it's like, what are you doing here? We kind of hate each other.

It's a second chance romance. They eventually find their way back to each other, but not without some bumps and bruises. They do some processing of things. It's charming. It's funny. It's really sweet. The pages turn. I loved spending time in this fictional version of Eureka Springs. I've never been there, but I've heard wonderful things about it. And like only Susie Dumond could make me want to go to Arkansas for fun.

and apparently she went and stayed there i mean obviously she's familiar with it anyway but like yeah and did you know research like was they went there again and stayed at it yeah so i thought she's yeah she's shown some pictures of like some of the real bnbs that that are there just really delightful i thoroughly enjoyed it look forward to this in july and then i am almost finished with great black hope by rob franklin which is one of the big debut novels of summer uh it's about a queer black man in his i think early mid-20s

From an affluent family, he's been palling around with kind of influencer types, like a glamorous sort of crowd. And he gets caught one night with cocaine, gets arrested.

and what is going to happen in his life after that. This sends him into kind of a satirical experience with both the justice system and also rehab groups, but not completely satirical. Like the character is trying to unearth something

what has happened. Not so long ago, before this incident with cocaine, his best friend was murdered, and he is still processing that. And like trying to figure out does he have an issue with substances? What is he going to do with his future? What's going to happen as people try to like investigate the story of what happened to his friend? There's a section of the book where he goes home and spends time with his parents and like back in his original community in Atlanta. And

For me, that was the most enjoyable part of the book. Like there's just something really sharp about the way that Franklin writes that those family dynamics, but the like satire around this very like glossy kind of glamorous group of people that the character's name is Smith that he's been running with in New York is also really fun and satisfying. It has some what we would call debut novel problems. Like the book is really, really ambitious and Franklin is doing a ton of things that

I think my experience of it would have been better if he had done like a couple fewer things. It could have just been a little bit tighter, but I really enjoyed it. I wouldn't be surprised if we see this get nominated for some stuff. Like there are some really stellar sentences. Just awesome.

On the language level, the book is a real pleasure. And you'll be cruising along in an elaborate description of some scene, and then there's a really sharp, really funny observation about, like, bitingly funny observation about this person that the character is in front of, or what kind of people it's

he's interacting with. I will certainly be paying attention to Rob Franklin's career, whatever happens after Great Black Hope. I think this is a really solid debut. And it is out in the next week or so. I've lost track of where we are on pub dates. It might be out already. I'll have to go back and double check. But I would definitely recommend it if you're paying attention to those that kind of fiction, but also looking at debut writers and some new voices on the scene.

Okay. That's our show this week. Vanessa, thanks as always for hopping in the sidecar and taking us down the rabbit holes. Happy to be the reporter from the fridge.

You can send your questions for the mailbag episode to podcast at bookriot.com or anything else you want to tell us about. That's our email address, podcast at bookriot.com. Show notes will be at bookriot.com slash listen. Join us on the Patreon, patreon.com slash bookriot podcast to find all of our bonus content. And of course, we hope to see you at Powell's on July 9th at 7pm talking about the best books of the year so far. Have a good one. Thanks, Vanessa. Yeah, of course. Bye.

♪♪♪

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