The Biggest Bookish News of the Week

Here are the stories Today in Books readers were most interested in this week. Settle into your Sunday and catch up!

The 30 Best Novels of the Last 30 Years

The L.A. Times is marking its 30th Festival of Books by curating a list of the 30 best fiction books of the last 30 years, “culled from a survey of authors, editors, critics, scholars and other experts in the field.” Ambitious is the word used to describe the 30th ranked book on the list (Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell), and that adjective can be used to describe most of the books on this list, especially the book in the #1 spot, which is 2666 Roberto Bolaño. I’ve seen 2666 on so many book lists of greats and while I’m certainly not in the mood to read about mass numbers of “brutally murdered women,” it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to understand why it’s on all of these lists. It’s long, dizzyingly layered, and by all accounts seems to accomplish what it sets out to do, which is a challenging feat when you have that many storylines. I guess what I’m saying is, there are no big surprises here. The most commercial book on the list is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, recommended by Marie Lu, but the overall leaning is très literary fiction.

In Case You’re More of a Nonfiction Girly

Yesterday, I shared about the L.A. Times list of the 30 best fiction books of the last 30 years, and today we’re taking a look at their matching list of best nonfiction reads. I read far more fiction than nonfiction, so I was initially surprised by how many of these books I’ve read, but then it occurred to me that the nonfiction books I pick up tend to be heavily vetted specifically because it takes more to get me to engage with true stories. The books on this list were hugely popular and/or big critical successes, picking up awards left and right, when they hit shelves and their significance endures. I mean, David Sedaris is one of our great living satirists and it felt like everyone was reading Me Talk Pretty One Day (#30 on the list) when it published. We’ve got another living legend–this time of both fiction and nonfiction writing–in award-winning author Jesmyn Ward whose powerful and deep memoir, Men We Reaped, placed 13th. At the top of the list, Isabel Wilkerson beat out Joan Didion for 1st place with The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, which I really really need to get to reading because an expertly told history of a huge movement isn’t something to skip past, even if you’re more of a fiction girly.

Supreme Court Considers KidLit With LGBTQ+ Themes

If you heard a deep sigh in the distance, that was me. My kingdom for a world where acknowledging the diversity of identities that exists all around us is not controversial; where kids reading about a puppy that gets lost at a Pride festival or a trans kid who wins a karate competition isn’t met with righteous indignation and gnashing of teeth. An association of parents and teachers under the moniker Kids First (the naming conventions of these groups is something else, but I digress) is suing Maryland’s largest school system to allow them to opt students out of classes on days where books with queer characters and themes are being discussed. They’re arguing that the books violate their right to free exercise of religion under the First Amendment. One member of Kids First decided she needed to help found a private school that wouldn’t “brainwash kids with these ideas.” This person apparently doesn’t know what brainwashing is because incorporating books about LGBTQ+ people into a broader curriculum ain’t it. People are watching this case and have real concerns about the implications of a vote in favor of Kids First. “Some legal scholars said that accepting the logic of the Maryland parents’ arguments would have broad consequences for the ability of public schools to manage their curriculums, citing cases in which parents unsuccessfully challenged course materials on evolution and the Big Bang theory and storybooks about wizards and giants,” Adam Liptak writes in the New York Times piece (this takes me back to season 4, episode 16 of Abbott Elementary, BUT I DIGRESS).

A Read With Jenna Book Festival is Coming

Jenna Bush Hager is taking her popular book club to Nashville for the first ever Read With Jenna Book Festival. It’s a two-day festival happening May 30-31 and will feature authors, book club discussions, live performances, and more. Hager said Read With Jenna authors Elin Hilderbrand, Ann Patchett, Alison Espach, Rumaan Alam, and Jessica Soffer will appear, and there will be a performance by singer-songwriter Blessing Offor. General admission is $399, which honestly knocked the wind out of me. That gets you admission for a single day–Saturday. When I think “book festival,” my mind goes to the L.A. Times Festival of Books, where I’d show up maybe having paid a few bucks for advance registration to some panels to ensure I got a seat. I was not in the mind of Coachella-level pricing. General admission includes food, beverages, and curated giveaway items in addition to programming, so obviously this is not the open to the public, food carts everywhere kind of event my brain jumped to. VIP admission is an eye-popping $699 and gets you the extra day and exclusive events. The event is a month away and there aren’t a lot of programming details… I don’t know, y’all–I’m a bit puzzled by the whole thing, but maybe the Read With Jenna army will show up and shell out.

Paul Mescal Will Star in HAMNET Adaptation

The visual stunner that was Nomadland (adapted from Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder) turned me into a big Chloé Zhao fan, so it is with great enthusiasm that I announce news for Zhao’s upcoming film–another adaptation–Hamnet, based on the book of the same name by Maggie O’Farrell. Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley are now attached to star in the film as William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes, respectively, in the story fictionalizing the untimely death of their son and the creation of Hamlet. Irish actors are fire right now. O’Farrell and Zhao worked together on the screenplay for the internationally bestselling book. Hamnet‘s limited release begins November 27 around the release of Zootopia 2 ahead of a nationwide release on December 12.