How to be an informed voter for libraries and books

Early voting is underway in many U.S. states as the November 3 midterms approach, and libraries are on the ballot.

Libraries—and intellectual freedom—are always on the ballot, but with the continued rise of book censorship and attacks on these institutions of democracy, it is more crucial than ever to show up at the polls.

Beyond the top-of-the-ballot offices, two main ballot matters relate to public libraries and schools this fall.

First, there will be elections in several states and municipalities for school and library board members. Who sits on these boards matters tremendously. Second, there will be numerous elections related to library funding. Voting to sustain or increase library budgets is crucial to their survival.

Election prep can be overwhelming, so we’ve got a step-by-step guide. To get started:

Find out what’s on your ballot. View a sample ballot, look up the candidates, and research any library- or school-related initiatives.

Identify strong candidates. Look at the language used in campaign materials, research where candidates’ money comes from and how they spend it, and locate nonpartisan voting guides.

Vote as early as possible and in person if you’re able.

Continue the momentum. Share what you’ve learned with friends and neighbors. Could you create a library voting guide for your area?

Keep going. Whatever the outcome, the work is not done. Even if every pro-library and pro-school candidate wins, these institutions are still going to be under fire.

The work has no end point—it’s a lifelong project. Take time to rest and hydrate so you can amplify the energy going into the next year . . . and realistically, the next several years. The damage being done to public institutions like schools and libraries is deep, and repairing it will be a generation of work. — KJ

NEW RELEASES

Daylight’s fading, but the books burn bright

If we were in charge, today would be a national holiday. The annual arrival of the “Best American” series is cause for celebration!

These anthologies are a wonderful way to sample a wide variety of work and discover new writers at the forefront of food and travel writing, short stories, essays, and more.

Award-winning journalist Lawrence Wright returns with a powerful exploration of the unlikely alliance between women on Texas’s death row and the nuns who visit them.

Horror season rolls on with Bestiary author K-Ming Chang’s terrifying tale of three cousins who are visited by a demon that gives them a horrible—and deadly—task.

Also hitting shelves:

A cookbook inspired by cult classic movies

A tarot-fueled epic fantasy

Ebenezer Scrooge takes on new life as a ghost hunter.

A new crime thriller from an American master

A charming collection of comics about dogs

Bust your TBR with more of the week’s most interesting new books.

BIPOC

BIPOC horror books to finish off spooky season with

There’s a little less than a fortnight left in October, but that’s plenty of time to get some more spooky reading in if you’re a seasonal reader.

As a recovering weenie, I’ve really come to appreciate the horror genre the last few years. It’s largely because I realize that horror in media serves as excellent social commentary.

Now, the way my nerves are set up, I haven’t been entirely converted—I don’t really do horror movies or shows by myself, but I have been reading more and more horror books. I’ve found that horror books, by BIPOC authors especially, can address historical social issues in the most effective and often visceral ways.

If you’re down for horror that disturbs you in new ways, the following books would be perfect to read in the remaining days of October (and beyond):

The Sleeping Sisters by Jennifer Givhan: This is both a Chicana-Indigenous retelling of The Headless Woman, and a story inspired by true events. Fortuna Miércoles has just moved her family across the Rio Grande, trying to outrun a family curse when she becomes involved in an ancient and deadly plot alongside Detective Palacio. Twenty years ago, the bones of girls were turning up, and now there’s a new body. Is it the same killer from decades prior, or some new terrible evil? Insatiable by Erica Ridley: A good gothic academia novel is especially suited to the fall, and this one gets bonus points for taking place in an exclusive boarding school on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. It’s there that Catriona becomes cursed after an attack by male students. She starts to look and act differently, and she’s got new powers…and a taste for revenge. Off the Reservation by Stephen Graham Jones: Five years after the events of The Only Good Indians, one of its characters is in the hospital. He sets out with three older Blackfeet to reclaim the bones of a Blackfeet boy who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. But once they take the bones, they realize something terrible has escaped with them.

How to break a reading slump

It happens to everyone. You’re cruising along through a nice run of books, then all of a sudden, you’re just…not. Reading slumps, while frustrating, are totally normal, and they have a diverse array of causes and cures.

Here are a few of our favorite tips for getting your reading groove back:

Switch Up Your Formats: If you normally read in print, try an engaging audiobook. If you’re typically an audiobook fan, pick up some comics. Fight your literary ennui with novelty. Revisit a Book You Loved: Go back to a book you remember fondly, not just for comfort but with curiosity. How much do you really remember? What’s different or surprising? Use the familiar to find something new. Lean Into the Slump: Sometimes, a reading slump is a signal that other areas of your life need to take priority. Don’t sweat it. Do what you’ve gotta do and know the books will be there when life isn’t life-ing quite so hard.

Hear our conversation with Anne Bogel of the podcast What Should I Read Next? for more tips and book recommendations for breaking a slump.

SERIES-OUS BUSINESS

Why you will probably be hearing a lot more about the Emma Lion series, according to data

Viking announced last month that it had acquired the rights to Beth Brower’s self-published Emma Lion series. It’s an 8-book (and counting) fictional diary of a Victorian woman returning to London to claim her inheritance, with each book covering roughly two months in her life. Emma has drawn comparison to Elizabeth Bennett and Anne Shirley, and readers have been taken with the wit and the world that Brower has created.

As compelling as that pitch is, the data is even more eye-opening. On her excellent Substack Read, Write, Rant, Jessica Johnson-Perez analyzed reader behavior across multiple well-known franchises, paying special attention to retention across books.

Using Goodreads ratings as a proxy for reader behavior, Johnson found that many best-selling series see the percentage of reader who read book one that read book two range from 75% on the high side (ACOTAR) to around 40% (Harry Potter). There are some confounding factors here, but if half or more of people who try your first book go on to your second, you are in good company.

Johnson-Perez notes that in this regard, Emma Lion has the makings of a breakout. Since there are already plenty of Goodreads ratings, there is enough data to project that Emma Lion will do well: the series sees an impressive 71.9% of readers continuing to book two, just behind ACTOR and Fourth Wing (72.9%) and ahead of Dungeon Crawler Carl (66.6%).

This is no guarantee that mainstream readers will flock to the series, but it’s exactly the kind of book you would want to bet on. And the fact that Viking is publishing the first eight books in the series in November, just a couple of months after announcing the deal, speaks volumes.

Go check out Read, Write, Rant. I bet you will like it. – JO

UNUSUAL SUSPECTS

Peter James recommends three of his favorite crime novels

the cover of Dead in Three Two One and a photo of Peter James

photo credit: Max Young

Peter James is the bestselling author of the Roy Grace series. The latest, Dead in Three Two One, is out today from Pan. Below, he recommends three of his favorite crime novels.

Brighton Rock by Graham Greene: This is the novel that made me want to write crime thrillers. I was 14 years old, growing up in Brighton in the 1950s, then a faded, grimy, and crime-ridden seaside resort on the south coast of England. My father, a passionate reader himself who knew I loved books, gave me this as a birthday present. I was instantly hooked by the very first sentence. Brighton Rock has one of the most gripping first lines I’ve ever read: “Within three hours of arriving in Brighton, Hale knew they meant to murder him.”

You have to read on! Who is Hale, why is he in Brighton, who is going to murder him? What followed was a crime thriller quite unlike anything I had read before. The novel’s central character, Pinky, is a truly terrifying creation: A 17-year-old boy gangster in charge of a bunch of weak, middle-aged criminals; Pinky is a devout Catholic. But as a killer, he is profoundly conflicted and lives in terror of eternal damnation. And the very last line is one of the darkest, psychologically, I have ever read.

The Two Faces of January by Patricia Highsmith: I think there are few finer examples in literature of just how engaging a truly awful person can be than Chester MacFarland, a con man on the run from the USA, hiding out in Greece. After murdering a detective who has caught up with him, Chester, his wife Colette, and an enigmatic young American tour guide go on the run, and their relationships implode in a way that gives the reader the most wonderful voyeuristic delight! I love Highsmith’s writing—and with this, she is at her pinnacle.

The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes: I love Himes’s writing. The Real Cool Killers is set in 1959 Harlem, with detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, and it begins with a white man murdered in an all-Black bar. The novel is full of raw energy, wonderful descriptions, real humour, and some very deep pathos. It is a wonderful evocation of a time of systematic racism and of life being cheap—for both the cops and the criminals.