The Bestselling Books of 2013
Publishers Weekly has gathered some interesting statistics about last year’s book sales. Among their findings: “fiction is the genre of choice for customers who read e-books” and movie adaptations created demand for several titles, including Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
See the books included on these lists:
- Nielsen BookScan Top 20
- Amazon Kindle Top 20
- Amazon Print Top 20
8 books I bailed on in 2013
Laura Miller, book critic for Salon, reads a lot of books and usually writes about the ones she recommends. Here she summarizes 8 books she didn’t finish last year, cautioning “what follows are my responses to books you might possibly have heard of, rather than the absolute worst things I read.”
See why she bailed on these books:
- Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
- Gun Machine by Warren Ellis
- The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates
- Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime by Adrian Raine
- At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcon
- Confessions of a Sociopath by M.E. Thomas
- Truth in Advertising by John Kenney
- Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova
How Do E-Books Change the Reading Experience?
Each week in Bookends, two writers take on questions about the world of books. This week, Mohsin Hamid and Anna Holmes discuss how technology affects the way we read.
Newbery Winner to Promote Her Genre
Television, music, and video games all compete with books for children’s attention. For this reason the Library of Congress in 2008 created the national ambassador for young people’s literature, a new position dedicated to promoting literature for children. A new ambassador is named every two years.
The next ambassador for young people’s literature will be Newberry Medal winner Kate DiCamillo, author of Because of Winn-Dixie and The Tale of Despereaux:
With a warm, lively personality and a boisterous laugh, Ms. DiCamillo would appear a natural fit for the post of ambassador, which asks for an ability to relate to children and an overall contribution to children’s literature. She is the fourth person appointed to the position, following Jon Scieszka (2008), Katherine Paterson (2010) and Walter Dean Myers (2012).
The Top 10 Library Stories of 2013
For libraries, 2013 was an eventful year. PW takes a look back at the top 10 library stories of the year, and a look ahead to what might be on the horizon in 2014.
Read what Publishers Weekly has to say about these news stories from last year:
- An E-Book Breakthrough?
- Google, GSU and Fair Use
- The Common Core’s Rough Debut
- What Happened to Copyright Reform?
- Pew Finds Americans Love Their Libraries, But Use Is Declining
- A Bookless Library?
- The NYPL [New York Public Library] Goes Back to the Drawing Board
- The Digital Public Library of America Launches
- Congress, White House Push for Public Access to Research
- The Death of Aaron Swartz
