Cool Move Alert: Kyle Minor is reviewing audiobooks for Salon. His first piece is on Dave Eggers’ Hologram for the King, as read by Dion Graham (The Wire, Law and Order).
Audiobook Reviews by Kyle Minor
Feminist Bookstores Resisting Trump and Getting Stronger Sales
“The feminist bookstores in the nation’s largest cities are experiencing the most significant upticks in sales, as well as in foot traffic.” We love bookstores here at the Millions, especially feminist ones. So we were ecstatic to see this piece in Publisher’s Weekly about the bonanza of feminist bookstores seeing an increase in sales and attention. While there are not many of these bookstores left, the ones that are still alive attribute their increased popularity to the ‘Trump bump.’ Read the story here and be sure to visit all the bookstores mentioned the next time you’re in town.
The Ziggy Stardust Bookclub
David Bowie hasn’t performed live in seven years, but he has a good excuse — he’s been reading. His top 100 books are part of the “David Bowie Is” traveling exhibition (currently in Toronto.) The list reveals that he’s a big fan of American lit, including Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys, Saul Bellow’s Herzog, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, and more. He’s also an amateur rock historian, naming Charlie Gillete’s The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll and Peter Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom among others. When can we sign up for the class, Professor Bowie?
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Book Boredom
Laura Miller discusses what she didn’t read this year.
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Facebook’s Fakery
Facebook’s amended S-1 to its IPO was filed this week, and the details confirm some of the doubts raised in the last filing. The company estimates that between 5-6% of its most active users could in fact be “duplicate” (read: fake) accounts. Put in more concrete terms, of Facebook’s estimated 850 million users, 46,475,000 may be like this one. (46 million, by the way, is roughly the population of Colombia, Spain, or Ukraine.)
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Defending the Poet Laureate
Recommended reading: Our own Nick Ripatrazone writes “In Defense of the Poet Laureate” and about the tension that arises when poetry meets government for the new Literary Hub site.