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This new Scottish bookstore will only stock books written by women.
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By Walker Caplan
July 27, 2021, 12:52pm
Earlier this month, author MA Sieghart revealed in The Guardian < https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/09/why-do-so-few-men-read-books-by-women > that, according to statistics she commissioned from Nielsen Book Research, the top 10 best-selling female authors’ readership is only 19% men. The top 10 best-selling male authors’ readership is much more evenly split, with 55% men and 45% women. So how do you get people to read more women? Scotland-based bookseller Rachel Wood has an idea: her bookstore Rare Birds Books < https://rarebirdsbookclub.com/ > , opening in Edinburgh on August 6 < https://www.thenational.scot/news/19471741.rare-birds-books-scotlands-first-female-centric-bookshop-open-capital/ > , will stock only books written by women.

Rare Birds Books is the culmination of Wood’s longtime mission of supporting female writers and viewpoints. “Through university I noticed the reading lists were always dominated by male authors,” Wood told The Sunday Post. < https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/rare-birds-book-club/ >  “The lens you would see the whole world through was always from men, basically. I was always trying to push things in the opposite direction. So I started asking, ‘What if the lens we viewed everything through was created by women authors?’”

This lightbulb moment led Wood to start the Rare Birds Book Club < https://rarebirdsbookclub.com/ > , a monthly subscription book club completely composed of contemporary novels written by women. For Wood, it’s a way for women to come together to read female authors, as well as men to expand their reading horizons. During the pandemic, Rare Birds Book Club grew much quicker than Wood imagined; overall sales increased by 204% < https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/rare-birds-book-club/ >  from January 2020 to 2021. Still, 97% of Rare Birds’s customers are women. Now, Wood is hoping an in-person storefront will draw more types of readers—including men.

“The bookstore space is going to be really beautiful and really welcoming so I’m hoping it’s going to draw in more people, who want to poke in their heads and check it out,” Wood told The Sunday Post. “Plus, once you’re in the bookstore would you really notice, unless we pointed it out, that all the books were by female authors? Probably not. You’re just picking up a book that looks interesting to you. I’m hoping we can really open the eyes of a lot of readers.”

https://lithub.com/this-new-scottish-bookstore-will-only-stock-books-written-by-women/
Rare Bird Books
https://rarebirdsbookclub.com/

WHAT ARE THE FASTEST SELLING BOOKS IN U.S. PUBLISHING HISTORY?
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Can you name any of the fastest-selling books of all time? In the United States? Maybe. But people tend to focus on the best-selling books, which is slightly different.

The best-selling books, like the ones the New York Times Best Seller List covers every week, are the ones that sell the highest number of total copies, while the fastest-selling books are those that fly off the shelves at top speed. Among the best-selling books of all time are The Bible, Don Quixote, and The Lord of the Rings. But did you know, that among the fastest-selling books in the U.S. are political memoirs and a certain magical boy?
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https://bookriot.com/what-are-the-fastest-selling-books-in-u-s-publishing-history/

Censorship Scholar On Book Bans And Critical Race Theory
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TRANSCRIPT
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

It's the summer, but the fight over what to teach and how has reached a fever pitch. Conservative media players and politicians have been waging a fight to ban so-called critical race theory. And while the war is national, the battles are local, with schools, school boards, libraries and even individual teachers facing challenges over what to teach and which books to include on the shelves and in their curriculum. According to Education Week, 26 states have already introduced bills or taken steps to restrict teaching, quote, unquote, "critical race theory" or limit how teachers can talk about racism and sexism.

We wanted to know more about how all this is playing out, so we called Richard Price, a professor at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. Professor Price focuses on censorship and book banning in schools and libraries, as well as school curricula. They also write the Adventures and Censorship Blog, which tracks efforts around the country to ban or censor books.

Professor Price, welcome. Thanks for talking with us.
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FULL Transcript or Audio in article
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/25/1020488416/censorship-scholar-on-book-bans-and-critical-race-theory?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lit Hub Daily: July 27%2C 2021&utm_term=lithub_master_list

Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Sold for $900 Million to Media Company Backed by Blackstone
https://variety.com/2021/film/news/reese-witherspoon-hello-sunshine-sold-1235032618/

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