Know somebody who’s looking for a new gig? Book Riot is hiring an ad operations associate. Now let’s kick off the weekend with a round-up of the week’s best.
After passing one of the most restrictive book banning measures in the country, the state of Utah has released its list of books to be banned from schools across the state. House Bill 29 allows parents to challenge books they deem “sensitive material” while also outright banning books from public schools if those books have been deemed “objective sensitive material” or “pornographic” per state code in at least three school districts or two school districts and five charter schools statewide.
Sci-fi fans’ staunch devotion to some things can make it hard to break away from books considered “classics.” In some ways, this makes sense: sci-fi as a genre has had to struggle against a lot of snobbery. Ursula Le Guin (among others) has openly rallied against this snobbery, but even in the contemporary heyday sci-fi seems to be enjoying, it’s there. So I get that saying some of the books widely considered to be sci-fi classics are overrated might cause some heat.
Regardless, sci-fi isn’t immune to certain issues — like racism and sexism, to name just two — that plague other facets of older literature. As sci-fi writer Carla Ra points out, this is simply part of how cultural production evolves. Importantly, she also notes that it’s possible to still enjoy older works even as we “notice the troublesome parts as something that we should, as a society, reject and get over.” In that spirit, read the sci-fi “classics” if you want. But I’ll offer you some contemporary works which I believe resonate more meaningfully with our current moment.
There are no new titles on the bestseller lists this week, but there are still some things worth noting. Let’s start with the most fun to the least. First off, Gravity Falls was a cartoon that ended in 2016, but a new Gravity Falls book (The Book of Bill by Alex Hirsch) just came out, and it made the Publishers Weekly and USA Today overall top ten bestseller lists. I love this show, so it makes me happy to see it’s still got a strong contingent of fans.
📚 See also: the most-read books on Goodreads this week.
Historical Fantasy as a subgenre plays with expectations, creating a unique reading experience. What we know about the past is already a part of our expectations from previous readings, studies, or media. We’ve been to museums, seen the photos and read the history books. We know there weren’t dragons in 18th-century New York City. But who says there couldn’t be—what do we really know about the alligators in the sewer, anyway? By using a set world—either historical or contemporary—the fantasy writer is able to have a bit of freedom in that regard. Historical Fantasy serves as a way to explore themes within a historical context and have a bit of fun.