See you at Comic-Con! (This week in books)

This week! Books!

We’re well into the publishing summer slowdown so I don’t have a tremendous number of links for you, but I still rustled up a few.

First up, I’ll be at Comic-Con next week moderating the From Idea to Shelves panel with a stellar lineup of agents! Swing on by and say hello!

Still more on the NY Times list of Best Books of the 21st Century! First LitHub has 71 books the list left off, which is a tremendous collection, and here’s the results of the NY Times reader poll, which has some positive correctives, and some crowd-pleasers I personally think shouldn’t come within a mile of this list.

Katy Hershberger at Publishers Lunch has a deep-dive into the world of book scouts, as well as news of a new podcast from Open Road that has a truly stellar list of industry stars on deck for interviews.

Agent Kate McKean has a post on the ins-and-outs of following up with literary agents. She advises following up every three months (if you want to). I’m going to update my advice on this, which was first written in a much more innocent time when agents got back to people far more quickly than they typically do now.

And Alexandra Alter at the NY Times sat down with Keanu Reeves and China Miéville to talk about their new (apparently weird!) collaboration.

This week in bestsellers

Here are the top five NY Times bestsellers in a few key categories. (All links are affiliate links):

Adult print and e-book fiction:

1. A Death in Cornwall by Daniel Silva
2. The Women by Kristin Hannah
3. The Housemaid by Freida McFadden
4. The Housemaid is Watching by Freida McFadden
5. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

Adult print and e-book nonfiction:

1. The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
2. The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson
3. True Gretch by Gretchen Whitmer with Lisa Dickey
4. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
5. The War on Warriors by Pete Hegseth

Young adult hardcover:

1. The Darkness Within Us by Tricia Levenseller
2. Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross
3. The Shadows Between Us by Tricia Levenseller
4. The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson
5. Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross

Middle grade hardcover:

1. Wonder by R.J. Palacio
2. Refugee by Alan Gratz
3. Heroes by Alan Gratz
4. The Sun and the Star by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro
5. Odder by Katherine Applegate

This week on the blog

In case you missed them, here are this week’s posts:

• Here we are again
• Who did the NY Times list miss?

And keep up with the discussion in all the places!

• Follow me on Threads and Bluesky
• Follow my page on Facebook
• Join the Facebook Group
• Check out the Bransforums

And finally, there’s a really fascinating paradox called Wigner’s paradox, that goes roughly like this: If my colleague is observing a photon in a superposition in a small room, and I’m observing the small room, from my vantage point is my colleague also in a superposition? Is it ridiculous (or not) to think a whole human could be in a superposition until they emerge from the room and tell us what they saw? Anil Ananthaswamy delves into a hypothetical experiment involving a quantum computer that could stand in for the colleague observing the photon, which could reveal a lot about the entire nature of reality.

Have a great weekend!

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