{"id":340834,"date":"2025-12-12T19:17:52","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T19:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/entertainment\/books\/the-tournament-of-books-shortlist\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T19:17:52","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T19:17:52","slug":"the-tournament-of-books-shortlist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=340834","title":{"rendered":"The Tournament of Books Shortlist"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Tournament of Books Shortlist<\/h2>\n

I don\u2019t know what I expected to find when I went to check out the Tournament of Books shortlist, but I was delighted by the selection of books. We\u2019ve got award winners like Flesh<\/a> by David Szalay, this year\u2019s Booker Prize winner, big names like Angela Flournoy (The Wilderness<\/a>) and Stephen Graham Jones (The Buffalo Hunter Hunter<\/a>), and books that fell entirely off my radar like The Burning Heart of the World<\/a> by Nancy Kricorian. For the uninitated, the Tournament pits fiction books against each other with judges choosing which book advances in the brackets. Previous winners include James<\/a> by Percival Everrett, Normal People<\/a> by Sally Rooney, and My Sister, the Serial Killer<\/a> by Oyinkan Braithwaite. Check out the full shortlist<\/a> and the books that made the play-in round themed, \u201cthe Academy, 2025\u20132026 edition.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Audible Partners With TikTok<\/h2>\n

Audible has announced a partnership with TikTok \u201cto help listeners discover top trending books and stories right inside the Audible app and web experience.\u201d New features will include a dedicated \u201cBest of #BookTok<\/a>\u201d destination, collections organized by popular BookTok genres (think romantasy and dark academia), and badges highlighted the books currently trending within the BookTok community. This is one of many indicators that the bookselling and publishing industry is investing much into bookish TikTok spaces. I mean, I can\u2019t tell you how many publicity emails I get promoting books from BookTok influencers or that found new or renewed success through the channel.<\/p>\n

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Today In Books<\/p>\n

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Is the Age of Reading Full Books in Class Over?<\/h2>\n

According to an informal survey by The New York Times<\/em>, and research, most kids only read one or two books a year. The Times<\/em> talked to parents, educators, and students<\/a> about the high school reading experience to get anecdotal information about the declining expectation. It sounds like curriculums are perhaps more heavily driven by standardized testing and the pressure to raise scores that impact school rankings. The Common Core, setting national standards for English and Math, has also prompted the use of anthologies. It\u2019s interesting because I was in high school in the \u201990s (class of 2000 represent!), and it wouldn\u2019t have surprised me to learn that kids read only one or two full books in standard English classes back then. Teachers did wear out the photocopier, and I had to lug a Norton Anthology around before the Common Core was formally adopted in California. But I can also say with certainty that we read Animal Farm<\/a>, Siddhartha<\/a>, Pride and Prejudice<\/a>, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/a>, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings<\/a>, and The Diary of a Young Girl<\/a>. Opinions on whether reading fewer full books impacts students varies, and I am fully biased, but it\u2019s hard to imagine that there aren\u2019t great benefits to reading a larger work from start to finish and being able to think critically about more complex works.<\/p>\n

The Seductive Appeal of Burning Comic Books in Postwar America<\/h2>\n
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It regularly surprises people to learn that America\u2019s history includes a period of time when books were burned. The surprise comes in part because there\u2019s a lack of knowledge about how book censorship has been fundamental in American history and in part because the American government spent a lot of time, money, and energy delivering propaganda during World War II about Nazi book burnings that was\u00a0intended to drum up patriotism<\/a>.\u00a0Americans\u00a0<\/em>wouldn\u2019t burn books like Nazis would, would they?<\/p>\n

They would. In fact, they\u2019d do it in the years following the end of World War II.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

The comments section is moderated according to our community guidelines<\/a>. Please check them out so we can maintain a safe and supportive community of readers!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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