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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily roundup of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media and more. Here are the most popular stories from the past week.
Walmart gets cheeky
If you’ve ever wanted to turn your book club into an episode of Hot Ones, now’s the time. Walmart, the big-box retailer traditionally committed to family values, has developed a line of hot sauces inspired by spicy romance novels. Made in collaboration with Melinda’s Hot Sauces, the limited-edition Spicy Books set includes five 5oz bottles of varying levels of heat and retails for $14.98. Walmart prepared the Caliente seasonings as a surprise for screenwriter Yulin Kuang, who will adapt two novels by Emily Henry (Beach Read and People We Meet on Vacation) and whose own debut How to End a Love Story was released in April. Stay tuned for the next culinary companion program, James Patterson’s “mysterious” meat Spam commercial.
Spoiler: It’s the patriarchy
Some things in life are certain: death, taxes, and every now and then the discourse decides to fuel itself with the question of why men don’t read novels. (And no, it’s not because book cover design turns men off, although I’ll have to write a 1,000-word essay about that for another time.) This question of men and fiction is not new, and frankly, not interesting. Since the 18th century, fiction has been aimed at, and increasingly dominated by, leisure-seeking women. And thanks to the magic of capitalist patriarchy, in which men are considered most successfully masculine when they are most visibly productive, men are motivated to emphasize their masculinity by distancing themselves from any cultural product primarily associated with women.
Men are given a centuries-old message that if they want to be Sigma (greetings, dear children!), they better stick to it, and that means they should only read nonfiction if they read at all. And that’s a huge bummer! Fiction is fun and edifying. Men should be able to enjoy all of its benefits, and the rest of us should be able to enjoy a world where men aren’t so limited by narrow definitions of masculinity. It’s almost as if the patriarchy is bad for everyone! The next time someone feels the urge to write an article on “Why Don’t Men Read Fiction?” I hope they pick up Liz Plank’s “For the Love of Men” instead and focus their time and energy on the real problem.
Utah bans 13 books from public schools nationwide
After passing one of the most restrictive book bans in the country, the state of Utah has now released a list of books that will be banned in the state’s schools. The ban includes books deemed “objectively sensitive material” or “pornographic” (six of the 13 books are romances by Sarah J. Maas) and are rated on average 13 years old. As my colleague Kelly Jensen notes, this underscores the fact that “the so-called problem of pornography in schools only arose when it was an appropriate topic of conversation.” Funny how that works.
The vast majority of Americans oppose book bans and believe they violate parents’ rights, and that’s part of the problem. This isn’t about the books; this is about a small minority of far-right conservatives who know they’re losing power in American culture and believe they’re allowed to restrict everyone else’s freedom. Go to your school board meetings, volunteer, and vote in November. Let’s remind them that this is a lost cause, just as it will be in 2022.
We saw It ends with us So you don’t have to
Vanessa Diaz, Book Riot’s intrepid editor-in-chief, spoke to me about the new adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us. The headline says it all.
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