A couple of notable deals happened over the last week in the world of books, both giving glimpses into the kind of retail environment we are in now.

Barnes & Noble Buys Levenger

Following the purchase of The Paper Source by its parent company, Barnes & Noble has bought Levenger, maker of high-end reading and writing goods, from its co-founders, Steve and Lori Leveen, who started the business by liquidating their retirement accounts to sell reading lamps.

• Over the last nearly 40 years, the business expanded into day planners, writing instruments, and other accouterments of exactly the kind I like to consider buying.
• If you’ve been in a Barnes & Noble recently, I think you will find it easy to imagine how Levenger’s product line-up will fit in with their current offerings

Podium Entertainment Goes for Almost Half a Billion

Podium entertainment, which made its bones specializing in audiobooks, particularly from self-published authors, sold to private equity firms Flexpoint Ford and Shamrock Capital for $400 million.

• Their current catalog includes more than 15,000 titles, which if you do that math comes out to be about $26,000 per title as a selling price.
• Podium had a huge hit with Andy Weir’s The Martian in 2012 and launched print publishing a few years ago.

Mornings are hard, but books can soften their edges. Yesterday marked the fall equinox. The sun grows weary of your summertime antics and so you wake up to find what you’re sure is midnight pressed up against the glass.

There’s no better time to become a morning reader. Light a candle in your favorite fall scent and pick up a book when the alarm sounds off tomorrow.

If you don’t know how to approach a morning reading routine or think there’s no time, consider a few tips from avid morning reader Sophia LeFevre:

• Reach for a book instead of your phone first thing in the morning
• Keep a book on the nightstand or near the bed so it’s ready when you are
• Plan out your morning ahead so you know how much time you have for morning reading

Why make time for morning reading?

The world is a little quieter, the lighting is dim, the coffee is brewed. Not to mention, opening a book in the morning is a gentler way to start your day as opposed to scrolling through social media (which might bring up any range of emotions).

May we all choose a book over doomscrolling. I would add that it won’t hurt to have a morning reading routine in the bag when you face down those 2027 reading goals. – SZW

One of the quintessential YA friendship books—and one many millennials recall with a particular fondness—turned 25 years old this year. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares is a story about four girls—best friends—spending their first summer apart. What keeps them bonded is a magical pair of jeans that fits all of them, despite each girl being a different size.

• The book was published in 2001. It was the first in a series of four books that went on to be made into a pair of beloved teen films in 2005 and 2008.

To celebrate the milestone, Delacorte Press is releasing a gorgeous Collector’s Edition on September 29. It’s got the painted edges you’ve come to expect from fancy editions, but it also feels like the kind of book you’d pick up at Borders or B. Dalton in the early aughts.

Some fun facts about the classic YA title: 

→ The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants has sold over nine million copies world-wide. 

→ Amber Tamblyn, America Ferrera, Blake Lively, and Alexis Bledel portrayed the 15-year-old best friends in the film adaptations.

→ Two films were made from the series, though a third film and a musical based on the first book were proposed in 2018. Neither came to fruition. 

→ Brashares has said she chose pants as the magical item because they’re much harder to fit every body than a shirt.

→ The book is one of the most well-known titles from a book packager in the YA world. Many pointed to Traveling Pants as a cautionary tale for authors when working with companies like Alloy. 

→ There’s a fifth book that continues the girls’ stories, even if it’s not considered officially part of the series. Sisterhood Everlasting is set 10 years after the fourth title. 

The deluxe edition of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which includes a foreword by Amber Tamblyn (AKA Tibby), won’t be the end of the celebration. The whole series will be rereleased in paperback with fresh covers and designed edges, too, in March 2027. You can peep those here. – KJ

Jane Austen is on all the screens this season, as a new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility hits theaters October 16, while Pride and Prejudice lands on Netflix in December.

• Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as Sense and Sensibility‘s Elinor Dashwood.
• Emma Corrin, Jack Lowden, and Olivia Colman anchor the upcoming Pride & Prejudice series.

The first reviews of Sense and Sensibility are rolling out, and, well, let’s just say it’s hard to live up to the 1995 version.

Georgia Oakley’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s timeless, beloved 1811 novel is enchanting and beautiful, just as it should be. It’s also, in its earthy and humorous way, intensely riveting, which is also as it should be. — William Bibbiani, The Wrap

This turns out to be a more downbeat, ruminative version, happening in much cloudier weather than 30 years ago and without the sugar-rush final wedding scene. The mood is cooler, but interestingly austere, sober and thoughtful. There are also some strange casting decisions. —Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Sense and Sensibility is a book with its fair share of melancholy…But I can’t recall another adaptation, either for film or television, that made the story so overwhelmingly morose and its protagonists such a joyless pair…The emphasis on naturalism perhaps removes some of the emotional barriers for young contemporary audiences, but it also gives the movie a low-energy feel and a drab look, with flat light and a dreary color palette. — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

These lovers’ quarrels unfold with a touching sincerity to Roger Goula’s wistful score, though Oakley’s more grounded drama also feels oddly safe, with a seriousness of tone that strips away some of the wit and comedy that makes Austen’s work, well, Austenesque. And though players like Edgar-Jones and MacKay make for perfectly tender lovebirds, they don’t exactly breathe new life into their characters. —Beatrice Loayza, Variety

We’re in a golden age for YA thrillers: series such as One of Us is Lying and A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder captured the imaginations of millions of readers and were adapted into successful TV shows.

Readers’ love of YA thrillers shows no sign of slowing down, with more and more brilliant, high-stakes stories being published each year. Here are some of the best.

• Your Murder Next by Ravena Guron
• Murder Academy: Camp Murder by Sophie McKenzie
• The Scammer by Tiffany D. Jackson
• Kill Me Now by Helen Price
• The Heirs by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
• How to Survive a Slasher by Justine Pucella Winans
• A Mind Full of Murder by Derek Landy
• The Blonde Dies First by Joelle Wellington
• The Getaway by Lamar Giles

Read more about these YA thrillers, including teen detectives and fantasy slashers, in Alice Nuttall’s list on Book Riot.

Libby has shared the top 10 most popular comic book checkouts across the more than 22,000 libraries they service, and 9/10 titles are historical fiction—more specifically, they are historical manga.

Since National Comic Book Day is September 25th, this feels like a perfect time for fans of historical fiction to branch out to comics if they haven’t already.

As a lover of historical graphic novels, let me just say that combining the genre and the medium is elite. Being able to see time-accurate attire and settings makes the story all the more immersive.

If you’re down for some historical graphic novels, here are a few of Libby’s most popular comics checkouts:

• #6: Demon Slayer, Volume 1 by Koyoharu Gotouge: This actually made it to our list of the best adaptations of the century so far because of how much of a vice grip it has on the manga and anime market. In the Taisho Period (1912-1926 in Japan), a young coal seller’s family is brutally killed by a demon. He sets out to find a cure for his sister, who was turned into a demon during the massacre.
• #5: Spy x Family, Volume 1 by Tatsuya Endo: Though the countries this manga takes place in are fictional, its overall setting gives Cold War-era Europe. In it, the spy Twilight tries to recruit a woman and child to play his family so he can infiltrate an elite private school. Thing is, the kid he finds is psychic, and the wife he recruits is one of the deadliest living assassins—all unbeknownst to him, of course. Naturally, hijinks ensue.
• #1: The Apothecary Diaries, Volume 1 by Natsu Hyuuga: I suspect all of the manga I’ve mentioned here are popular because of their very popular anime, and The Apothecary Diaries anime is having quite the run. It’s set in a country very similar to 16th-century China, and in it, we follow a young woman who is kidnapped and made to work in the Emperor’s Rear Palace. Soon, her vast knowledge of medicines and plants has her solving palace mysteries.

The chokehold this anime/manga had me on, let me tell you. —EE

Did you know? Springsteen collects and builds HO scale model railroads.

Family secrets abound in these thrillers recommended by a bestselling writer.

A new limited-edition Handmaid’s Tale boxed set is going for $760.

Enter to win a $50 ThriftBooks giftcard by signing up for our romance books newsletter!

Dive into the best new mysteries and thrillers.

Netflix has partnered with the British Library for a new event series.

Written by Rebecca Schinsky, Jeff O’Neal, Sharifah Williams, Kelly Jensen, Danika Ellis, and Erica Ezeifedi. Thanks to Vanessa Diaz for copy editing.

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