When Dostoevsky Made #BookTok Cry

Beast of the North Woods

by Annelise Ryan

"This mystery begins when cryptozoologist (one who studies legendary creatures) Morgan Carter is asked to help prove the innocence of a friend's nephew who is in jail for murder. The nephew claims that the victim was killed by a mythical creature, the Hodag. Obviously the authorities and community are skeptical...While this book is the third in a series, it is a solid stand-alone. Readers might want to try the first two books: A Death in Door County, and Death in the Dark Woods." —Donna M. (Kennesaw, GA)

"What a fun and unique read. This is the first novel of Annelise Ryan that I have read, but it won't be my last...The characters were interesting, the story came together with lots of action and minimal explanations. This was a quick and enjoyable read and I will be recommending this book and this author to all my reading friends." —Catherine O. (Altavista, VA)

"Readers that like mysteries will like this book. I'm a huge mystery reader (Denise Mina, Jeffery Deaver, Michael Connelly, Harlan Coben — you get the picture) and I thoroughly enjoyed it." —Mary S. (Bow, NH)

Giovanni's Room

by James Baldwin

The first time I read James Baldwin's novel Giovanni's Room, I was around the same age as the book's protagonist David, a twenty-something American living in 1950s Paris who becomes reluctantly embroiled in an affair with an Italian man. By contrast with many classics I'd been assigned or directed to in school, multi-perspective books about Family-with-a-capital-F, the story's modest size and scope made it seem confident and attractive, as coolly European as its setting. What it lacked in volume it made up for in drama.

The morning after David meets Giovanni, a bartender at a gay bar, the two drift to a café with Guillaume, the bar owner, and a regular, Jacques, where they dine on oysters and wine and eventually leave for Giovanni's rented room. Before David goes home with Giovanni, he tilts towards the possibility with a sense of inevitable decline. Closeted and self-loathing, having surrounded himself with other queer people but maintained a distance from them, he feels admitting an attraction to men generally and Giovanni specifically will come with disastrous consequences (which is true, even if he drives those consequences himself). But in this moment, Baldwin captures a sense of incandescent beauty, of hovering in a space where all possibilities still exist, a sense that the oncoming disaster, while foretold, is in no way inevitable ... continued

Review by Elisabeth Cook

TikTok's Impact on Book Sales

In 2024, Dostoevsky's short story White Nights became popular on BookTok, the corner of TikTok populated by readers. BookTok users post videos of themselves recommending books, discussing books, crying at the endings of books, and showing off their color-coordinated bookshelves, tagging these videos with the hashtag #BookTok. BookTok has been equally praised—young people are reading! And buying books!—and derided as a shallow way of engaging with literature. What is not in doubt, though, is how BookTok has changed the publishing industry in the past few years. Books that have gone viral on TikTok have seen increased—sometimes astronomically so—sales, are featured on TikTok display tables at bookstores, and make the bestseller lists, often years after their original publication. During this period, publishers and their marketing teams have attempted to harness the app's power and use it to chase or predict what's trending. ... continued

Article by Chloe Pfeiffer

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