Tuesdays, for Some Reason

When I was in high school and college I was a gigantic musichead. I read Rolling Stone cover to cover; I spent thousands of dollars on CDs; I connected dots between dozens of artists based on producers and studio musicians like Nellee Hooper and Justin Meldal-Johnsen. I knew that Calvin Johnson was the other guy on the cover of Beck's One Foot in the Grave. I could keep going.

It took at least a year for me to recognize patterns in the industry. For instance, that most indie records came out in the fall and that all records were released on Tuesdays. I still don't know why this is. My wild guess is that it's left over from obsolete logistics that meant physical shipments arrived on Mondays (or, if they were late, Tuesdays) and the staff needed time to unpack the boxes and stock the album. But maybe not, maybe it's related to statistics about when people buy things.

Picking up patterns in the book world has taken me a shorter time, but I am not distracted by as many things now as I was then. When books come out in the calendar year is often related to their subject matter; uplifting books come out in the summer and serious books come out in the winter. July is a total dead zone. And books, like albums, usually come out on Tuesdays.

Today is Tuesday. And a shocking number of highly anticipated books are coming out on this one day: Sarah Gailey's Magic for Liars, Kristen Arnett's Mostly Dead Things, Ocean Vuong's debut novel, the latest novels from Elizabeth Gilbert and Neal Stephenson, on and on and on. My Twitter feed is sparking and spitting fire. I don't know why the Big Five picked today to dump so many big-deal books. I'm guessing it's the same reason they barely release anything in July - this is the last week to get book dollaz before people start going on vacation and...stop...buying books?

I mean, they know their business (I think) but it seems like, if no one is dropping good stuff in July, maybe be the press that drops something good in July, and the book will do way better than if you put it out at the same time as four other debuts that have been hyped for the past two or six months. This is how March has gradually become a decent month to release films. It used to be a dumping ground for failed Oscar bids, but starting in the late 00s, studios started putting better-than-average summer releases out in March, and now there's plenty of good stuff to see during that month. It seems like the book business could do this too.

Maybe not; maybe they've tried that and it doesn't work. But for the remoras of the publishing industry, like me, a huge dump of buzzy books on one day and then nothing for two months is super unhelpful and frustrating. It means we fight to cover the most popular books in a timely way and then, for weeks, have nothing to do (or get paid for).

All this would be a lot easier if book coverage weren't obsessed with reviewing books at the moment they come out. But it is. I wish that would loosen, because reading a book is a different project than watching a film, and keeping up is so, so, so much harder. But boundaries between the theater market and the home video market have blurred in a way not really repeatable in the book world, so it might be hopeless.

My friend Jen Pastiloff's book also releases today. I haven't said much about it on social media & etc. because Jen does not need help from me; she has a street team, and celebrities like Pink and Patton Oswalt have been hyping her book. But she's a magical person, and her book is as loving and true as she is. It's, well, a great summer read.

There'll be another Tuesday next week, another batch of books coming out from various presses and places. But I suspect most people will still be reading this week's stuff. How good can a book be if it's already forgotten by the time the next week's book comes out?

my to-read/review pile, mostly fall releases