Pepsi says books make Americans happy

Your glass half-full news for the day: Results from the second annual survey conducted by the Pepsi Optimism Project (yes, the acronym is POP) conclude that Americans are more optimistic about their personal relationships, health, finances, and overall well-being than they were in 2008, and the leading “optimism booster” is books. Although POP’s official press release focuses on the role of live events such as concerts, theatre performances, and speeches, GalleyCat points out that the full results show that 88% of respondents cited books as a key contributor to their optimism, putting it first in a “top optimism boosters” list. From GalleyCat:

Unfortunately, that’s not broken down by categories, so it’s not quite clear whether fiction or non-fiction lifts people’s spirits, so you should probably read a little of both, just to be on the safe side.

Even more surprising is the inclusion of poetry readings in the list of top “optimism boosters,” an option chosen by 56% of respondents, putting poetry ahead of advertising, news, and blogs. Although it’s not clear whether these results refer to writing blogs or reading them, you’re likely still better off picking up a novel than scanning through your RSS feeds, but we here at Quillblog wouldn’t blame you if you made an exception.

Harry Potter and the Mountain of Returns

An article on The Independent site is reporting that Scholastic, J.K. Rowling’s American publisher, is poised to lose big on the latest installment in the Harry Potter series, in spite of the book’s record-breaking first print run of 10.8 million copies. The reason for the unexpected downturn is due largely to a case of extreme optimism on behalf of Scholastic. When copies of the Half-Blood Prince began breaking sales records in the first 24 hours, the publisher decided to go back to press to print another 2.7 million copies to meet the demand. But now that the buying frenzy has tailed off, Scholastic may be looking at a whopping 2.5 million unsold copies that will eventually find their way back to the publisher.

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Read the article on The Independent site

Alexander McCall Smith on cynicism

In an article for The Independent, Alexander McCall Smith discusses the characters of his bestselling series, the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. The author revisits his life in Botswana to relate how the characters came to be — some imagined, others based on pushy friends who demanded to be written in. He then moves to a larger discussion of literary optimism. Oft accused of ignoring the difficult social issues of his setting or being overly optimistic in his characterizations, Smith responds to this critique with one of his own: “The problem is that we have become so cynical that we cannot believe that the world is peopled, in part at least, by those who are sincere, well-meaning, and well-disposed to others.” The article coincides with the launch of a new BBC show that follows a real-life version of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

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Click here for the full story in The Independent

Those were the days, my friend

The Times has a funny piece on authors looking back on their first book publications. The authors are mainly from the U.K., but there’s a witty reflection by Margaret Atwood on the (self-)publication of her first book of poetry at the age of 21. Atwood is not particularly sentimental about her first effort: “The title of this tiny but peculiar effort was Double Persephone; the poems rhymed and scanned, and were about sex and death, with some rebirth tossed in: my optimism was showing early. As I recall, the word chthonic was in them, so it was pretty deep stuff.” She also remembers the cultural void that was Toronto in the mid-1960s.

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Read the Times article