Reading about the reading life: October 20, 2017 edition

Welcome to another edition of "Reading about the reading life" here at The Itinerant Librarian. This is where I collect stories about reading and the reading life. Basically, these are items related to reading, maybe writing and literacy, that I find interesting and think my four readers might find interesting as well with a little commentary. As with other features I do on this blog, I do it when I have time or feel like it. Comments are always welcome (within reason).

Let's see what has been going on in reading, books, and literacy recently: 

• According to NPD Bookscan, comics and graphic novels are experiencing growth in the book market. It also indicates there is growth in  women buying comics and graphic novels. 
• Open Culture has a story on Napoleon's traveling library. 
• Gustavo Arellano resigns from OC Weekly. Why is this significant? "Arellano was the rare Latino editor-in-chief among American alt weeklies. In fact, he was the rare Latino leader at any English-language news organization — period." The owners of OC Weekly seem to be claiming bad economy kind of stuff, but this may be questionable. Story via The Los Angeles Times. 
• Via The Paris Review, a piece on finding books "by accident." Piece starts out a little stuffy when the author goes over some old literary serious book she found and stakes her claim that "I never go all the way and read real mass-market crap" (which is the kind of somewhat snobbish attitude The Paris Review often offers), but it then warms up when it talks about the experience in general of finding those books by accident in places like used bookstores  or thrift shops. So, literary or "mass-market crap" or anything else, any readers here have any happy book finds, books found by accident? The comments are open.
• At Cooking With Ideas, the question of whether to use a cookbook or use Google to find your recipes  is the way to go. And what about cooking magazines?
• Via Signature, a small list of 5 charming southern bookstores. 
• I knew it: book clubs are just excuses for schmoozing and boozing it up, even in the 1700s. Via Atlas Obscura. 
• This came out a while ago, but I thought it  was of interest. It is an article out of The New York Times on college summer reading books. You know, those books some of us hate that colleges make their incoming students read every year for a "bonding experience" and are more than likely soon forgotten by said students. Here is another similar article on the same topic, this time via Inside Higher Ed.
• Dangerous Minds featured piece looking at old PAN paperbacks.