Mysterious Hunk Helps America Get Over Recession

Libraries and romance novels are up in this economic downturn. Scifi and fantasy are also doing well, according to that New York Times article, but those are not sexy enough to devote an entire feature to by themselves. This is a really interesting nugget, though:

Romance readers have always tended to buy in much higher volumes than people who read other genres like literary fiction. So even though some romance readers may be cutting back — Sue Grimshaw, the romance buyer at Borders, says people are buying four or five instead of five or six books a week — they are still buying more than readers of other book categories.

Five books a week? Oh look, we just found the people who are keeping the lights on in book publishing.