Books

Here’s a look back at the news stories Today in Books readers were most interested in this week. The New York Times Picks Its 10 Best Books of 2024 If there is a list you want to be on at the end of the year as an author, it is this one. Less expansive than

A while back, I was chatting with a close mom friend when she referenced her first husband. “Right,” I nodded. “Your first husband.” She had a first husband? Should I have known that? Did I know that, and space out the fact somewhere between buying my tween wide-leg jeans and binging The Bear? But, no.

Today, I’m continuing my journey through the queer books in the Best Books of the Year lists with The New York Times picks. I went through the 10 Best Books of 2024 as well as their 100 Notable Books of 2024 and pulled out all the queer books I recognized. As always, I may have

★ The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year Ally Carter does it again with the delightful The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year. An anonymous invitation lures rival mystery writers Maggie Chase and Ethan Wyatt to a secluded and nearly snowbound English mansion for Christmas. Upon arrival, they encounter a series of surprises: the identity

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. The Lists Keep Coming and They Don’t Stop Coming Gone are the days when a publication could release one best-of-the-year list to rule them all. Algorithms and the increasingly fragmented media landscape they’ve wrought mean

★ Believe          Fans of beloved hit television series Ted Lasso will delightedly embrace Believe: The Untold Story Behind Ted Lasso, the Show That Kicked Its Way Into Our Hearts. Part oral history, part cultural analysis, Believe is an entertaining and insightful behind-the-scenes tour in which New York Times television editor Jeremy Egner offers a wealth

The results of this year’s Goodreads Choice Awards are finally in, and while it’s always fun to see what others are reading, we have to say that they are a little disappointing. Let’s rewind a bit first, though. If you’re unfamiliar with the Goodreads Choice Awards, this is the 13th year the awards have been

These books are just the thing for screen buffs who want to revel in their favorite stories and auteurs, with deeply knowledgeable experts as their enthusiastic guides. 4 modern takes on the eternal quest for self-improvement Humans have been trying to improve themselves since they discovered they had selves that needed improving. As the search

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. What Will Enter the Public Domain in 2025?: A Festive Countdown In fact, of all the people I know who have read dozens of these smutty fantasy books and share the obsession, they mostly have

Former competitive skier Wylie Potts is trying to find a new identity. Her mother and coach, World Cup and Olympic medalist skier Claudine Potts, put so much pressure on Wylie that she began to experience panic attacks and, eventually, walked away from the sport. She’s found a career she loves at an art museum and

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. The New York Times Picks Its 10 Best Books of 2024 If there is a list you want to be on at the end of the year as an author, it is this one. Less

Dania is in prison for a murder she did not commit. She spends every day plotting her escape and listing off the people responsible for her imprisonment: Vahid, the cruel emperor; Darbaran, the loathsome head of the palace guards; and Mazin, Vahid’s ward and Dania’s ex-lover. After a failed attempt to break out, Dania is

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. No question that the “story” of the day is that it is *groan* Cyber Monday (is this shopping day the last thing, along with the *double groan* Cyber Truck to use “cyber” as a descriptor?).

In her third novel, Weike Wang follows married couple Keru and Nate on two vacations: the first on Cape Cod, the second five years later, in the Catskills. Keru, a Chinese American woman, and Nate, a white man who grew up in Appalachia, grapple not only with the usual challenges of marriage and careers, but

Book bans and best-of lists dominated the literary news during this shortened week in the U.S. Here are the highlights. 📚 NPR Shares Their Books List of Favorite Books of 2024 And for All Access members, here’s a big list of other interesting links from around the bookish internet. Membership Required The comments section is

I shared a list of queer adult books to vote for in the opening round of the Goodreads Choice Awards with the intention of sharing the YA books to vote for this week…except now the opening round has closed. Whoops! Instead, I have a list of the queer books still available to vote for in

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Here Comes the Rooster The Morning News has released the longlist for the 2025 Tournament of Books, which doubles as their recap of the notable fiction of 2024. The 70 longlisted titles will be whittled

Happy 10th anniversary to this perfect seasonal piece by Book Riot co-founder Jeff O’Neal. Wherever you are this week, we hope the food is good and the company is better. We’ll back in your inbox on Friday. There’s a lot I love about reading. Here are a few things for which I am especially grateful:

Artist and poet Douglas Florian has created numerous award-winning picture books over the years, including Dinothesaurus and Insectlopedia. A book by Florian is often destined to become part of family lore, lovingly passed down from child to child to grandchild. And that’s certainly true of his newest title, Windsongs: Poems about Weather.  Each poem in

Erica Ezeifedi, Associate Editor, is a transplant from Nashville, TN that has settled in the North East. In addition to being a writer, she has worked as a victim advocate and in public libraries, where she has focused on creating safe spaces for queer teens, mentorship, and providing test prep instruction free to students. Outside

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen. View

With nearly 50 books under his belt, beloved author and illustrator Barney Saltzberg turns his attention to canines in his latest zany offering, The Smell of Wet Dog: And Other Dog Poems and Drawings. He proclaims his love in the first poem, “I Love Dogs,” followed by the title verse, which describes their odor as

Black Friday sales have begun, and they include plenty of sales relevant to readers! First, check out our round up of early Black Friday sales on hardcovers, paperbacks, and ereaders, and be sure to check back on Black Friday proper: we’re updating these lists every day. It’s not just books that are worth snapping up

In his 17th book of poetry, Scattered Snows, to the North, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Phillips gazes both inward and outward. His work carries a signature heft, a musicality and syntax that seems to rewrite itself with each read. Phillips tangles his sentences like few other poets working today, and often, rather than untangling them,

Here you have it, the most popular stories from this week’s installments of Today in Books. And the Winners Are… When He Was 42, Cormac McCarthy Began a Relationship With a 16-Year Old Girl That’s the headline. In 1976, when Cormac McCarthy was 42 years old, he began a relationship with a 16-year-old girl he met by

It might seem simple, sitting on the couch with Netflix on and your belly full, to envision the heroics you’d accomplish if war broke out in your homeland: You’d join the armed forces, or whatever constituted the resistance. You’d break the chains of your oppressors, just like Star Wars, or go rogue, living off your

Welcome to your Saturday edition of Today in Books, wherein we round up all the news Book Riot covered this week. 💰The Winner of the $100,000 Giller Prize Has Been Announced 🏅 The Best Debut Books of 2024, According to Debutiful And for All Access members, here’s a big ol’ list of links to other

A hotly anticipated debut novel, complete with a princely advance and a dreamy move to Los Angeles, equals lifelong success, right? Not quite. Books flop, money dries up and the city’s bright lights conceal both its dark underbelly and what those in the limelight will do to stay famous. Pip Drysdale’s marvel of a thriller,

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. HBO Doubles Down on Support of Rowling As HBO prepares to begin production of its planned decade-long Harry Potter reboot TV series, CEO Casey Bloys is doubling down on the network’s partnership with and support

A memory palace is a memorization technique used by figures as diverse as Cicero, international memory champions and the late, great Sherlock Holmes. Practitioners visualize placing images representing information they want to recollect in a familiar setting that they can revisit whenever their memory needs a nudge. The Memory Palace: True Stories of the Past,