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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
Reclaiming Her Brain, One Big Book at a Time
You’re alive and on the internet in 2025, so you don’t need me to tell you that it’s getting harder and harder to pay sustained attention to, well, anything. Rebecca Jennings has tried all of the tech-based solutions to this tech-generated problem, and some of them have been helpful, but it turns out that book club is really what’s helping her fix her attention. And it’s not because of some magical property that’s unique to books; it’s because of human connection. We all know this, I know we do, that spending time together IRL makes us less susceptible to the pull of the internet’s dopamine machines, and we can’t be reminded of it enough. Text a pal, pick a book, schedule a hang, and don’t worry if you don’t actually talk about the book very much.
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Reflecting on 10 Years of We Need Diverse Books
It’s been just over 10 years since a programming line-up for the now-defunct BookCon convention that had more cats than people of color on it led to the creation of We Need Diverse Books. Co-founder Ellen Oh sat down with Publishers Weekly to reflect on the organization’s first decade and what its work looks like in this moment. As the Trump administration ramps up anti-DEI initiatives and book banning attempts increase nationwide, Oh emphasizes the need for the publishing industry to support diverse books financially—robust marketing budgets are essential—and politically. The work is difficult and can be disheartening, but Oh sees irreversible ways that WNDB has changed the industry: “diversity is inevitable, no matter how hard certain administrations want to fight it. In fact, they are fighting so hard because they desperately want to stave off the inevitable…” May their efforts continue to succeed.
Trending Now
In the latest installment of her indispensable newsletter about BookTok trends, Alyssa Morris explores what’s tired and what’s wired on the app where trends change faster than Marco Rubio’s job titles. Romantasy is holding steady, but series fatigue is on the rise, and more readers are yearning for standalone stories and already-completed series. That could spell bad news for all of the publishers (which is…almost all publishers) that dumped gazillions of dollars into multi-book deals in an attempt to ride Rebecca Yarros’s tailwind. Most interesting to me of the rising trends is an increased emphasis on audiobooks and audio-adjacent tools and technology. Listening to audiobooks 100% counts as reading, hello and welcome.
The Day’s Best Ebook Deals
Book Riot features great ebook deals every day, but today’s round-up is extra tasty because Hanif Abdurraquib’s There’s Always This Year, one of my favorite books of 2024, is available for $4.99. You don’t need to know anything about basketball—take it from me—to appreciate his singular approach to memoir. Into the Woods by Tana French, the one where it all began for the Dublin Murder Squad, is on sale for $1.99, as is Klara and the Sun, which really shouldn’t be missed. Happy reading!
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