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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.
I realized the other day that I get more requests for audioboook recommendations in my personal life than I do for print books. Maybe that’s because people know I listen and know a lot of audiobooks, but I think it might also be the case that people are still trying to figure out what kind of audiobooks they like. But judging from this list of the most checked-out audiobooks of 2025 from the NYPL, patrons there seem to be pretty much listening to the audiobooks of the biggest books. And this means, in the case of library patterns, that the most listened to audiobooks of 2025 were the best-selling books of 2024, to a first approximation
Yesterday would have been Jane Austen’s 250th birthday, and her work feels just as present as ever. (I had the stray thought the other day about what kind of romantasy Jane Austen would write). I had been stockpiling a bunch of Austen-related stuff that has been going on this year in celebration of the what-ever-the-word-for-250 is, but fortunately for me Stephanie Isley Hershinow has a great overview of recent books and goings-on in this year of special interest for Janeites. As she smartly notes, part of Austen’s appeal, like Shakespeare, is how little we know about Jane herself. If one is beguiled, one can never be satisfied.
The Hay Festival is a bucket list trip for a lot of book lovers, and the National Year of Reading over in the UK is fine idea as well: I am suspicious of the ability of a PR campaign to change fundamental cultural habits but then again what else is there. This is all fine. As is one of the initiatives in The Year of Reading: source the most compelling books (I no longer use the term “unputdownabl”. Compelling does the trick and has the advantage of not being the enunciation equivalent of trying to carry four pint glasses back to the table).
Here is what is not fine:. The name of this crowd-sourced collection of terrific reads is “The Pleasure List.” We have to do better than this. This cannot stand.
On today’s episode of the Book Riot podcast, Rebecca and I are joined by the full roster of Book Riot editors to talk about our personal favorite books of 2025. We considered calling it Our Pleasure List, but didn’t want to get HR involved.
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