The Book News We Covered This Week
⚓ Books 📅 2026-02-08 👤 surdeus 👁️ 5Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Here are the stories we covered ourselves on Book Riot this week.
- Read In Community: Two New Celebrity Book Clubs for 2026
- 7 Book-to-Screen Adaptations You’ll Love in February 2026
- February’s Exciting New Mystery & Thriller Adaptations To Watch
- Future Movies of the Past—and More SFF Links
- Zombies, Creative Inspiration, and More From the Latest in YA Book News
- Winter Self Care For Librarians and More Library Updates
- New Consulting Contracts in Texas Will Muzzle Authors and Harm Students
In early 2026, children’s author Chris Barton learned that his author visit with Alamo Heights Independent School District had been canceled. This happened after three parents complained that one of his books explored the history of glitter. The book included references to LGBTQ+ people, which was enough to prompt cancellation. Barton wasn’t going to be speaking about that book, nor about queer people through history. But the mere existence of that book in the author’s bibliography was enough to deny him and 1,600 students the visit. It was later revealed that the administration lied about the reason for the cancellation.
- The Most Read Books on Goodreads This Week
- Four Freedom to Read Bills to Follow Right Now: Book Censorship News, February 6, 2026
- The Bestselling Books of the Week, According to All the Lists
- Netflix’s 2026 Book-to-Screen Adaptations Are Seeing Book, Audiobook Sales Grow
Netflix attributes the popularity of their adaptations across the globe to the books themselves–good source material is key to producing a great adaptation. What’s tricky about adaptations, of course, is that what someone envisions as they read differs from reader to reader. What a producer and team do when developing an adaptation is create an interpretation of the book and build a story from that. There are constraints in the visual medium that don’t exist in the book format. That’s why some favorite scenes or secondary characters aren’t present in the film or television version; it’s also why other scenes or secondary characters take on more prominence.
And for All Access members, here are all the interesting links we bookmarked that didn’t make the cut for full Today in Books coverage.
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