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Here are the stories Today in Books readers were most interested in this week. Settle into your Sunday and catch up!
And Another Best of the Century List Enters the Ring
I could talk about The New York Times‘ list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century So Far for days, and if you read my stuff around Book Riot you know that I have, so I hastened to Kirkus with a quickness when I learned they released their own version. There are some obvious differences between the two lists–Kirkus doesn’t rank their picks in order, but they do make them sortable by genre/category without getting very granular (all adult novels fall under the Fiction category, including science fiction and fantasy, graphic novels, romance, etc, for instance). At a glance, there’s crossover in terms of title selection because of course–there are books that can’t be absent from a list like this–but you know you’re not going to find An Island Princess Starts a Scandal by Adriana Herrera on the NYT list. Some of my faves on this list that aren’t on the NYT list include James by Percival Everett (NYT chose Everett’s Erasure), Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, and The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw–and that’s just in the Fiction category. I will be doing a deeper dive into this list; I find them fun and fascinating, like little windows telling us who these publications are and what kinds of books they stand by.
The Best Books of 2025 So Far, According to Vulture
…Are we doing quarterly Best Books of the Year lists now? I had to double check the date to make sure it wasn’t June when I encountered Vulture‘s Best Books of 2025 So Far. But, you know what, I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth and there really are so many good books already out. Like, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad has been everywhere and, based on literally every mention of the book I’ve come across, for good reason. Agustina Bazterrica first captured my attention with her brutal, dystopian vision of a cannibalistic future in Tender is the Flesh (translated by Sarah Moses), and returns this year with The Unworthy (same translator), another dystopian horror story but this time about a religious order. We also have another great from prolific MacArthur Fellow Imani Perry. Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People “traces the relationship between the color blue and the Black experience in America and throughout the world.” Find the full list over at Vulture.
Speaking of What’s Happening to Libraries…
Here’s a piece from our own Kelly Jensen on the gutting of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. “As of this afternoon, all staff members have been placed on administrative leave,” reports Jensen. In a separate piece, Katie McLain Horner shares resources for how to support the IMLS and the Department of Education. Find out what will happen if these important agencies go away and what steps you can take now to help.
The Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist
The shortlist for the 30th Women’s Prize for Fiction has been announced! The list of six features four(!) debut novelists. Here are the shortlisted book: Good Girl by Aria Aber (Bloomsbury Publishing), All Fours by Miranda July (Canongate Books), The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji (4th Estate, HarperCollins), Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout (Viking, Penguin General, Penguin Random House), The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (Viking, Penguin General,Penguin Random House), and Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion Publishing Group, Hachette). The winner will be announced on June 12, 2025 along with the winner of the 2025 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. The Fiction prize is awarded “for the best full-length novel of the year written in English and published in the United Kingdom between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025,” with the winner receiving £30,000.
You Had Me at A24
I love what A24 is trying to do with film, so I was intrigued by this Simon & Schuster profile by The Cut, which asks if the Big 5 publisher can be the next A24. The profile focuses on S&S flagship publisher Sean Manning who’s characterized as a publishing outsider trying to do bold new things in an industry known for running at a snail’s pace. Remember the kerfuffle over the importance, or rather the uselessness, of blurbs? Manning was a big voice in that most recent conversation about the eternally contentious issue, kicking it off with a Publishers Weekly op-ed. He’s currently trying out something new with Bookstore Blitz, a Supermarket Sweep-style web series featuring authors on $100 bookstore shopping sprees. I’m genuinely curious about where this story will go and whether Manning’s experiments will pay off and be adopted by other pubs.
Brace Yourself for Tariff Impacts on Books
Trump’s so-called Liberation Day arrived on April 2, planned after April Fool’s Day so it wouldn’t be mistaken for a joke. And who was laughing after he delivered the details of sweeping tariffs from the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday? Senator John Kennedy doesn’t care about what the experts say but many, many investors and industries do, with stocks seeing their worst single-day drop since 2020. Tariff hikes are expected to impact households nationwide with many lower-priced products people rely on imported and increased costs passed on to consumers. Everyone is scrambling to figure out just how much tariff increases will impact consumer prices and the price of producing goods, including publishing. We have no definitive answers yet, but the industry has been bracing itself for impact, especially publishers who rely on printing in China, and with a not insignificant amount of paper imported from outside the U.S. This is a developing story with more information sure to arrive over the coming weeks and months.
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