Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
Amazon’s Best Books of the Last 10 Years
Amazon decided to have a little throwback moment with its latest round-up, which looks at the books they’ve chosen as the best book of each year for the past 10 years. All the books are bestsellers, some are award-winners, only two are nonfiction, and the overall list is decently diverse (except for when it comes to genre). If you’ve been paying attention the last couple of years, you might be able to predict the most recent three or so selections (Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy for 2025, James by Percival Everett for 2024, and Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano for 2023), but what about for 2016? I totally blanked.
Netflix Has a Hub Where You Can “Watch Your Favorite Books”
Netflix just debuted a new hub titled “Watch Your Favorite Books” that gathers all their movies and series that have been adapted from books into one place. It’s organized (somewhat) by genre and overall book vibe. There’s a “You Crave Amazing Characters” category, a “You’re into Immersive World-Building” category, and a “You Savor Swoonworthy Romances” category, to name a few. Flipping through the choices is so interesting—I already knew that there were a lot of adaptations being released each year, but sheesh, I wonder where Hollywood would be without books. With that said, it makes a lot of sense for Netflix to have this sort of feature. Now I’m just wondering if they’ll try to expand it into something more, like a partnership with Bookshop.org or something…
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A List of Author-Owned Bookstores
AP News has put together a nice little map of bookstores owned by some of the biggest authors of our time, and each of them seems to have its own focus. Louise Erdrich’s store, Birchbark Books & Native Arts, is located in Minneapolis and specializes in Indigenous lit, while Lauren Groff’s Florida store, The Lynx, highlights banned books. Beastly Books, George R.R. Martin’s New Mexico store, also highlights banned books, as well as speculative fiction and works by local authors. I actually went to Ann Patchett’s Parnassus Books in Nashville, TN, the last time I visited family. It’s a cozy store with a cute kids’ section design. I remember the particular day that I went had a lot of babies. There were also shop dogs, but I didn’t manage to get a peek of any of them (boo). 10/10 would visit again, though.
Jeff and Rebecca Read Maya Angelou’s Classic
I had to have read Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings about 20 years ago, but I still remember so much of it, a testament to the ground Angelou broke as a Black woman writer. For the latest episode of Zero to Well-Read, Rebecca and Jeff explore all the things about the autobiography that solidified its place within the American literary canon.
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