Welcome to Today in Books. In this weekend edition, a look at all the news Book Riot covered this week.

Read the Best of SFF with the 2025 Locus Awards Finalists

Here are the Winners of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize

The Latest from the Institute of Museum and Library Services

Judge Issues Injunction in Favor of State Attorneys General IMLS Lawsuit

I read a lot of queer books, and I don’t always have an opportunity to talk about them on Our Queerest Shelves. So, I thought I’d give you an update of all the queer books I read last month. In April, that was eight titles, including graphic novels. Half of those I really enjoyed. A few weren’t 100% for me, but that’s just because they weren’t my particular taste. One, though, was the rare book I actually gave one star, and I feel extremely justified in that—in fact, I can’t believe it got published at all. Let’s get into it!

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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.

Trump Abruptly Fires First African American Librarian of Congress

With seemingly no warning, the first woman and the first African American to be Librarian of Congress received an email from the White House’s Presidential Personnel Office notifying Carla Hayden that she was fired. AP News reported that Hayden had recently come under fire from conservative advocacy group American Accountability Foundation for “promoting children’s books with ‘radical’ content and literary material authored by Trump opponents.” AAF took to X to celebrate the termination hours before the news was made public. Democratic leaders have condemned the move and praised Hayden’s leadership, with New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich saying Donald Trump was “taking his assault on America’s libraries to a new level.” It is exhausting to be this horrified by the callous takeouts of good people doing good work, and I cannot begin to imagine how Hayden felt receiving such a blithe and dismissive email ending her historic career at the Library of Congress, “effective immediately.”

A New Judy Blume Adaptation is Now Streaming

If you have Netflix and you’re a Judy Blume fan, you might want to check out this eight-episode series adapting Forever. “It is gratifying to know that, 50 years after its release, the love story at the core of Forever is still resonating with audiences,” Blume said of showrunner Mara Brock Akil’s adaptation starring Lovie Simone as Keisha and Michael Cooper Jr. as Justin. Published in 1975, Forever arguably became Blume’s most controversial YA novel, oft the target of censorship, because of explicit sex scenes–the book centers a teen couple’s first time. Learn more about how Brock Akil tells Blume’s classic story through a Black lens from Nadira Goffe writing for Slate.

1919 Author and Friends Collab on Bookstore Coffee Shop

Well this is a lovely story of friendship, coffee, and books. 1919 author Eve L. Ewing, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Trina Reynolds-Tyler, and award-winning media-based organizer Andrea Faye Hart–longtime friends–are teaming up to run a socially conscious bookstore and cafe in Chicago. Build Coffee opened in 2017, co-founded by Hannah Nyhart who sold the shop to the trio, and the team plans to build on the community space rather than overhaul it. One update brings especially good news to book lovers: Ewing says there are plans to expand the bookstore. Happy reading and caffeinating to Chicago’s South Side!

The Most Read Books on Goodreads This Week

Stack your TBR with some of the most read books on Goodreads this week, and the top five most read books in countries across the world.

The name of the book is a ruse. Camping on Low or No Dollars, the dingy cover page reads. An older edition bears a similarly anodyne title: From Birmingham to Wendover. Both are a misdirection, intended to keep the wrong people—cops, journalists, nosy normies like me—from realizing what they’re holding. The Crew Change Guide is a set of best practices and guidelines for hopping freight trains anywhere in the U.S. and Canada. A “crew change” refers to a train’s personnel shift, a brief window of opportunity for those brave enough to take it. In the heist movie, this is that ten-second gap after the night watchman clocks out and before his replacement takes over. For a train hopper, it’s a rare chance to clamber up a wagon undetected.

The Guide is either the train hopper’s Bible or an outdated relic, a must-have or a crutch, depending on whom you ask. The subtitle dubs it “An Alternative Hiking and Camping Guide,” but you won’t find any trail maps inside. Instead, what you see in these unstapled pages are dense walls of highly acronymized text in a miniature nine-point font. “East Joliet YD is becoming a major CN GM YD and c-c point for thru trains,” reads a line headed “Gibson City.” “E. Jackson crosses over S end of YD IM NE of DT.” The acronyms are more shorthand than code, a way of packing as much information as possible into 154 pages. The aesthetic ethos here is lightness, economy, discretion.

The first Crew Change Guide appeared as a partly typed, partly handwritten pamphlet in 1988. The true identity of its author, a reclusive seventy-six-year-old Vietnam veteran known only as Train Doc, is as fiercely protected as the Guide itself. Train Doc disguised his voice for his sole interview, and of the three people I’ve spoken to who claimed to know him, none agreed to go on the record. The most consistent report about him is that he is remarkably litigious—he’s purported to threaten anyone and everyone who uploads the Guide to the internet with copyright infringement.

One of the most important parts of a story, any story, is getting the audience to root for the main character. Or, at least, to understand them. Their motivation, their purpose, and why they make the decisions they do, all contribute to audiences feeling invested in their journey, wherever that may take them. It’s why, sometimes, we root for the villain more than the “hero” because we understand why they’re doing what they’re doing, even if we don’t agree with their actions.

Nothing taps into this more than revenge thrillers! What’s easier to understand than a wronged character seeking vengeance? What’s more thrilling than a character exacting the revenge they fought so desperately for? Who’s more sympathetic than, say, John Wick, seeking vengeance for the murder of the dog his deceased wife gave to him, or, a classicly quoted Liam Neeson as he fights to save his kidnapped daughter? We’ve all been wronged before, have fantasized about the petty revenge we’d get in retaliation, and revenge thrillers elevate that to an extreme. There’s nothing more satisfying than bad guys getting their due.

If you’re in the mood for a satisfying vengeance story or two, check out these eight delightfully page-turning revenge thrillers!

What began at the local public school level moved to the public library level. Book bans, overtaking of boards, and cruel budgetary slashes have played out precisely as anticipated back at the beginning of the rise in censorship in 2021, despite claims by book banners that they were simply “curating” “appropriate” books in their local schools. We knew pretty quickly that that wouldn’t be the end of the ride, either. The goal was–and is–dismantling and defunding public institutions.

Public institutions constitute a shared responsibility and shared ownership of goods. They stand in opposition to privately funded institutions, to capitalism, and to beliefs of a superior breed of well-off entrepreneurs. Anywhere that the far right could choke out access to materials; education around mis- and dis- information; and voices outside of their manufactured ideal of white, male, cishet, able-bodied, and a specific brand of Christian was going to be a target. This is why librarian criminalization bills popping up so frequently this year wasn’t exactly a surprise to those who’ve been active in the anti-book ban space. They weren’t new. They were just happening more frequently.

One of the biggest shifts in the censorship landscape so far in 2025 is that the target has once again shifted higher. Legislators have set their sights on state libraries in a way that, while not surprising, happened far faster than anticipated. What, again, of those lies about “curating” “appropriate” school collections and the websites purporting that books were not being banned? Perhaps they deserve some credit here. They weren’t banning books. They were working to take down the futures of the few spaces of public good still left in America.

Three states floated legislation this year that directly targeted the future of their state libraries. State libraries, as more folks have come to understand thanks to the dismantling of the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) at the federal level, help their local and regional level libraries in a variety of ways. Each state library operates differently, just as each state librarian is appointed, elected, or hired differently (in Illinois, for example, the Secretary of State is also the State Librarian). But ultimately, state libraries distribute funds to public libraries under their umbrella, provide programming and professional development, offer consulting and legal counsel, negotiate vendor contracts, and more. They are an authority accessible to smaller libraries, even if they do not oversee the day-to-day at any of these libraries.

Arkansas, New Hampshire, and South Dakota legislators saw it fit to suggest defunding and removing state libraries this year. Why? “To save money” was one of the phrases bandied around as a means of distracting from the real reason: state libraries follow the law, practice ethics, and stand in between power-hungry legislators and the library users in their state.

May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month! This year’s theme is “A Legacy of Leadership and Resilience,” and many of the new AANHPI middle grade books I review below illustrate this theme. One chronicles the life of a Filipino guerrilla fighter. Another depicts a basketball star deciding to show the world he loves drag. A third has friends taking action to protect the environment. Many feature families who stick together in hard times, celebrating their cultures and supporting one another’s goals. While I do include one middle grade novel by a Native Hawaiian author, there are far too few Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander books published, and I hope to see more in the future.

There’s something for every reader to enjoy on this list of new middle grade books featuring AANHPI voices, to read in May and all year long. Happy reading!

For all the talk of superhero fatigue and formulaic films — and I don’t necessarily disagree with any of it — superhero movies remain incredibly popular and are still among my favorite films to watch and rewatch. The action! The bombast! The pathetic attempts to turn it into a Serious Genre for Serious Adults instead of acknowledging it’s all kind of silly! Aren’t superhero movies great?!

Or, some of them are. Others…well, they can’t all be Winter Soldier or Lego Batman.

Where Did the Women Go?

Superhero movies have undoubtedly gotten better about giving women a role beyond Manipulable Girlfriend, Sexy Villain, and Dead Mommy. Unfortunately, they also cling to the outdated idea that women can best serve the plot by dying so the male hero has something to be angry about. That includes Vanessa Carlysle in Deadpool 2, Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight, and Aunt May in No Way Home. Because if there’s one thing Spider-Man has been missing all these years, it’s a dead parental figure to brood over.

So we can all agree that Sinners is the best movie of 2025 so far. Ryan Coogler’s historical horror film, starring Michael B. Jordan (two times!), Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O’Connell, and Wunmi Mosaku, is breaking box office records left and right. It’s also currently sitting at an impressive 98% Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Critics are praising the film’s accomplishments, and fans are returning to theaters to see the film over and over again. But what do you do after you’ve seen this vampire movie multiple times in theaters and are still thirsty for more? Here are three vampire novels by Black authors that you should read.

Dream 203

I found myself in a strange and sad place when suddenly there was my old love, B. She walked burdened by old age. Knowing that I will never see her again, I felt such deep sorrow.

Dream 204

I saw myself in my forties, caressing a pale rose. It responded, encouraging me, but, given our age difference, I hesitated. My reluctance persisted until she left, leaving me alone to contend with my aging self.

PARALLEL PARKING

The guidance counselor was my driver’s ed teacher. He liked to talk about football. He didn’t guide me much on driving.

I angled the car into the school lot. We never practiced parallel parking. Therefore, I failed the test for my driver’s license twice.

When my mother died in the mid-seventies, her only extant portrait took on a greater significance. Thus photography’s basic function: “Photography is an elegiac art,” as Susan Sontag wrote. To the little girl that was me, this portrait happened to be a document of the moment in which, for the first and last time, I had stood beside my mother in a studio, unaware that less than two months time she would be dead. That photograph must be a means of instruction, an exercise in recovering the moment that had passed, in recovering the features and presence of my mother or, as Barthes writes, “The effect it produces upon me is not to restore what has been abolished (by time, by distance) but to attest that what I see [in this instance, my mother] has indeed existed.”

I never had the sense that the woman in the photograph was my mother. Perhaps it is the anxious expression she turns toward the lens, as though, having stepped out of her domestic fortress, she now stood powerless. Perhaps it is the dress she is wearing, one I only ever saw her in once or twice on expeditions into town. Or maybe it is the hair that hangs down to her waist and which was usually plaited into two long braids that circled her head in opposite directions. The woman in the picture is not just different from what I remember of her, or want to remember: she is a ghost, like the ghosts I would see on strips of negatives as a girl. I would hold them up to my eye, trying to guess who they were, and when I grew bored of this, would fashion these haunted ribbons into bracelets around my wrist.

A woman and a girl, pallid because the acids were not properly washed off the paper. The woman unsmiling (though unaware she was to die exactly forty-seven days later). The girl unsmiling (though unaware of what death was). The woman has the girl’s lips and brow (the girl has the nose of the man who will remain forever outside the frame). The woman’s hand on the girl’s shoulder. The girl’s hand clenched (not in anger but because it holds half a piece of caramel). The girl’s dress is not Egyptian cotton (Abdel Nasser, who manufactured everything, died years ago). The shoes are imports from Gaza (Gaza, as you’re aware, is no longer a free zone). The woman’s watch doesn’t work and has a broad strap (is that in keeping with the style of 1974?).

I wrote this poem in 2007 and it was published the following year before appearing in my 2013 collection Until I Give Up the Idea of Home. Setting aside questions of the poem’s ambitions or its failures, reading it now, I think of my mother’s portrait as an exercise in memory, a writing exercise, and at the same time a reexamination of the distance that divides us.

“Restaurants will break your heart” is something that I often hear myself saying. It has become a mantra. When did I start saying it, I wonder. Maybe it was when I first discovered the criss-crossed lines of affection; falling in a crash-out kind of love with a fellow line cook because he helped me with my mise en place. Maybe it was when my sous-chef first called me mediocre; we all watched slices of chocolate cake I cut pile up in the garbage because of my disappointing quenelles. Maybe it was the first time that I had to fire a kitchen assistant over the phone, hearing him quietly murmur in response, “Okay.” Maybe (definitely) it was the time I got fired—the bad news sandwiched between my manager saying I was “amazing” and also “so great.” Maybe it was the first time I watched a plate of food I made go out and I understood, profoundly, that I would never know who might eat it.

In his new memoir, I Regret Almost Everything, Keith McNally’s tells us that his heart has been broken many times over—but it seems that restaurants are, in fact, what have saved him. As a diner, his restaurants have certainly given me much life force and heart-mend; they are perhaps the most accessibly glamorous in New York City, where I grew up. Over the course of his career, McNally, who is now seventy-three, has opened Augustine, Balthazar, Café Luxembourg,  Cherche Midi, Lucky Strike, Nell’s, Minetta Tavern, Morandi, Pastis, Pravda, and Schiller’s, as well as Balthazar in London and the new Minetta Tavern, in Washington, D.C.

This memoir spans the course of McNally’s life. It loops and shifts between timelines, but in a way that is forgivable and even charming: it reads like McNally remembers as he writes and then—urgently—wants not to forget. A funny tension for someone who claims to regret almost everything. He weaves together memories from the working-class London of his childhood to his young man’s adventures abroad and the sets (strip clubs and playhouses alike) where he realized that film and theater were what moved him most. But more often than not, we’re in New York City in the eighties, witnessing, up close, the building of his empire, the explosions of his love affairs, and time’s passage and pains to the present. McNally turns on the overheads: We get intimate, poignant, sometimes brutal moments from his marriages (two, both now finished) and earnest, messy fatherhood. Lights intensify on a stroke, a suicide attempt, a stint at McLean, and an arrival at new kind of life. 

Each month, we comb through dozens of soon-to-be-published books, for ideas and good writing for the Review’s site. Often we’re struck by particular paragraphs or sentences from the galleys that stack up on our desks and spill over onto our shelves. We sometimes share them with each other on Slack, and we thought, for a change, that we might share them with you. Here are some we found this month.

—Sophie Haigney, web editor, and Olivia Kan-Sperling, assistant editor

From Joan Copjec’s Cloud: Between Paris and Tehran: Corbin/Kiarostami/Lacan (MIT Press):

I’m walking, as I do pretty much every day, along the Eastern Promenade near my home in Portland, Maine, when I feel my wedding ring slip off. Luckily, my hands are in my jeans, so no harm done. I slip the ring back on without breaking stride and return to contemplating Casco Bay. I make it another ten yards or so before it happens again. When the ring slips off my finger a third time, I give up and leave it there at the bottom of my pocket. Though the jeans I’m wearing are relatively new, I double-check anyway to make sure there’s no hole in the pocket. Having read Tolkien, I know some rings want to be lost, others to be found, and I’ve already lost one wedding ring, though that was decades ago.

The ring in my pocket doesn’t actually want anything, of course. It’s just a piece of metal and has no meaning other than what I attach to it. It’s sliding off my finger because it’s January and bitter cold and my skin is dry and—­who knows?—­maybe I’ve lost a couple pounds. As I said, it’s perfectly secure right where it is, yet here I am fretting about its safety and unable to reconcile its being in my pocket when it belongs on my finger.

My parka has a tiny pocket with a zipper, and I consider putting the ring there, but that would further distance it from the finger it’s supposed to be on. Also, the zipped pocket of my parka carries its own risks. I’m seventy-three and my memory is becoming porous. Sometimes I have to page back through whatever novel I’m working on because I can’t remember the name of a character who’s been absent from the last couple chapters. And like many men my age I too often find myself in front of the open refrigerator, peering at its contents in the hopes of spotting the reason I’m standing there. Am I even in the right place? Is what I’m looking for in the washing machine? The silverware drawer? The pantry? If I put the ring in the pocket of my parka where it can’t possibly fall out, will I forget doing so? If so, then two or three years down the road the ring will go with the parka to Goodwill, and in the meantime I’ll be left to contemplate what it means that I’ve managed to lose not one but two wedding rings. To some people—­maybe even to me—that might appear subconsciously intentional. My therapist, if I had one, would surely agree, which is why I don’t have one.

Part of the reason I’m fretting is that this would be a terrible time to lose the ring. For the last several months my wife has been suffering from headaches that we’ve been unable to diagnose. MRIs and biopsies seem to have ruled out the most terrifying scenarios, but there’s something scary about not knowing, especially in the wake of the pandemic, which reacquainted all of us with mortality and the uncertainty of the future, realities that in the beforetimes we managed to sequester in the back of our brains. To lose my wedding ring at a time when my wife’s health is in question would mean something, wouldn’t it? Yes? No?

On the night of July 24, 1927, Ryunosuke Akutagawa swallowed a lethal amount of Veronal, slipped onto a futon beside his wife, and fell asleep reading the Bible. The writer was thirty-five years old. Proclaiming himself an atheist yet preoccupied by Christianity, he had written, shortly before his suicide, “Man of the West,” a series of fifty aphoristic vignettes in which Jesus Christ is an autobiographical writer who has profound insight into all human beings but himself. Akutagawa was a prolific and celebrated writer and one of the first modern Japanese writers to gain popularity in the West. He was drawn to the son of God at a time when he suffered from visual and aural hallucinations, often accompanied by migraines. His wife sometimes found him crouched in his study in Tokyo, clinging to the walls, convinced they were falling in.

Days before he died, Akutagawa wrote a series of letters to his family and friends. At a crowded news conference the day after Akutagawa’s suicide, his friend Masao Kume read aloud a letter addressed to him, “Note to an Old Friend,” commonly referred to as Akutagawa’s suicide note. The letter describes, in dark comedy, the practical banalities that undignify the grandiosity of arranging one’s own death: problems involving the rights to his work and his property value and whether he’d be able to keep his hand from shaking when aiming the pistol to his temple.

It is also a portrait of the author’s interiority in his final moments. “No one has yet written candidly about the mental state of one who is to commit suicide,” the note opens. “In one of his short stories, [Henri de] Régnier depicts a man who commits suicide but does not himself understand for what reason,” he writes. “Those who commit suicide are for the most part as Régnier depicted, unaware of their real motivation.” Like the Christ-poet of his fiction, Akutagawa thought he could see into the souls of all men—except his own. Perhaps he couldn’t look; perhaps he did not want to, for where there is motivation, there is culpability: precisely what he wanted to abdicate in death. “In my case, I am driven by, at the very least, a vague sense of unease,” he writes instead. “I reside in a world of diseased nerves, as translucent as ice.” He mostly wanted rest, he wrote. In “Man of the West,” he writes, “We are but sojourners in this vast and confusing thing called life. Nothing gives us peace except sleep.”

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