On Spotify wrapped day, my social media feeds filled with users sharing their top listens of the year. They can share all sorts of stats about top artists, songs, and genres. But Spotify isn’t just for music anymore. You can also listen to podcasts and even audiobooks.

A little over a year ago, Spotify launched their audiobooks feature for Premium. Subscribers can listen to 15 hours of audio a month from a selection of over 150,000 audiobook titles. I have to admit, I love being able to pop over to my Spotify app and listen to just a few hours at a time without having to worry about purchases or credits. The interface is easy to use and find what title I’m looking for on any given day.

This year, they launched their new Audiobooks Wrapped editorial hub, a place where users can see the top audiobooks listened to in 2024. There, listeners can find the top audiobooks of the year and lists of editorial picks. While the majority of the titles are fiction, let’s have a look at their top 10 nonfiction audiobooks of the year:

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy, Performed by the AuthorThe 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene, Performed by Richard PoeSapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, Performed by Derek PerkinsDown the Drain by Julia Fox, Performed by the AuthorElon Musk by Walter Isaacson, Performed by Jeremy Bobb and the AuthorKitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, Performed by the AuthorFriends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry, Performed by the AuthorThe Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson, Performed by Roger WayneThe Woman in Me by Britney Spears, Performed by Michelle WilliamsThe Mountain is You by Brianna Wiest, Performed by Stacey Glemboski

Right out of the gate, we can see that the majority of these titles are incredibly popular backlist books that people keep picking up in print, so it makes sense that would extend to audio as well. But the list isn’t very diverse across the board, to put it mildly. In regards to the type of books represented, it’s a lot of self-help and celebrity memoir. I would have loved to have seen more science and history represented on the list.

If you scroll through their lists curated by their editorial team, you can find more diverse titles, especially in the fiction categories. In nonfiction, there’s more diversity in authors represented, but we still have a lot of celebrity memoirs and self-help. I appreciated Spotify’s efforts to broaden their list of bestsellers with additional titles, but, in the future, I would love to see more nonfiction categories curated by their editorial team. That kind of work helps broaden listenership to diverse books.

I firmly believe that mockery is one of the strongest weapons we have against thin-skinned tyrants — and it’s certainly one of the most fun. So today, I’m starting a monthly limited series to compare the (unfortunately) former and (even more unfortunately) incoming president of the United States to comicdom’s most infamous supervillains to see how he stacks up.

First: Lex Luthor, who also served as president.

Luthor was elected in 2000, much to the shock and dismay of Superman, who assumed the American people were smart enough not to hand the nuclear codes to a self-obsessed, unrepentant criminal (you sweet, summer child). Before that, Luthor was a criminal mastermind and a cunning and ruthless businessman. While comparing the two men’s business acumen, or lack thereof, is beyond the scope of this article, I would like to point out that Luthor built on his fortune by using mysterious alien tech to make things like “repair spiderbots,” which, while scary, is also kind of awesome.

Where does Trump’s money come from these days? Crypto scams?

Once in the Oval Office, Luthor shows repeatedly that he is an intelligent, worldly leader with a thorough understanding of both foreign and domestic affairs. The first Trump administration, aside from being the most nauseating phrase in the English language, got off to a repugnant start with the Muslim Ban in January 2017. Luthor’s administration? Started by funding the Justice League and greater educational opportunities for all students. He used his deep knowledge of politics to push these initiatives through Congress…

It’s hard to feel optimistic about 2025. America as a country is more divided than ever. With the upcoming presidential inauguration later this month, it doesn’t seem like that will be changing any time soon. If you’re hoping to ignore the very real, very frightening realities of the current political climate in the United States, then maybe skip this book. But if you’re feeling the heaviness of this upcoming year and want to know that you’re not alone in feeling afraid, this is absolutely a must-read. It’s one you’ll want to read right now, as it feels especially timely.

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman If you’re an American, chances are you have opinions about this country’s cable news channels. Maybe you’re an avid viewer of CNN. Maybe your TV is perpetually set to the Fox News station. Maybe you avoid cable news channels completely. But have you ever wondered to yourself if our country is being brainwashed by cable news? What if that was literally what was happening and people all across the United States of America were being radicalized and mind-controlled by the media they consumed? It doesn’t seem that far off from reality, does it? Clay McLeod Chapman’s recently released book explores that reality and its horrifying consequences. It all starts when Noah Fairchild travels from Brooklyn to his parents’ house in Richmond, Virginia, for a wellness check. He hasn’t heard from them and they aren’t answering their phone. Noah knows that his parents are addicted to watching a far-right cable news channel called “Fax.” But surely, even though the channel might be infuriatingly conservative, it couldn’t actually cause them any harm, right? When he arrives in Richmond, he sees the extent of the damage. Their home is a wreck, and his parents are complete zombies, seemingly physically unable to take their eyes off of the television screen. They don’t seem like themselves at all. And then Noah’s mother attacks him. But the mind control goes far beyond the walls of Noah Fairchild’s family home. All over the country, people are falling prey to a dark, sinister mind-controlling demon. And it’s not just on the right-wing channels. It’s in social media apps. It’s on influencer’s Instagram posts. It’s in emails. It’s on message forums. Nearly every screen in America is sending the message out to people everywhere that it’s time to “Wake Up” and “Open Your Eyes.” It seems like Noah and his young nephew Marcus might be some of the only people not affected by these violent urges, but can they escape while all of America seems to be turning against itself? Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is a deeply unsettling horror novel and, even though it’s still very early in 2025, I would guess that this is likely to be one of the most unforgettable reads of the whole year. It’s hard to read this and not consider its chilling connections to the state of the United States, the great divide between its citizens, and our uncertain future. Clay McLeod Chapman was not afraid to go to disturbing places with this horror novel, and I applaud him for shoving all of our faces so violently into reality.

What a year it’s been!

Martyr! came out of the gate in January as the year’s hottest debut with major book award potential, and while it didn’t win the NBA, it made the shortlist and just about every best-of list around. Jonathan Haidt sparked a new round of phone and social media concern—and some congressional hearings—with The Anxious Generation. James was indisputably the most anticipated novel of the year, and it’s ending the year as the indisputable champion. Simon & Schuster tried—and mostly succeeded—to make fetch happen with the every-genre-and-the-kitchen-sink romp The Ministry of Time. Miranda July launched a thousand midlife crises with her manic pixie perimenopause novel, All Fours (I was not a fan). Sally Rooney got adults out to midnight release parties for Intermezzo. Romantasy ruled BookTok and bestseller lists. Even Louise Erdrich got sprayed edges. A lot happened.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that if you leave a content creator alone with Google Analytics during one of the quietest weeks of the year, they’re going to go spelunking. Presented in no particular order, here are 10 of the news stories Book Riot readers read and shared the most in 2024.

We are four years into this wave of book censorship. There are plenty of new folks entering the fray, discovering that at heart, none of this is about books at all. It’s about ensuring access to public goods like public libraries and public schools remain the democratic institutions of civic engagement that they are and it’s about ensuring that entire swaths of people—queer folks, people of color, and anyone else who doesn’t fit into the neat and tidy image of the cishet able-bodied Christian white male—aren’t erased.

It is great to see continued growth in wanting to learn and engage in the fight to protect the First Amendment rights of all and especially young people. There are plenty of guides for what to do and how, including throughout the four years’ worth of Literary Activism newsletters. There will be another guide coming next week that serves as a year-long plan for understanding the past, present, and future of book bans.

But this week, to wrap up 2024, let’s take a look back at a few of the most popular and most urgent posts about censorship this year. The news roundup itself will be short as well, given that most schools are out for the holidays and public library boards are not scheduling their meetings during this time, either.

This is the time to catch up, to reflect, and to refill your cup in preparation for what will be a longer, harder, darker battle in 2025.

Louisiana HB 777 Would Criminalize Librarians and Libraries Who Join the American Library Association

What are the most popular library book checkouts from 2024? This is a tough question to answer, in part because not every library reports on the books being checked out, some do but separate out genres and formats (i.e., they pull out mystery checkouts from overall checkouts or count digital and print separately), and because the reports on top checkouts might show up at different times at the end of one year or in the beginning of another. But as we count down to the end of 2024, what can we gather about popular library books from the year based on the information that can be surfaced?

Looking at over 40 different “top library book” checkout lists from big and small public libraries across the USA, here are some of the most popular books of the year. What makes looking at public library book popularity fun is that it is year-agonistic, meaning that books published this year might sit alongside books published several years ago. Genre books tend to see more top books lists in libraries than in other outlets who compile or write about the year’s best or top books.

There are a number of interesting trends in the most popular books. Many are titles that were highly decorated in the previous year, and as always, genre fiction tends to do a lot of circulation in public libraries. Certainly, there are some books that pop up that have had their moment on BookTok, but that showing is not as strong as in last year’s roundup of most popular books in US libraries.

White authors tend to dominate in these lists, but the lists across the 40 libraries surveyed are more varied than what bubbles up to the top. This is, of course, a result of how publishing is still a predominantly white industry, and the books that tend to get bigger publicity and marketing around them are by white authors—it’s also worth addressing here that some of the biggest genre writers are long-time writers, so hitting the top of the most-circulated list as a newer genre writer can be tough. Again: that doesn’t mean they aren’t here or don’t circulate in libraries. It means they’re not at the tippy top.

Another element to consider in looking at these lists is the role that the digital platforms for library ebooks play themselves. Some collections will simply have more copies of particular titles than others, allowing for more checkouts of said titles. Likewise, whatever books are being promoted on those digital platforms via book lists or readalike lists (aka, what to read if you liked a particular title or movie) can impact what people borrow. It was interesting looking through hundreds of the most popular titles and seeing some surprises bubble up on the “top ebook” checkout lists. As you’ll see below, though, the top checkouts in print and ebooks have been collapsed into single lists.

When my days get busy, and I start to feel overwhelmed, I tend to reach for science fiction and fantasy novels. Sometimes, you just need a whirlwind adventure novel. And with The Stardust Grail, Yume Kitasei delivers.

The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei A year or two ago, I watched Kitasei’s previous novel, The Deep Sky, take over TikTok. It was everywhere. But for whatever reason, I never picked it up. But when The Stardust Grail came out, and the publisher described it as Indian Jones in space, I knew I had to read it immediately. Maya Hoshimoto is a retired art thief turned anthropology grad student. Now, instead of traveling around the galaxy stealing artifacts, she studies them. She tries to settle into her new life by walking around campus, drinking coffee, and avoiding her never-ending deadlines. But something isn’t quite right. Maybe that’s why when Auncle, her best friend and former partner in crime, asks her to do one more job, she agrees. Maya heads into space with a new crew—a former member of the military and a medic robot—determined to find an artifact that could save Auncle’s alien species from extinction. The stakes have never been so high before, but Maya is determined to succeed. I loved this wild whirlwind of a story full of unique world-building. Establishing a science fiction world full of other planets, moons, and space stations can be difficult. But Kitasei slowly introduces readers to the galaxy and the politics of the different alien races, robots, and colonies. At one point in the novel, Maya and her crew must find a way to steal an artifact from a museum. The heist vibes are immaculate. At another time, they head to a distant planet to explore ruins filled with carnivorous plants. The audiobook is incredibly performed by Katharine Chin, a narrator who perfectly embodies Maya’s character. And as the action takes off, Chin keeps up with the pace, maintaining the tension and keeping listeners on edge until the very end of the novel.

I’ve loved horror since I was a kid. So when I had the chance to breathe the same air as Nick Cutter, Tananarive Due, and Stephen Graham Jones, I was over the moon. These three titans of contemporary horror — along with paranormal investigator Steve Gonsalves — appeared in a Spotlight on Horror panel at last year’s New York Comic Con. Listening to them speak about my most favorite genre in the whole world left me feeling as if I’d ascended to a higher plane of awesomeness.

What I am excited about — and what these rad panelists acknowledged — is that there are so many new voices representing the genre. Once upon a time, I had to rely upon the old John Saul paperbacks I pulled from my father’s shelves and his collection of Stephen King doorstoppers. If I wanted to explore further, I dug deeper into the classics: Edgar Allen Poe. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Shirley Jackson. Charlotte Perkins Gilman. But these days, I feel as if we’re seeing new classics. Books and authors who, one day, will loom as large as their predecessors. To me, they already do.

In the list below, I shout out some of the contemporary horror authors (and their standout titles) who seem most notable to me, alongside the classic authors who preceded them.

Forty years ago, in May of 1984, two young, unknown men sat at a table at a comic book convention in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was the first-ever Portsmouth Mini-Con, a tiny, local event with about 200 attendees. The two young creators had brought along their new comic, which they had published through their own independent publishing company, Mirage Studios, with an initial print run of 3,275 copies. It was printed in black and white on cheap newsprint, and copies sold for $1.50 each.

There was no reason to believe that this deliberately silly, cheaply produced comic would change comics and pop culture history or that one of those $1.50 copies would someday be worth thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars on the collectors’ market. But this was the debut outing of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1.

The gamble worked. Within weeks, they sold out and had to reprint. Demand was so high that they decided to turn their one-shot into a series. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #2 had 15,000 preorders. Issue #3 had 50,000 preorders. Cowabunga!

Every week, I put together a list of the most read books on Goodreads this week, but now that we’re at the end of the year, I can finally set that time span to “the last 12 months” and find out what the most read books on Goodreads were in 2024. What’s interested is that Goodreads already put out a list called The 144 Most Read Books of the 2024 Reading Challenge, and there are some notable differences between the two.

The Most Read Books page is only 50 books long, so of course not all 144 titles are on that list. But more strange is that not all 50 books are on that longer list. For example, there are five Sarah J. Maas books on the 144 book list, but 16(!) on the Most Read Books page.

It’s not surprising to me that Goodreads used some editorial discretion putting together their list, because the story looking at the raw data is a lot more boring. 24 of the 50 books listed are by Sarah J. Maas or Freida McFadden—just shy of 50% of the titles are shared between only two authors.

The most read books on Goodreads this year aren’t diverse by any sense of the word. Roughly 95% are by white authors. About 85% of the books included are either romance, fantasy, or thrillers. Only one is nonfiction: I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy, in the 50th spot.

Before you keep scrolling, take a guess what you think the top five most read books on Goodreads were this year. If you’ve been paying attention to the bestseller lists or these weekly roundups, I think you could get 100%!