Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.

How the New York Times Picks the Best Books of the Year

Ever wondered how the New York Times makes it lists of 100 notable books and the 10 best books of the year? Times book editor Gilbert Cruz stopped by the Book Riot Podcast to take us behind the scenes of the year-long process. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your other podcatcher of choice.

Children’s Booksellers Share Their Holiday Highlights

When you’re in need of a great book for a hard-to-shop-for reader of any age, you can’t do better than asking an indie bookseller. When you want to get beyond the current kids’ bestsellers, reach for some of these tried-and-true handselling highlights.

The Hallmark-Movie-to-Romance-Novel Pipeline is Real

The Venn diagram of people who like Hallmark holiday movies and people who read romance novels isn’t a circle, and it really should be. Good romance books have everything you love about a Hallmark movie and then some. The dialogue is better. The tropes are deployed more creatively. Some of them are spicy! Here’s a nice, short list of holiday romances for Hallmark movie fans, with something for everybody. Season’s readings!

Last week, I highlighted several big-picture trends that we’ll see happening in book censorship in 2025. Those are far from the only trends emerging as we move forward, especially as a new administration amenable to revocation of human rights takes over. Here are several more censorship trends to prepare for in the coming year.

This list is not comprehensive. Instead, it’s meant to highlight a small number of things to pay attention to and to take action on when they arise. It’s also a reminder that personally stocking up on banned books or giving them away as gifts, while nice, is not actually doing anything to help stop the attacks on the democratic institutions of public libraries and public schools.

Taking that personal action with the belief that it is a solution to book banning is to not only not understand what book censorship looks like right now, it’s playing right into the very mentality of those seeking to destroy these institutions of access. Books will never go away, even if many of the themes or topics in them may; books will simply be because the luxury item is only accessible by those with the privilege and wealth to get them. This ongoing fight has not stretched out nearly half a decade because of fears around getting the books at the bookstore or online. It’s stretched out because the people who need access most are those who are most marginalized and who most benefit from strong institutions that have public support. Handing Nana a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird for Christmas does nothing to help ensure the lower-class queer Brown kid in Idaho has access to books with characters like them…or access to any books, to classes that strengthen their literacy, to experts in various subject fields, or to actual factual information at all.

That’s what is at stake here.

Read the first part of this two-part series here. If this is your starting place on book censorship, take the time to read through this guide to explaining book censorship to those who want to understand—there’s been a huge swell of interest in the last few weeks and dispelling a lot of common assumptions is crucial to make forward progress. If you work in a library or care deeply about your local school and public libraries, here’s your reminder of what you’ll want to do in these next several weeks to ensure your library is as protected as possible.

The holidays are here, and I’m just finishing up my Christmas shopping. A lot of my family are huge food nerds—just like me—so I have assembled an all-star collection of food-related books that will end up in my family’s stockings.

There’s just something about sharing my favorite food books with people I love. Plus, we love making the same recipes from the books and comparing notes.

Between social media bans, the slow destruction of Twitter, and the fight over the Kids Online Safety Act (which promises to deliver just the opposite), news about the dangers of technology is everywhere. No matter how technology itself changes, though, it’s not going away, so it’s important that we teach children how to use it safely and to remind ourselves of best practices as well.

That is the goal of (Be Smart About) Screen Time, Rachel Brian’s latest comic book. While aimed at children, the book’s simple yet cute art and digestible advice about how to enjoy the perks of modern technology while avoiding its many pitfalls speak to everyone. There are, in fact, perks, no matter how scary the headlines are. Brian, founder of the educational animation company Blue Seat Studios, went out of her way to emphasize this in her book.

“Adults often feel a lot of anxiety about kids being online, but we also have to recognize that technology is a huge and exciting part of kids’ lives,” she told me in an email interview. “The goal is to encourage caution and thoughtfulness without instilling fear.”

It’s never too early to start. According to her book, the American Academy of Pediatrics says that children can start enjoying limited, supervised screen time when they are between three and five years old. Brian believes that lessons on-screen safety should begin at the same time:

It’s never too early to start modeling good habits! Even if you’re co-watching content with a toddler, you can talk about the choices you’re making: why you’ve picked a certain app or video and how you’re using screens thoughtfully and intentionally….When kids start using screens independently, they’ll ideally already be familiar with these habits because you’ve modeled them early on.

What’s happening in libraries as we start to close out the year? Let’s find out.

Library Updates

The Urban Libraries Council released its annual “Library Insights” survey, showing positive trends and challenges for its member libraries.

Could AI help catalog thousands of digital library books in the Library of Congress? (To paraphrase Jeff Goldblum, your librarians were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they never stopped to consider if they should.)

Hoopla has announced a BingePass partnership with Impactful Group to bring mental health literacy resources to libraries.

Speaking of health, libraries are offering free health and wellness classes across the US.

Book bans and best-of lists dominated the literary news during this shortened week in the U.S. Here are the highlights.

I shared a list of queer adult books to vote for in the opening round of the Goodreads Choice Awards with the intention of sharing the YA books to vote for this week…except now the opening round has closed. Whoops! Instead, I have a list of the queer books still available to vote for in the final round, which closes December 1st. (Excluding TJ Klune’s book because I still feel weird about his “cozy” fantasy novel being inspired by the horrific history of residential schools and the ’60s scoop. If you’re interested, this Reddit thread has a good discussion about the topic.)

I’m disappointed The Pairing by Casey McQuiston didn’t make it to the final round because I thought it had the best chance since the author is well-known. It’s also my new favourite romance novel. Alas!

I’ve also included all the queer YA books that were in the opening round, in case you’re curious. Now, onto the queer books in the final round!