Today is our birthday! All month, we’ll be looking back on the last 15 years in books and publishing, and you’re invited to join us on the journey.
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THE HEADLINEHappy 15th anniversary to us!Book Riot went live 15 years ago today.
It’s something of a miracle to keep a small, independent media company alive for 15 years, even more so in an industry as constantly in flux as publishing, and we couldn’t be more grateful to YOU for making it possible with your reading, listening, watching, liking, sharing, and subscribing. Most of all, we’re grateful that you trust us with your time, attention, and intellectual lives.
Here’s a look back at a few highlights from Book Riot’s first day of posting:
- Reading on an iPad was avant garde, and Libby didn’t exist yet.
- Book reviews in haiku form
- CEO Jeff O’Neal’s Nobel predictions weren’t right in real-time, but two of his picks—Bob Dylan and Louise Glück—did go on to receive the prize.
- When we talked about beating the algorithm for book recs, we just meant Amazon.
- This is what happens when you mix book chat and The Jersey Shore.
And the money quote from Jeff’s “Welcome to Book Riot“:
Engaging with fellow readers feels so crucial because what we want from books is impossible. We read to be inspired and we read to deal with sadness. We read to feel connected just as we read to be alone. We read to seem smart and we read because we are all too aware of our ignorance. We read for story and for character and for beautiful sentences and ideas and escape and information and to pass the time and to make time slow down. Only other readers understand this.
All of that remains true, as does his statement that “readers are now in control.” The ways we engage with books and the platforms we use to connect about them continue to evolve, but the fundamental magic of talking about art and ideas with other people who care about them stays constant. Here’s to many more years.
Clear eyes, full bookshelves, can’t lose. — RJS
TRENDINGThe It Books of October 2026We’re deep into Big Book Season now, folks. Here’s our totally scientific vibes-based assessment of 10 of the month’s buzziest new releases.
The ideal It Book rings four bells:
- Zeitgeist – What’s the buzz?
- Art – Is it good?
- Acclaim – Will it contend for awards and best-of lists?
- Sales – Where’s the money?
This month’s contenders include the romantasy hit with the biggest first printing we’ve ever seen, a terrifying collision of history and horror, Barbara Kingsolver (need we say more?), and a haunting new novel from a Pulitzer-winning writer.
Find out which book was crowned It Book of October on the Book Riot Podcast. Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
ADAPTATION NATION“Listless,” “Trashy fun,” “Dumb mystery.” Let’s talk about VerityAnne Hathaway in VERITY. Image: Alisha Wetherill/Amazon Content Services LLC
The Verity reviews are in and phooey, there are some stinkers. Reviewers continue the tradition of panning Colleen Hoover adaptations with boredom as the through-line for this fourth adaptation directed by Michael Showalter (The Idea of You), adapted by Nick Antosca (Cape Fear), starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and Josh Hartnett.
But don’t take it from me. Here are a couple of scorchers:
Eventually all involved have to get down to business and actually contend with the plot beats of Hoover’s story, which is when the movie careens off a cliff, plumetting past so-bad-it’s-good and crashing on the rocks of agonizingly dumb. – Richard Lawson, The Hollywood Reporter
After a whole lot of wintry lifestyle porn and surreptitious stalking down soft-carpeted corridors, “Verity” takes more than an hour to reach so much as a low boil, but its twists are second-guessed and double-bluffed to death, even as Showalter punctuates certain revelations with literal thunderclaps in the background. – Guy Lodge, Variety
The source material claims much of the blame. But here’s what reviewers had to say about some of the cast and crew:
- Showalter gets rocked for being ill-suited to the story’s eroticism
- Critics are split on Johnson’s performance, with some praising and some suffering through Johnson’s commitment to “Resting Bored Face.”
- Hathaway walks away with select praise for her commitment to camp:
Where Hathaway plunges deep into the sultry, salty waters of psycho-sexual thriller with her psycho-biddy eccentricity as a tool, Johnson seems rudderless. – Kristy Puchko, Mashable
My colleague Erica Ezeifedi predicted Verity would be 50 Shades of Anne. Turns out it might be a pale imitation of Gone Girl and Rebecca. –SZW
AWARDSBooks by geniusesThe MacArthur Foundation has revealed the recipients of its 2026 fellowships, known to most of us as the “genius grants.”
- The awardees are always a humblingly accomplished line-up of scholars, artists, scientists, and thinkers. And many of them have published books.
So, in addition to the recipients that are known explicitly as writers (Bryan Washington, Maaza Mengiste, and Layli Long Soldier), here are a few titles you might be interested in checking out:
- After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration by Holly Jean Buck
- Deaf Material by Christine Song Kim
- The Power of Small Nations: Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South by Elizabeth N. Ellis
Bryan Washington’s Palaver was one of my favorite books of 2025, and The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste was a book from 2020 that I noticed, was interested in, and didn’t get to. I plan on correcting that.
I would also recommend spending a moment with Layli Long Solider’s poem, 38, just as soon as you can.
Pro tip: If you are looking to have a richer social feed, going through the profile pages of each of these people and following their Instagram is the move. –JO
ADAPTATION CORNERChaotic thoughts about Practical Magic 2In an era of remakes, reboots, and redos, I was genuinely jazzed as hell to be getting a Practical Magic sequel this year. I’m such an evangelist for the original book and bad-good movie that I flew across the country to watch it with a buddy.
After securing a giant beverage and a lifetime supply of popcorn—refreshments that came with the ridiculous commemorative plastic blender I gleefully purchased—I sat down and prepared to be razzled and dazzled anew.
Both the razzle and the dazzle were in low supply.
The magic was, well, impractical. The original film’s CGI is minimal (and mostly used on Jimmy Angelov’s creep ass), but PM2 went hard in the other direction. I wanted more potions and whimsy, less laser battles and silly flower magic.
How you gon’ make Lee Pace cringe? Not even that gorgeous redwood of a man could save that line about molecules. Whoever’s responsible, we have beef now.
Holy Botox, batman! Let women age! I know the pressure is real and women can’t win, and I’m not even anti-‘tox. But there was something so jarring about all those frozen faces that don’t match their kneecaps, and in a movie about witches.
Arya Stark deserved better. Antonia is reduced to kind of a boring side character, and she’s stripped of her queerness, but she and her partner helped break the curse in the book. Shame!
Stray thoughts: We needed Vincent. Did Kylie hop on a jet plane with only that slip dress and a dream? Did she at least pack a few pairs of panties? At least we got some Fleetwood Mac.
It wasn’t all bad. Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest are gold, and Sandra and Nicole seemed to have a great time. And I did get to sway along to “Landslide” with one of my dearest friends for a couple of witchy hours. That part was worth the price of admission, and the cost of the blender, too. —VD
MEMOIRSThe books I wish I had as an undocumented childphoto credit: Liam Suvorova
Katya Suvorova is the author of Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter: A Memoir From the Child of a Mail-Order Bride, out this week from Alcove Press. Below, she discusses three books she wishes she had as an undocumented child.
Growing up undocumented was a lonely experience, spent fearing a traffic stop or trusting the wrong person could lead to being deported or separated from my family. I sometimes didn’t believe we would survive the situations we were in, and I didn’t know any adults who had grown up undocumented.
I wish I had gotten to read stories from adults who had been where I was, but I was far too afraid to go to my librarian and ask, “Do you have any books about undocumented kids like me?”
As an adult, I have found books about undocumented experiences to be deeply healing. If I could go back in time, I would give myself three of my favorite memoirs about undocumented childhoods:
The first is Qian Julie Wang’s Beautiful Country. The memoir is told from her POV as an undocumented Chinese immigrant growing up in New York in the 90s and early 2000s. This book was a balm to my heart. While reading, I was struck by how Qian Julie’s description of the all-consuming stress of being undocumented was so similar to my own memories. I have every available format of this memoir because it is so profoundly meaningful to me.
Before Beautiful Country, I didn’t know we could talk about our undocumented childhoods, even after we got our documents. It had felt too taboo. But after reading it, I started searching for more undocumented stories and came across Americanized: Rebel Without a Green Card by Sara Saedi. Sara’s book about her Iranian family is a hilarious and emotional recounting of her childhood and helped me see my own experiences through a more comedic lens, which helped me process and recontextualize difficult parts of my childhood.
There are now many more undocumented stories, but one I deeply wish I could have given my teenage self is The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande. I found Reyna’s nuanced exploration of her strained relationship with her father to be a masterful depiction of how undocumented immigration can shape the very foundation of what family means.
HAPPY BIRTHDAYTim O’Brien, born October 1, 1946Did you know? O’Brien quit writing when his first child was born in 2003 to focus on being a parent. It would be 20 years before his next novel came out (America Fantastica).
CRITICAL LINKINGYou are now free to roam about the internetBrush up on East of Eden before you watch the adaptation.
Pick up these queer Latine books for Latine Heritage Month!
These are the best student podcasts in America.
Some very good advice for managing your TBR.
Find your next horror read.
END NOTESWritten by Rebecca Schinsky, Sharifah Williams, Jeff O’Neal, Vanessa Diaz, and Danika Ellis. Thanks to Vanessa Diaz for copy editing.
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