I didn’t know what I was in for. I was in London for a week in 1997, and one of my English professors suggested I go check out this play by someone he really liked. I knew nothing (and don’t still, really) about contemporary theater. But I was a 20-year-old English major, and going to a play about A.E. Housman and Oscar Wilde seemed like a very “I am an English major in London” thing to do. 

I came out of The Invention of Love with at least two things. The first was a favorite living playwright. The second was this question: “Was that what it would have felt like to see a Shakespeare play in 1599?”

Tom Stoppard passed away this weekend at the age of 88 . I can only give my personal elegy here, one that is uneducated about modern theater, and I am by no means a Stoppard scholar. But I was, and remain, a fan. For me, it is quite simple: Tom Stoppard did with spoken words exactly what I want to listen to. With seemingly extra-terrestrial erudition, a penetrating intellect, an undying curiosity, and a thorough-going veneration of ideas and those who have them, he brought play to what could be ponderous and intimacy to what could be intimidating (it is the great regret of my culture-consuming life that I did not cough up the cash to see The Coast of Utopia in its entirety: its day-long, multi-hundreds-of-dollars-per-ticket entirety). 

Betters can write a terrific obituary. Others have conducted fascinating interviews. What I can offer for someone who doesn’t know Stoppard from a stop sign is a clip from the film adaptation of his breakout play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead . If you find yourself as charmed and as alarmed by it as I still find myself today, then likely he too was your favorite living playwright, even if you didn’t know it. - JO

We’re in the home stretch now, the closing of the year, which brings with it reflection, wistfulness, celebration, and a reminder of the finite nature of time. If you find yourself dreaming of a deeper, more expansive reading life as we prepare to turn the page (forgive me) into a new year, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more charming companion than Hwang Bo-Reum’s Every Day I Read.

Also hitting shelves this week:

• A novel in translation about “ the rich stories of small places” from a Nobel Prize-winning writer
• Adults-only romance manga about a young man who works at a library and finds himself drawn to an older gentleman who starts spending a lot of time there
• A comprehensive biography of Tolkien and the epic worlds he created
• An exploration of the art of writing from an award-winning, bestselling author

📫 Sign up for our New Books newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best new books.

🦕 In your Mesozoic era? Give yourself and the dino enthusiasts on your holiday list the gift of Dinosaurs by New York Times bestselling author Rachel Ignotofsky.

A fully illustrated tour of more than 4.5 billion years of life on Earth, Dinosaurs is an engaging, beautifully drawn crash course in prehistoric life, from our planet’s harsh beginnings to the lush Paleozoic Era, from the T. rex and Mesozoic giants to the rise of mammals after the ice ages. It’s a perfect pick for the dino-obsessed and anyone who loves smart, stunningly illustrated nonfiction. Order your copy now.

2025 has been a fascinating year in books.

It brought us toxic lesbian vampires and lesbians in space, multigenerational family sagas, and Godfather-inspired crime fiction. After yet another round of handwringing op-eds about men’s role in and relationship to literary fiction, novels about masculinity won two of the major book awards. Dan Brown came back to do Dan Brown things in his best book since The Da Vinci Code. Climate was a chief concern across genres, and dark academia went to Hell.

There hasn’t been one clear Book of the Year, but there have been plenty of interesting, newsworthy, memorable reads. Which ones will stand the test of time?

🎧 Listen as we analyze 2025’s canon contenders.

It’s a book lover’s dream: hide away in the Hudson Valley to spend a weekend reading a novel start to finish and discussing it with new friends.

Page Break is making it happen with reading retreats that combine group and solo reading time with creative activities, gourmet meals, and plenty of space for relaxation.

This fall, 15 readers gathered to read The Children by Melissa Albert, coming next summer from William Morrow. It was the first time a publisher has launched a book with a weekend retreat. We heard from a few of the lucky attendees about what it was like:

As an avid reader, I have never felt more engaged or immersed in a book before, from the details to the setting, delicious meals and wine, and meaningful, passionate conversations about the story. Pagebreak brings together such welcoming and interesting people connected by an interest we all share and love that left me deeply fulfilled, both as a reader and as a person.

—Letitia Asare,  @bookshelfbyla

Reading aloud & discussing each segment while immersed in such an introspective, thoughtful bookish community was an incredible (and somewhat nostalgic) experience. I was able to engage with The Children more intentionally and forge some new friendships along the way!

—Steph, @starry.steph

Learn more...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen fans love a good themed gift, and with her 250th birthday arriving on December 16th, the timing couldn’t be better. Celebrate with a fill-in book, a question deck inspired by her novels, and a cozy cross-stitch kit, perfect for winter craft nights with literary friends or for gifting to the Austenites in your life.

Charming, creative, and unmistakably Austen, this is a trio you will ardently admire and love.

Matthew Pearl is the author of The Award, out now from Harper.

Writing my novel, The Award, a suspense thriller about writers and publishing, reminded me of what a black box the publishing world can feel like. I know it felt that way for me when I started writing, and still does sometimes! Many of us discover books and authors in spaces such as bookstores and libraries, which foster such a positive community. But there’s another side to the literary world. Behind the curtain.

The literary world is rife with isolation. Isolation is inherent in writing, when you think about it. It’s a very solitary act! There’s various ways to combat that, but during a journey through a writing life, you meet a number of writers who convert that isolation into alienation. They tend to view other writers as threats, and in some cases sabotage and mistreat them, whether to serve a strategy or to feed ego.

There’s a range of behaviors I’ve observed that crop up, including hypocrisy and backstabbing. Fortunately, there are plenty of other writers who counteract the isolation of writing with generosity and kindness toward peers, and, of course, that’s who you try to surround yourself with. But in using building blocks of tension for The Award, I definitely drew from the darker encounters in my own experiences.

The process was cathartic, and besides hoping readers will get caught up in the story, I also hope to give an authentic peek into the less visible and sometimes shocking corners of literary life!

Expand your literary horizons this holiday season with these outstanding books by BIPOC authors.

• 🍴 Samin Nosrat has been called the next Julia Child. Her latest cookbook, Good Things, was published earlier this year and is full of more than 100 of the chef’s favorite recipes.
• 📰 For someone interested in current events, there’s Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, which comes highly recommended by our Executive Director of Content, S. Zainab Williams.
• 🦄 For the reader who likes something a little fancy, there are the gorgeously stenciled deluxe editions of fantasy bestsellers, Katabasis by R. F. Kuang and The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon.
• 🔥 Lovers of Southern noir and The Godfather would absolutely get their life from being gifted S.A. Cosby’s King of Ashes. - EE

Tailored Book Recommendations is the ultimate gift for everyone on your list , from the dedicated book nerd who devours every genre to the hesitant reader looking for a starting point. Here’s how it works: your gift recipient fills out a simple, quick survey about their reading likes and dislikes. Then, our professional book nerds (yes, real people!) hand-select three books, just for them. Choose to gift the personalized recommendations alone, or go all out and have paperbacks or hardcovers delivered right to their door. Gift TBR today starting at just $18!

Saunders can rip quotes like that in pretty standard-fare digital publicity hits.

🌱 Build your own little botanical buddies with the Happy Plants set from LEGO.**

📱 Break up with your phone with help from these books.

🙋‍♀️ See if you can guess the most-read books of Goodreads’s 2025 Reading Challenge.

📖 Fall in love with reading again. Here’s how.

📚 Bust your TBR with 100 notable small press books from 2025.

_{**This is a product recommendation from the Book Riot team. When you buy through these links, we may earn a commission.}

Written by Rebecca Schinsky, Jeff O’Neal, and Erica Ezeifedi. Thanks to Danika Ellis for editorial support and Vanessa Diaz for copy editing.

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