We have some good news in the world of books and reading today: Reading Rainbow is coming back! The original TV show was hosted by LeVar Burton and ran from 1983 to 2006. It’s hard to overstate just how beloved this educational children’s series was—and still is. Now, after 20 years, it’s finally coming back!

Here are ten of the best books of October, according to indie booksellers. Many of these we also recommend on Book Riot, so I’ve quoted our relevant recs when available. Be sure to click through to the ABA website for the full list, including six Indie Next Picks that are now out in paperback.

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Mark your calendars and book your flights to New York in spring 2027, because that’s when the new Baby-Sitters Club musical is set to premiere. The musical is set twelve years after the events of the books (which were originally published from 1986 to 2000). Now adults, the four founding members of the Baby-Sitters Club—Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia, and Stacey—return to their hometown of Stoneybrook, CT to honor the pact they made with each other when they were thirteen years old. As the four women reflect on their past lives, the friendships, and the hardships, they come to some life-changing realizations about themselves and what matters most.

As reported by Frank Strong, what makes this case even more infuriating is that district officials used Artificial Intelligence to create their list, allowing them to abdicate responsibility for the decision to an even further degree. First, they can blame state legislation for the removal of books, then they can blame A.I. for identifying these specific titles.

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry was published in 2021, and four years later, we’re getting a movie adaptation. The film of the same name stars Emily Bader as Poppy and Tom Blyth as Alex, and it comes out on Netflix January 9th. Netflix has just released the first teaser trailer, which you can watch below.

So what does the latest report find? Starting at the top level, PEN found that since 2021, nearly 23,000 titles have been banned across 45 states and 451 public school districts.

There are a ton of new titles on the bestseller lists this week, which makes for a nice change.

In another blow to the First Amendment Rights of library users, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida ruled that the Escambia County school board did not violate student or author rights when it pulled And Tango Makes Three from school library shelves. This is the second ruling in a matter of months to put the approved content of public library and public school library materials into the hands of government officials.

From romance novels to thrillers to historical fiction, these were the most read books on Goodreads this month.

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Here are the stories Today in Books readers were most interested in this week. Settle into your Sunday and catch up!

A Wealth of Summer Releases From the NYT

Between our own list of the best beach reads of all time (more on that below) and the New York Times lists of novels and nonfiction out this summer, it’s apparent that we all want you to have a great upcoming reading season. Highlights from the list of novels include a new Taylor Jenkins Reid because what’s a summer without a TJR novel, the highly anticipated Flashlight by Susan Choi and King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby and Katabasis by R.F. Kuang. And on the nonfiction list, we’ve got How to Lose Your Mother by Molly Jong-Fast, daughter of feminist icon Erica Jong, Blessings and Disasters by Alexis Okeowo, and The Dry Season by Melissa Febos. The good books can’t stop won’t stop and I’m pleased as punch about it. Check out the full list of novels out this summer and nonfiction out this summer.

A Megalist of New LGBTQ+ Books

Goodreads has a massive list of 135 LGBTQ+ fiction, nonfiction, and YA books just in time for Pride. These are books that published in January through early June, so you can catch up on any titles that might’ve flown under your radar this first half of the year. My standouts include The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong, Stag Dance by Torrey Peters, Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid (who recently came out as bisexual), When the Harvest Comes by Denne Michele Norris (which is on my fantasy league book draft), and Good Girl by Aria Aber (also on my fantasy draft), but there really is an embarrassment of riches here. Check out the full list at Goodreads.

Politics Can Now Dictate Public Library Collections in Three States

A group of library patrons in a Texas county sued when books were removed from the Llano County Public Library based on their contents, arguing that it curtailed their First Amendment rights. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals “held that library books are government speech and thus, not subject to the Free Speech clause.” And to that I say, in what world? Read more about how this ruling affects states beyond Texas, and opens the door to more rampant and taxpayer-funded censorship.

Readers Discover AI Prompt in Novel

Between that Chicago-Sun Times story and this one about an author who left an AI prompt in her romantasy novel, AI use is getting as messy as we thought it would. Readers of Lena McDonald’s Darkhollow Academy: Year 2 took to social to point out the prompt, which, Futurism reports, not only asked for a rewrite but a rewrite in fellow romantasy author J. Bree’s voice (the prompt has since been deleted). I’ve written before about the pace of publishing to meet demand, especially in the romantasy genre, and I don’t assume this is an isolated incident. Futurism‘s Victor Tangermann points to additional instances of AI-generated works and the proliferation of AI books on Amazon, and there are certainly undiscovered, more expertly disguised instances we haven’t yet identified. It’s easy to understand readers’ frustration–it’s the human touch and unique perspectives I and others are questing for, not an AI masquerade.

The Best Beach Reads of All Time

Need a beachy read for the summer? Our whole team of editorial staff and contributors got together to curate a list of 50 of the best beach reads of all time for your summer reading list. We considered not only our personal favorites, but also the beach reads canon. We also used the broadness of the category to gather a list that, we hope, has books for just about every kind of reader. So take a gander and get your summer reading list a glow up.

The comments section is moderated according to our community guidelines. Please check them out so we can maintain a safe and supportive community of readers!

The post The Biggest Bookish News We Covered This Week appeared first on Our Story Insight.

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

How To Build a Voters Guide for Public Library Board Elections

The Best Books of the Summer, According to the LA Times

Politics Can Now Dictate Public Library Collections in Three States, Per Fifth Circuit Ruling

The Most Read Books on Goodreads in May 2025

The Best New Books Out in June, According to Indie Booksellers

The Bestselling Books of the Week, According to All the Lists

The Best New Book Releases Out May 27, 2025

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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. Here are the stories we covered ourselves this week.

Last week was the first time in a quite a while that Empyrean books were not represented in either the top five most read books on Goodreads or the top ten bestselling books—but that’s not true this week. The series still isn’t in the top bestsellers, but Onyx Storm has made its way back into the top five most read books on Goodreads. I really need to stop declaring the end of peak Empyrean.

We’re less than one month out from Pride month, and with it, the programs, book displays, and conversations about LGBTQ+ identity and history across the USA and beyond. For libraries, Pride has traditionally been a month for joyful displays of queer books, with periodic and predictable complaints. But several years into surging book bans, escalating violence, and rising fascism, it is important to prepare for the upcoming month of events to anticipate all that has, does, and might arise.

Today, I’m excited to offer this space over to Frank Strong, whose candidate guides in Texas have become indispensable tools for voters. Frank is a leader in the Texas Freedom to Read Project and he’s an educator himself. You can read his work on his Substack Anger & Clarity, where he often covers censorship legislation and policy and how it directly impacts young people.

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I had several summer reading lists I wanted to link to but thought “I can’t link to more than one of these in a day that is too much” and then I thought “but if I make today’s newsletter a collection of them then I CAN.” So that’s what we have have for you today in Today in Books. Summer reading lists. A lot of them. And I think they were all written by humans. Mostly. Pretty sure.

 No real surprise at Backman and McFadden, whose titles reliably land them on bestseller lists at this point. Devney Perry may be new to this list, but not to publishing, with over 50 romance novels to her name! Her romantasy Shield of Sparrows, also in a deluxe limited edition, has comps to Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros (I see you, marketing people) and is already in development with Amazon MGM with a script from John Wick screenwriter Derek Kolstad.

The International Booker Prize is the world’s most influential literary award for translated fiction, with its £50,000 prize money that gets divided equally between authors and translators. It got its start as the Man Booker Internationl Prize in 2005, and looks at the best novels and short story collections that have been translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland.

Trump and his lawyers are seeking a stay pending the appeal in Rhode Island vs. Trump. This would allow the administration to continue doing nothing to bring back workers, services, or grants as ordered by the Judge. Although there is currently a temporary restraining ordered ordered the court in the other IMLS lawsuit, ALA vs. Sonderling, that halts further dismantling of the agency, given the history of the administration following legal precedent, seeking this stay is likely an opportunity to do more damage while the case is in court.

To say that a lot has been happening in Library Land would be a gross understatement. Between the firing of Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, an IMLS lawsuit update, and South Carolina and Utah banning more books statewide, there’s a lot to unpack.

The post The Book Stories We Covered This Week appeared first on Our Story Insight.

As deadly wildfires raged across Southern California this week, conservative and liberal media outlets reported similarly on the level of devastation that occurred. But they found vastly different culprits for it.

Right-wing outlets blamed much of the devastation on Democrats. They assailed the political leadership of California, which is heavily Democratic. They also blamed the destruction on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives undertaken in Los Angeles.

Liberal outlets criticized President-elect Donald J. Trump’s reaction to the fires, which they described as insensitive. Some attributed the intensity of the fires to climate change.

The fires have so far killed at least five people, although the sheriff has said the exact toll is unknown as this point, burned 27,000 acres of land and forced the mandatory evacuation of nearly 180,000 people in Los Angeles.

Here’s how a few outlets have been covering the news:

FROM THE RIGHT

Breitbart

Conservative outlets have blamed the fires on the incompetence of elected Democrats in California, including Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles. When the fires broke out, Ms. Bass was visiting Ghana as part of a delegation for the inauguration of the country’s new president, a fact that has angered some of her constituents.

Breitbart, the conservative website, ran more than a half-dozen headlines on its homepage that criticized Ms. Bass on Thursday, including one that referred to her as missing in action “in Africa while her city burned.” Another claimed she “knew of the fire risk” before leaving for Ghana.

“What does the mayor of Los Angeles have to do with Ghana?” said Alex Marlow, the editor in chief of Breitbart, on the “Alex Marlow Show” on Wednesday. Mr. Marlow also claimed that the L.A. Fire Department had emphasized hiring diverse candidates instead of being prepared for fires.

In a news conference Thursday, Ms. Bass dismissed a question about her leadership, saying that she was currently focused only on saving lives.

FROM THE RIGHT

The Daily Wire

Ryan Saavedra, a reporter for The Daily Wire, a conservative news and opinion site, wrote about warnings in December from Kristin Crowley, the city’s fire chief, that budget cuts to the department had “severely limited” its ability to quell wildfires.

Los Angeles officials have said that they didn’t have enough firefighters to contain the fires. Matt Walsh, a conservative blogger who hosts “The Matt Walsh Show” on the site, blamed the staffing issues on efforts at the department to improve diversity, equity and inclusion, often referred to by the acronym D.E.I. Several right-wing influencers had highlighted old fire department documents that signaled an interest in increasing diversity among firefighters and staff, and blamed the struggle to contain the fires on the programs.

“DEI is a cancer that destroys everything it touches,” he wrote in a post on X.

FROM THE LEFT

MSNBC

MSNBC, a liberal news network, has covered the fires on the ground in Los Angeles, providing live updates from its reporters.

“Those embers during those hurricane-force winds were pretty much playing hopscotch to vehicles and homes,” said Dana Griffin, a correspondent for NBC News, on “Morning Joe” on Thursday as she walked through a destroyed neighborhood.

Other parts of the network criticized Mr. Trump for his angry response to the fires. He had blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom of California for the devastation, calling him “incompetent” and questioning some of his past policies involving water and fish.

It “seems like an impossibility” to ask Mr. Trump to lead on “the climate problem we face, as a country, as a globe,” said Alex Wagner, the host of “Alex Wagner Tonight” on MSNBC, reacting to Mr. Trump’s comments.

Ryan Teague Beckwith, a newsletter editor at MSNBC, called Mr. Trump’s response “a profound misunderstanding of his own argument,” in an opinion article published Thursday. The cause of the fires was not the supply of water or a fish, Mr. Teague Beckwith argued, but “a combination of a drought, extremely high winds” and urban planning decisions.

Mr. Trump’s “first instinct was to blame his political opponents, raise an irrelevant issue and misinform everyone about the basic facts,” he wrote.

Writing for Salon, a liberal online news and commentary site, Daria Solovieva, the site’s money editor, wrote that wildfires showed Americans are “not prepared for climate change.”

Ms. Solovieva, who is based in Los Angeles, also said that it was “surreal to watch” how a wealthy region like Los Angeles struggled to find enough firefighters to contain the blazes, but noted that this was “the new normal.”

“Scientists have been predicting these deadly conditions for decades,” Ms. Solovieva wrote. “We are all just one weather calamity away from becoming displaced,” she added.

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