The editors over at Amazon read like nobody’s business. They devour anything and everything with pages before selecting their “best of” books of the year. This year, they’ve given us their top 20 books to peruse, naming Buckeye by Patrick Ryan their top pick of the year. For us nonfiction fans, never fear! They have several titles for our enjoyment, too. 

While taking a look at the titles, I can’t help but notice that while their fiction picks feature authors from a wide range of backgrounds, their nonfiction picks aren’t very diverse. While these might be great true stories, they all kinda hit one note. Surely, with all of that reading, they could have given us a better range of nonfiction picks.

Every year, like clockwork, the moment the Goodreads Choice Awards opens for voting, the discourse begins. There are MANY legitimate issues with the award process that people have brought up, but I would like to enter my grievance into the mix: what do you mean there are only three nonfiction categories?! I love a good “dad” book, but for what ridiculous reason have they always combined biography and history into the same category? You literally make the rules, Goodreads.

If fiction can have a plethora of categories—including romance, fantasy, AND romantasy—surely history and biography can each have their own. Off and on, they used to also include humor, cookbook, science & technology, business, and travel & outdoors book categories, which have all disappeared over the years.

Sure, I’m waving my personal opinion flag a bit here, but nonfiction can be just as riveting and all-engrossing as any fiction genre. With more categories, more nonfiction books would be featured and potentially find new readers. So why not highlight a broader range of nonfiction genres?

You can find me over on my Substack Winchester Ave, over on Instagram @kdwinchester, or on my podcast Read Appalachia. As always, feel free to drop me a line at kendra.d.winchester@gmail.com. For even MORE bookish content, you can find my articles over on Book Riot.

The post More Lists of the Best Nonfiction Books of the Year—Plus Some Advice for Goodreads appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Waterstones Names Its Books of the Year

I think this is the shortlist, and eventually the book of the year will be named, give the huge banner on the page, but at the very least this is a list of their books of the year. Browsing UK best-of lists always feels a bit like a dream: somethings are recognizable (Katabasis, Sunrise at the Reaping) and some things feel like make-believe (Donut Squad Take Over the World, Strange Pictures). Weirdly, I was just talking about how much I liked Craftland, but had no idea who I would recommend it to. I forgot about the whole of the British Isles apparently.

Did Europa Editions Just Spoil Monday’s Booker Prize Announcement?

The Booker Prize, the most prestigious award for an English-language book in the world, will be announced Monday. I do not think publishers know ahead of time if their books is going to win. If they did, though, they might try to get special editions with a sticker or logo on the book ready to hit the shelves. And if they did that, might they not look something like this? Someone on IG (thank you!) sent this to us, and that really looks….suspicious.

Amazon Introduces Kindle Translate

I have been waiting for the news of something like this to drop. AI is pretty good at translation. Not as good as expert humans, but unlike expert humans it is blazingly fast and really, really cheap. And in the case of Amazon’s new Kindle Translate, it looks like it might be free–at least for authors using Kindle Direct. The beta program will have English to Spanish and German to English available (who knows why). The plus side is that there are thousands and thousands of books that won’t ever be translated without something like this because the cost of having human translators is too high. The downside is that programs like this will put the paid labor of professional translators at risk, as the LLMs get better and reader and writer comfort with them rises.

Grammy Nominees for Audiobook of the Year

Also known as, what famous people have audiobooks out or audiobooks about music awards of the year. Snooze.

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The National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) has compiled the forty-six named applications, sites, and platforms as it believes they are a risk to users and their data.

NCCIA publishes a list of banned operators

Aviator Game, Chicken Road, 1xBet, Betway, Dafabet, 22Bet, Melbet, Parimatch, Bet365, Plinko, 10Cric, Rabona, Casumo, BetWinner, 888Starz, and Thunderpick have all been named in the list according to the Times of Karachi.

Bet365, Parimatch, and Dafabet are giants in the gambling world, so the news that they have been outlawed across Pakistan will undoubtedly be a blow, being associated with the allegations the NCIAA is putting forward.

The unregulated forex and binary trading platforms included in the list were Binomo, IQ Option, Pocket Option, Deriv, Olymp Trade, OctaFX, and Quotex.

Money laundering, data theft, lack of oversight, and legislative breaches are all being levied at these operators by the gambling watchdog.

The NCIAA earmarked certain operators in the list that give access to SIM and CNIC details, such as Sim Owner Details, Pak Sim Data, Sky Sim Data, and Sim Tracker, which breaches data protection and a list of privacy laws.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has also been involved in the decision to outlaw the apps designated by the NCCIA to be illegal.

The PTA will now block access or restrict them where possible, and the NCCIA is taking steps to restrict apps being promoted or available on mobile stores.

Pakistan’s cybercrime agency vigilant against illegal gambling

As we reported, in Lahore, the capital of Punjab, over 1,600 people involved in illegal gambling have been named in 400 cases in the city’s courts.

This includes 8.41 million rupees ($86,000) recovered by local authorities and a stern statement from Capital City Police Officer Bilal Siddique Kamyana, “The noose is tightening around those involved in online gambling.”

Celebrity faces have not been spared the wrath of the NCCIA, as Ducky Bhai recently found out. He is currently under the watchful eye of the regulator for allegedly promoting illegal gambling platforms, including Binomo and 1xBet, through his YouTube channel, which has more than eight million subscribers.

https://twitter.com/MehwishQamas/status/1958078577079177224/

Wasim Akram, one of the nation’s top cricket pundits was also under the scrutiny of the NCCIA after a complaint was lodged alleging that he was endorsing gambling and betting apps. The former captain of the national cricket team was reported to be a bet ambassador for an entity named Baji.

The complainant has asked for the nationally known sportsman be held accountable under the Electronic Crimes Act 2016.

Featured image: Pexels

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I did a summer reading list round-up a little while ago and that seemed to go over pretty well, and as I opened my email/RSS/social media this morning, I thought a round-up of the lists coming out about just July books might be a good way to kick off the month. Here we go.

Amazon’s Best Books of July

Barnes & Noble’s Picks of the Month

July 2025 Indie Next List

12 Books of the Best Books of the Month in Every Genre [Book Riot]

Vulture’s 7 Books You Should Read This July

Goodreads’ Most Popular July Book Releases

20 Best Books to Read this July [Kirkus]

Book of the Month Club’s July Picks

20 Books Coming in July [The New York Times]

The post A List of Lists of Books Coming Out in July (which it now is impossibly) appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Atmosphere: A Love Story by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Goodreads, Atlantic, AV Club, Kirkus Reviews, New York Times, Town and Country, USA Today)

The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey (Publishers Weekly, LA Times, Lit Hub, New York Times, Vulture)

Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs (Goodreads, Publishers Weekly, AV Club, LA Times)

The Dry Season by Melissa Febos (Goodreads, New York Times, USA Today, Vulture)

Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle (Goodreads, AV Club, Vulture)

The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King (Goodreads, Town and Country)

A Family Matter by Claire Lynch (Goodreads, USA Today)

Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan (Goodreads, Vulture)

So Gay for You by Leisha Hailey and Kate Moenning (Town and Country, Vulture)

The Original by Nell Stevens (Lit Hub, Town and Country)

Hot Girls With Balls by Benedict Nguyễn (AV Club, Vulture)

Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove (Goodreads)

Volatile Memory by Seth Haddon (Goodreads)

The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling (Goodreads)

Black Flame by Gretchen Felker-Martin (Goodreads)

Well, Actually by Mazey Eddings (Goodreads)

And They Were Roommates by Page Powars (Goodreads)

Tenderly, I Am Devoured by Lyndall Clipstone (Goodreads)

Aggregated Discontent: Confessions of the Last Normal Woman by Harron Walker (Goodreads)

Boys Weekend by Mattie Lubchansky (Atlantic)

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One by Kristen Arnett (Atlantic)

A Language of Limbs by Dylin Hardcastle (Publishers Weekly)

Palm Meridian by Grace Flahive (Publishers Weekly)

Walk Like a Girl by Prabal Gurung (Kirkus Reviews)

Sick and Dirty: Hollywood’s Gay Golden Age and the Making of Modern Queerness by Michael Koresky (LA Times)

Human Rites (The HMRC Trilogy) by Juno Dawson (Town and Country)

Forest Euphoria by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian (Vulture)

Simplicity by Mattie Lubchansky (Vulture)

Trying by Chloé Caldwell (Vulture)

The post The 30 Best Queer Books of the Summer, According to All the Lists appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Yen Press, your favorite publisher of Japanese manga, comics, and novels.

From the renowned science fiction author Cixin Liu comes a mind-bending comic adaptation of The Three-Body Problem! A series of mysterious suicides leads a detective and group of scientists down a rabbit hole, one that might be more dangerous than they once believed… A desperate battle against Earth’s final countdown might have just begun!

Most of the bestsellers this week are familiar from weeks before: Freida McFadden and Rebecca Yarros continue to comfortably hold onto the top spots across all five of the biggest bestseller lists. We do have a couple of new titles, including From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough. This memoir was written by Riley Keough based on the notes her mother had recorded before she died, and it’s told in both their voices. This is the newest Oprah’s Book Club pick.

It’s disheartening to see that Melania Trump and J. D. Vance both have books on the bestseller list this week. Melania has been reviewed as “a blame-dodging masterclass” (The Guardian), “truly bad” (Vanity Fair), and “a brazen whitewash of a presidency” (The New York Times). As for Vance, you might be interested in the Book Riot articles Lies, Damn Lies, and Hillbilly Elegy as well as 15 Books About Appalachia to Read Instead of Hillbilly Elegy.

To get these numbers, we look at the USA Today overall top 10; Publishers Weekly overall top 10; The New York Times top 10, both Combined Print & E-Book Fiction and Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction lists; Amazon Charts top 10, both Fiction and Nonfiction; and Indie Bestsellers top 10, Fiction and Nonfiction, both Paperback and Hardcover. New additions to the list this week are bolded.

Books On Four Bestseller Lists:

From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough (Publishers Weekly, USA Today, NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates (USA Today, NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

Counting Miracles by Nicholas Sparks (Publishers Weekly, USA Today, NYT, Amazon)

The Housemaid by Freida McFadden (Publishers Weekly, NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

Melania by Melania Trump (Publishers Weekly, USA Today, NYT, Amazon)

Books On Three Bestseller Lists:

Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering by Malcolm Gladwell (NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (USA Today, NYT, Indie Bestsellers)

The Women by Kristin Hannah (NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance (NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

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