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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.
The Biggest Best-Of-2025 List Has Landed
NPR’s annual “Books We Love” feature is the antithesis of the hyper-curated top-ten. “More is more” readers, rejoice: the crew at NPR—hosts, producers, editors, everybody—has rounded up more than 380 books to celebrate. The gloriously massive list is filterable by all the usual genres, along with gift-assistance categories (art lovers, history lovers, etc), staff picks, book club recommendations, options for readers who prefer the “rather long” or “rather short” read, and, my favorite, “seriously great writing.” The 2025 selections join the collection NPR has been amassing since 2013, and yes, Virginia, you can see all of those lists, too. If you can’t find something exciting, something you haven’t heard of before, and something for everyone on your holiday shopping list from the 4,000+ titles in the omnibus collection, I don’t know what to do for you.
34 Books to Get You Through the Holidays
Speaking of book lists with helpful categories! Run for Something founder Amanda Litman recommends 34 great books to check out before the end of the year, ranging from “romance novels (hot)” to “romance novels (slightly less explicit but still fun!)” to “romance + something else (fantasy, thriller, magic, etc)” to “just good fiction!” I can co-sign Heart the Lover and The Ten Year Affair as terrific, absorbing reads perfect for a flight…or fleeing from your family.
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Solange Expands Lending Library of Rare Books by Writers of Color
Since 2021, multi-hyphenate powerhouse Solange Knowles has added librarian to her job descriptions. Saint Heron Library, which offers 45-day loans of rare and one-of-a-kind books by Black and brown authors, has expanded from its original catalog of 50 books to a collection of more than 2,150. Anyone in the U.S. can borrow a book from Saint Heron for free, which is a pretty radical—and radically generous—thing to do with the kinds of the books collectors would pay handsomely for. And that’s the point. Knowles created the library because she was concerned that these works “would be inaccessible to communities that would greatly benefit from them,” telling the New York Times, “I believe that a lot of the expressions of these books can change lives if they are reaching people who seek and have a thirst and a yearning for knowledge and expression and imagination.” May her efforts succeed.
BIPOC Books to Gift This Year
We’ve got gift guides for every kind of reader rolling out this season. Here’s Erica Ezeifedi with picks for the person on your list who makes it a point to celebrate BIPOC authors. I heartily second the emotion for Good Things by Samin Nosrat; give a great cookbook and guarantee yourself an invitation to the dinner parties that follow!