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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.
Game of Thrones‘ Big Screen Debut
Hot on the heels of the critical success that is A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the newest Game of Thrones spinoff, comes word of a GoT movie in the works. The prequel film set around 300 years before the OG show’s pilot episode will be developed by Warner Bros, with Andor writer Beau Willimon onboard to pen the script. George R.R. Martin promises a “Dune-sized feature film”; you’ve got to believe that budget is eye-popping. And apparently the story of conquering King Aegon Targaryen’s Westeros campaign is so compelling that it demanded an HBO series based on the same conquest. The moral of the story is that Hollywood studios aren’t as pressed as the fans by Martin’s ever-unfinished sixth A Song of Ice and Fire book, The Fabled Winds of Winter, when they can rake it in with spinoffs galore…and I won’t pretend I’m not going to watch this movie.
Don’t Let Anyone Tell You Books Don’t Sell
Book sales are not only stable, they have a new, higher baseline, according to Circana BookScan industry analyst Brenna Connor. Covering the American Booksellers Association’s Winter Institute 2026, Publishers Weekly recaps the good news from Connor’s U.S. book market trends and strategies talk. Even as Americans tighten their belts around a tougher economy, adult fiction and escapist fiction like dark romance have lifted book sales. I bet you can guess what other category is performing. That’s right: dystopian fiction. In nonfiction, hope, comfort, and community are key, with trusted sources, mental well-being, and religious and spiritual content on the rise. These times have also put us in search of a more analog lifestyle and what’s more analog than a tome? We may think we’re très cerebral but book sales are reading us to filth.
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Speaking of…
Are we living in a “smut renaissance?” Amanda Hess explores our current obsession with all things erotic, zeroing in on the recent success of and thirst for the new Wuthering Heights film adaptation, the Heated Rivalry books and series adaptation, and romantasy. Hess emphasizes the “yearning for male yearning” as a common thread in our current gravitation toward smut, with women seeking escape from lived heterosexual experiences, drawn into the inaccessible and exciting world of, say, guy on guy action and sex with magical men from the world of faerie. Don’t call it a comeback but it remains interesting to ask what smut’s trends tell us about contemporary culture.
BookCon Announces Its Schedule of Events
ReedPop is bringing BookCon back after a long COVID-catalyzed hiatus, and the schedule includes a celebration of Heated Rivalry, trans and nonbinary stories, and Indigenous authors. Learn more about BookCon’s upcoming events (and recent criticism).
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