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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.
A Big List of 2025 Books By Women of Color
Electric Literature rounded up 48 books by women of color to look forward to in this fresh, new year. Casualties of Truth by Lauren Francis-Sharma is appearing everywhere and is on my reading list. I scrolled down for books publishing later in the year since those aren’t getting as much hype in these early months and a couple standouts for me include Hot Girls with Balls by Benedict Nguyễn, a satire about trans athletes, and Zeal by Morgan Jerkins, which is a multi-generational look at the legacy of slavery and has a banger blurb from Kiese Laymon. It’s easier to face down what’s gearing up to be a hard year knowing great books by great authors are coming to bring us some joy and remind us of our humanity.
S&S Launches Audio-First Imprint
Simon & Schuster is launching an audio-first imprint, Simon Maverick, with Jason Pinter (formerly of Polis Books) as VP and editorial director. The plan for the imprint is to mostly work with self-published authors to mostly produce original audiobooks. There are a lot of mostlys here because it sounds like this isn’t an all or nothing scheme when it comes to audio or authors–Pinter is staying open to opportunities printing works under the Maverick banner and working with books by S&S authors under other divisions. It’s not hard to see this as a business model where the focus on self-published works and audio formats allows S&S to quickly surface and mass produce unrepresented works in successful genres (ahem, romantasy) that come with a built-in readership ready and willing to hear their favorite story in audio format and capture fans who might not know of X author but have a big appetite for the genre. And if an audiobook takes off, Simon Maverick would be set up with a framework to quickly pivot to print. The imprint is already planning to publish at least 50 titles this year.
The French Writer Who Predicted the Rise of Audiobooks and Podcasts
Here’s a fun piece of historical book nerdery for your Friday. Open Culture profiled a French writer who presaged the panic headlines of today with his story, “The End of Books.” I do love a visitation of old texts that seem to predict our present day, though I think the headline, built on the premise that audiobooks are not books and could therefore be the end of books, is silly. I was, however, delighted by the illustration of the 19th century flâneur stretching his legs while engrossed in a true crime podcast. Okay, Octave Uzanne did not explicitly predict podcasts, much less the obsession with true crime, but his description is pretty on point:
“At home, walking, sightseeing,” says the Bibliophile, “fortunate hearers will experience the ineffable delight of reconciling hygiene with instruction; of nourishing their minds while exercising their muscles.”
BookLooks, RatedBooks, and Other Unprofessional Book “Review” Sites to Know
Not all book sites are good book sites is an understatement when it comes to these censorship apparatuses masquerading as review platforms. Some libraries are using these sites–one of which was created by a former Moms For Liberty member and others by even more dangerous groups intent on spreading bias–to make decisions. Get the details on these sites and how they’re impacting communities nationwide.
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