TV and publishing are cozying up for cuffing season. Studios are snatching up series about what happens behind closed doors in the publishing industry and viewers are here for it. Some, but not all of these get even more meta as book adaptations.

Here’s a refresher on some of the buzziest TV shows about publishing:

Tahmima Anam’s Good Books has been picked up for a series adaptation, according to Variety. The book, described as The Devil Wears Prada meets Yellowface, won’t even be published until 2028.

Youth, Sharon Horgan’s buzzy new romantic dramedy following a literary agent navigating publishing shenanigans, midlife, and empty nesting, just aired its HBO finale on November 1st.

The Other Black Girl, Hulu’s comedic thriller based on Zakiya Dalila Harris’s novel of the same name, enjoyed great reviews but was cancelled after one season.

Younger, the dramedy based on Pamela Redmond Satran’s novel of the same name, fared better, ending its seven-season run in 2021.

While shows like The Bold Type and its predecessors capitalized on the interest in entertainment around magazine publishing and journalism, perhaps this current small screen trend speaks to book publishing’s enduring success and influence. – SZW

After nearly 20 years working in books, I’m ready to call it: Publishers Weekly consistently produces the most interesting Best Books of the Year list in the business.

With a Top 10 that often contains more surprises than predictable zeitgeisty hits, the PW list fulfills the promise of what a Best Books list should be: it actually serves as a tool for discovery.

Not even the best list is perfect, though, and TBH, talking about the omissions is part of the fun, too.

Get more analysis of the PW list and books-of-the-year trends on the Book Riot Podcast.

Ready or not, we are fast approaching gift-giving season. It can be intimidating to give readers books: what if they already have it? One way around this is gifting gorgeous editions of their favorite books, like these collector’s editions of classic novels.

Beloved by Toni Morrison (Vintage Quarterbound Classics)

You don’t have to break the bank to get a beautiful edition of a classic. These Vintage Quarterbound Classics are stunning, but they don’t cost much more than an average hardcover. I’ve pulled out Beloved by Toni Morrison, but any in this collection would be a great gift.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Chiltern Classic)*

There’s something deeply satisfying about an edition of The Great Gatsby that would look at home in Jay Gatsby’s library. This Chiltern Classic edition has an Art Deco-style design and gilt edges. The other Chiltern Classic titles have a similar repeating design, so they look great lined up together on a shelf.

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (Beehive Books Illuminated Edition)

If you are willing to pony up for a pricier option, illuminated or illustrated versions of classics add another layer to a beloved story. I couldn’t resist this illuminated version of the classic vampire novel Carmilla, which includes illustrations by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell.

*A message from our sponsor

Award-winning singer, composer, and instrumentalist Laufey chaired National Library Card Signup Month this year. One of the projects? She and her Laufey Book Club fronted numerous special-edition library cards across the country, including at Los Angeles County, Kern County, Broward County, Des Plaines Library, and more.

This was far from the first special edition library card, and it was also not the only special edition library card to pop up this year. Across the country, libraries are building interesting collaborations with brands and stars to increase sign-ups and to spur discussion about the role of the public library.

Among some of the raddest collaborations this year:

There’ve been a number of other fun public library card collaborations in recent history, too, including:

And while it wasn’t a collaboration between artist and library, in 2024, the Placentia Public Library (CA) designed a Taylor Swift-themed card in honor of the musician’s popularity and her Eras Tour.

These collaborations are a fun and meaningful way to get new library users in the door and take advantage of local artists, local celebrities, and local history. – KJ

There’s nothing that brings people together like trying to navigate a strange situation together, and that’s exactly what happens in these queer time travel romance books. One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston is the most well-known example, but there are lots of ways to approach this genre.

► More time-travel smoochin’ here. —DE

Kwan Ann Tan is the author of the interactive story The Waiter, out this week from Union Square & Co. Below, she recommends three more interactive books.

An interactive story or a novel with an unusual structure is a difficult and unwieldy thing to pull off. But when it’s done well, you come away feeling like you’ve experienced something unusual, or the way that you see the text has changed.

Here are three books that invite you to interact with the text as a physical object to reframe the narrative, or piece together the full picture yourself through their unconventional structures.

Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar: A book that conjures up smoky jazz in friends’ living rooms and circular conversations of bohemian intellectuals in 1950s Paris, Cortázar’s novel can be read in two ways: linearly, or as a recursive loop, according to the “instructions” that the author prints in the introduction. Depending on how you read it, the story unfolds quite differently, revealing different layers and answers to questions that might have been previously opaque.

The Age of Goodbyes by Li Zi Shu, translated by YZ Chin: Set in the humid, dialect-slinging environs of Kuala Lumpur, The Age of Goodbyes is a swirling metafictional piece where memory is questioned through literary structure. The novel starts on page 513, both a nod to the May 13, 1969 race riots in Malaysia but also to a story that “you”—the reader, but also the narrator—have arrived in the middle of, and are trying to retroactively piece together. Interwoven through this are not just one, but two versions of the mysterious figure Du Li An, inviting you to construct your own understanding of events.

The Employees by Olga Ravn: The farthest-flung of these recommendations, Ravn situates us in the far future on a spaceship, where the crew encounters a series of strange sensory objects. The novel is told exclusively through interviews, or “performance reviews,” of the crew over the course of 18 months, and these are non-linear, with some having missing or redacted sections. Through this, you can piece together a story of human and transhuman change, as well as a contemplation of the absurdity of the modern workplace.

Did you know? Cliff met her partner Adrienne Rich while working as an editor at Norton, where Rich was published.

These were the most popular books on Goodreads in October.

Catch up with the best recent fiction in translation.

Why is every book Gothic now?

Fill your queue with literary film & TV to stream this month.

Does self-help need a makeover?

Written by Rebecca Schinsky, S. Zainab Williams, Danika Ellis, Kelly Jensen, and Jeff O’Neal. Thanks to Vanessa Diaz for copy editing.

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