The Biggest Book News of The Week

Welcome to Today in Books, our round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Here are the biggest stories from the last week in books.

Barnes & Noble’s Best Books of 2024

B&N is out of the gate first among the major makers of annual (and semi-annual, and monthly, and, and, and) best books lists. This year, they’ve dialed back on the the more bespoke (precious?) categories from last year and gone back to familiar genres, though with a couple of notable wrinkles. First: “smart thinking books” becomes a category for the sort of non-fiction that encompasses productivity, idea-forward business books, and other kinds of books that are non-academic, but claim to help you understand the world, and yourself better. That long, fuzzy description shows that “smart thinking” is a good moniker. 

Second, and this is a first as far as I can remember, there is a section for the best Spanish language books of the year. This is a) very cool and b) another manifestation of something I have been told by major publishers themselves–they want to get into the lives of more Spanish-speaking readers and also Latinx people who don’t speak/read Spanish. Trend to watch in 2025 and beyond.

‘Good Omens’ Season 3 to Consist of One 90-Minute Episode, Neil Gaiman Not Involved in Production

Season Three was already slated to be the last for Good Omens even before was accused by several women of sexual misconduct. Why not just….not do this? Or go the other way: does a full-season without Gaiman, and I should say be loud about that fact if you do it, really have worse optics than this? Or perhaps this is what they could negotiate their way out of with all the parties involved. This single-episode vestigial weirdness seems like the worst of both worlds: neither a cord-cutting nor a moving on.

This is the Winner of the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction

Really interesting shortlist for this year’s award, and the winner itself is not something I had on my radar. One thing I like about science-fiction and fantasy awards in general is that there are often novellas (as this one is) recognized. I am not sure why SFF is more open to novellas in general, though probably it has something to do with the importance of the science fiction short story in the mainstreaming of the genre.