The reveal is here at last! Audible and Higher Ground have announced the anticipated guest lineup for A Great Book With Barack Obama.

The intimate six-part podcast series hosted by our former Reader in Chief features the following “luminaries” in conversation about the books that have shaped President Obama’s worldview and our society:

• Episode 1: Tom Hanks (Uncommon Type) on Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
• Episode 2: Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me) on The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
• Episode 3: Jill Lepore (These Truths: A History of the United States) on All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
• Episode 4: Ben Rhodes (The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House) on Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré
• Episode 5: Percival Everett (James) on Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• Episode 6: Lauren Groff (Florida) on All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

A Great Book with Barack Obama debuts on Audible September 24, 2026, and will be available on YouTube and everywhere you get your podcasts later this year.

We do miss a president who reads. – SZW

This fall marks the start of year six of relentless book bans—that’s more than half a decade. While the movement has shifted since its start, there is little question that we’re in for several more years of tireless advocacy on behalf of the right of all people in this country to read and access diverse, inclusive library collections.  

As book censorship roars on, freedom to read advocates have reflected on the challenges, the opportunities, and the wins that have helped keep the work of protecting the right to read going over the last half decade.

“We Need To Tell The Story”: Literary Advocates Nationwide Reflect On Five Years of Relentless Attacks on the Freedom to Read, a collaborative project from Book Riot, the American Library Association, Florida Freedom to Read Project, Freedom to Read Project, and literary advocate Tasslyn Magnusson dives deep into what’s been happening nationwide.

• 12 states share what’s been happening with the right to read since 2021, including not only Texas and Florida, but also Louisiana, Ohio, New Mexico, and more.

• Funding was cited several times as an obstacle to achieving more wins for the freedom to read

• Community and Coalition building were among the tools that advocates on the ground found most meaningful and potent for educating people about what’s at stake and empowering them into action.

• Advocates emphasized the need to tell their own stories about what’s happening—and this is that space.  

Voices range from national-level advocates, including That Librarian Amanda Jones, as well as parents who’ve simply shown up and taken action.

No one is coming to save us. We’re the adults we need right now, and it’s our duty to stand up and defend the right to read. This is an issue of democracy, and we have tremendous power when we show up.  

Read the full report, which includes a list of accessible calls to action. – KJ

Happy Latine Heritage Month! Also known as Hispanic Heritage Month (Latine is more inclusive), the celebration began on September 15 and concludes on October 15.    

In spite of how much fantastic Latine lit has already published this year, it’s been a quiet LHM. Several Latine authors and content creators have chimed in on social media to confirm my suspicions.

• Last year’s requests for interviews, panel discussions, guest posts, collabs, etc were anemic compared to years past.
• This year, they’re practically non-existent.

Consider this your invitation to get in on the celebration. You can buy or borrow these reads, review them, or share them on social media. Need recs? Here’s a lighting round of 2026 releases to get you started.

Literary Fiction

• Eating Ashes by Brenda Navarro, translated by Megan McDowell
• Now I Surrender by Alvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer

Sci-Fi/Fantasy

• Cursed Ever After by Andy C. Naranjo
• The Demon Star by Jesse Aragon  

Horror

• Muñeca by Cynthia Gomez
• Rooted by Leopoldo Goût

Mystery/Thriller

• The Intrigue by Silvia Moreno-Garcia  
• The Secret Dinner by Raphal Montes

Romance

• Mutual Discord by Liana de la Rosa
• The Starter Ex by Mia Sosa

Middle Grade  

• The Mystery of the Stolen World Cup Trophy by Angela Cervantes  
• The Chismosas Only Book Club by Laekan Zea Kemp and Heidi Moreno

Young Adult

• Cemetery Boys: Espíritu by Aiden Thomas
• We Could Be Anyone by Anna-Marie Mclemore

Nonfiction  

• Muevelo: The Enduring Legacy of Latin Music Across Borders by Miriam Zoila Pérez and Verónica Bayetti Flores
• Migrant Heart: Essays About Things I Can’t Forget by Reyna Grande  

📚 Get regular Latine book recs in our Latine Lit newsletter. —VD

Super Bowl quarterback Colin Kaepernick sparked a national conversation about police brutality against Black and Brown people when he took a knee during “The Star-Spangled Banner.” His memoir, The Perilous Fight, is out this week from Legacy Lit. Below is an excerpt about the books that changed his life and helped inspire him to speak out about injustice.

On one trip, she gave me a copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I’d let it slip that I had never read it, and she was adamant that I’d be forever changed once I did. Nessa had grown up in a very pro-Black household. Her parents had exposed her to figures like Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X, telling her that they were amazing people who had changed the world. That’s how I’d viewed Allen Iverson and Randy Moss growing up. They’d changed my world and opened a window into my own Blackness. Ali and Malcolm were men who sacrificed everything for their beliefs. They were men of uncompromising integrity who deeply loved their people.

“I just feel that you would love the story of Malcolm X and his evolution because I can see that you are evolving,” Nessa said. “I see how the sports world is treating you, and it is so different than the person I’m getting to know. We can’t be talking about the same Colin Kaepernick! We can’t be talking about the same guy who’s so caring and compassionate. The media is saying all these crazy things about you, like you don’t care about football. I was like, he cares so much about football that it’s annoying. It just bothers me.”

The Autobiography of Malcolm X turned out to be pivotal in my development intellectually. Reading Malcolm opened my eyes to the pervasiveness of white supremacy. I began to look at my world differently. It sent me down a path of self-discovery as I threw myself into works that fed my soul. Some of the books I devoured during this period were The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon; Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P. Newton; and The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. Nessa, who had graduated from Berkeley, even reached out to some of her old professors for recommendations.

The books, particularly Malcolm X’s, gave me a framework and context to understand many of the experiences I had had in my life immersed in a white world…

👉 Read the full excerpt on Book Riot.

^{Excerpted from THE PERILOUS FIGHT. Copyright © 2026 Colin Kaepernick. Published by Legacy Lit, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing, a Hachette Book Group company. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.}

It’s been eight years since Tara Westover’s Educated made its mark on the book world, and now we’re getting a follow-up. Westover will publish Brothers and Sisters in 2027, an autobiographical story focusing on the period after the publication of her bestselling debut.

• The 2018 memoir documented Westover’s experience growing up in rural Idaho in a Mormon fundamentalist and survivalist family, one where hospital visits and Western medical care were strictly forbidden and all of their seven children were kept out of school.
• Westover was 17 the first time she stepped into a classroom, enrolling against her family’s wishes at Brigham Young University.
• She’d eventually go on to study at Harvard and earn a PhD from Cambridge University. Talk about beating the odds.

Brothers and Sisters will address the backlash Westover faced in the wake of the memoir’s publication, after which she had to hire a lawyer; her family—including two brothers who initially expressed support for Westover’s writing and claims of repeated abuse by another one of her siblings—now deny Westover’s version of events.

A statement shared with People describes Brothers and Sisters as “a story of how memories are held in a family… How someone can know you are telling the truth but still say you are lying. Ultimately, it is a story of what it means to grow up — to outlive the story that made you.”

Brothers and Sisters is expected to publish on April 13, 2027. —VD

To say Pokémon is popular is an understatement. The franchise is one of the highest-grossing in the world.

• As of April 2024, it has made an estimated $147 billion.

Even as the franchise hits 30, its popularity shows no signs of slowing down. And I get it. Like, on a spiritual level.

I’ve been playing the games on and off for more than 20 years. I began watching the anime as a middle schooler, and since my older brother used to play the games, I started playing them, too.

We bonded over the hours and hours I spent on my Game Boy adventuring through the world Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri invented, battling with my “pocket monsters.” I even learned little tidbits about the real-life animals that inspired the Pokémon. Now, playing the games as an adult feels like being swaddled in wholesome nostalgia.

Despite my long history with the franchise, I still learned a few things when I started writing about its 30th anniversary:

• It began as a video game in Japan in 1996 (unlike many anime, which usually start as manga). It was released in the US in 1998.
• There are hundreds of official Pokémon books—including manga, chapter books, and picture books—for kids, ranging from toddlers to preteens.
• It was introduced to the US in Kansas in 1998 with a publicity stunt that involved 700 Pikachus being dropped from the sky, and 10 skydivers who landed and then drove away in a Pikachu-themed Volkswagen Beetle.
• Its video games have sold around 500 million units.
• In January alone, $450 million was spent on Pokémon cards. In February, influencer Logan Paul sold a rare Pikachu card for $16.5 million after he bought it for $5.2 million.

If you want to get a kid involved in a fun franchise that has decades of material, you could do a lot worse than Pokémon. Even writing this has me looking forward to firing up my Nintendo Switch later. —EE

Did you know? Golding captained one of the landing craft that landed at Normandy on D-Day.

🔪 A new documentary follows Salman Rushdie in the aftermath of his 2022 attack.

📓 Comedian Anthony Jeselnik explains why he started a book club.

💩 The verdict is in on the AI-generated Odyssey film: it’s craptastic.

📚 Crying in H Mart author Michelle Zauner’s new book title is just as good as her first.

🛳️ This floating library delivers books to kids.

Written by Rebecca Schinsky, Sharifah Williams, Vanessa Diaz, Erica Ezeifedi, Danika Ellis, and Jeff O’Neal. Thanks to Vanessa Diaz for copy editing.

Did someone forward you this email? Sign up here.

_{Got a tip, question, comment, or story idea? Drop us a line: [email protected]}