The Best Audiobooks of 2024, and More Library News
Let’s close out the year with one last roundup of library news. Here’s what you need to know before 2025 arrives.
Books & Authors in the News
Trailblazing poet Nikki Giovanni has died at 81.
MJ Rose, author of The Witch of Painted Sorrows, has died at 71.
The book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents is surging in popularity a decade after it was published thanks to social media.
Adaptations in the News
Wicked has become the highest-grossing musical adaptation in history in just eight days.
Stephen King’s short story “Autopsy Room Four” is getting a feature adaptation.
Austin Butler is poised to star as Patrick Bateman in the American Psycho remake, which I have thoughts about. (Mainly that we don’t need an American Psycho remake to begin with.)
Vulture has 119 book-to-screen adaptations from 2024 to check out.
The 10 worst book-to-screen adaptations. Thoughts?
Audiophilia
Sourcebooks launched an in-house audio program in partnership with Penguin Random House.
Sarah J. Maas topped Spotify’s inaugural Audiobooks of the Year list with the Court of Thorns & Roses series.
AudioFile has their top audiobooks of 2024. And these were Libro.fm’s Top 10 audiobooks of 2024.
2024’s best audiobooks for kids and teens.
Censorship Updates
Censorship trends for 2025, part 2.
New Jersey signed the Freedom to Read Act into law.
“East Hempfield Township [PA] supervisors voted 3-2 Wednesday not to give the library $26,700 in funding, saying the library had not guaranteed it wouldn’t try again to host a Drag Queen Story Hour.” The library tried hosting the story time in March, but the program was canceled after receiving an anonymous bomb threat.
“Hour upon hour, residents marched to the lectern—grandparents, home-schoolers, veterans, teachers, merchants, farmers, students—an unlikely cross-section of this little community united in one mission: defending their public library against what they saw as a hostile takeover by the Warren County Board of Supervisors. It didn’t work. The all-Republican board voted 4-1 early Wednesday to take greater control over Samuels Public Library, which was honored as Virginia’s 2024 Library of the Year but has clashed with conservative county leaders over LGBTQ-themed books and now finds its future plunged into uncertainty.” The Samuels Public Library just keeps taking hit after hit after hit.
The Illinois anti-book ban law has led some school districts to forsake grants in favor of “maintaining local control” over the books on school shelves. One superintendent said, “There were some value statements in that document [ALA Bill of Rights] that just didn’t align with my school board, my district.” For real?
With Utah’s statewide book bans, two (2) school districts have steered the conversation. You read that right. Two. Once again, it’s a tiny number of (parents, residents, schools) driving the decisions for the entire group.
Popular Liberty Lake (WA) library trustee Kim Gerard was ousted from the board for the crime of wanting the board—and not the city council—to set library policy.
As book bans soar, sales are down and librarians are afraid—even in California.
The Thunder Bay Public Library in Ontario received a bomb threat in response to their Drag Queen Story Time—and it’s not the first time they’ve received bomb threats.
This is one trend I don’t want to see in 2025. More books and fewer bomb threats, please.
