So Long, See You Tomorrow has been tipped as the new Stoner – but how did an ‘experiment in empathy’ from 1980 go viral in 2025? Read more
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Author: GR
Joan Didion and Kurt Vonnegut Had Something to Say. We Have It on Tape.
Tom Wolfe was a fast talker. Eudora Welty had a musical Southern drawl. Kurt Vonnegut’s jokes got belly laughs. Each of these authors once spoke to audiences at the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center in New York City, which has hosted some of the most celebrated writers of the past several generations, from Isaac Asimov to Anaïs Nin and Kazuo Ishiguro to Margaret Atwood. Now, the Poetry Center has digitized audio recordings of its literary events stretching back to 1949 — hundreds of which have never been released before — in a collection that offers a glimpse into history and a taste of what the writers themselves were like in public. Read more
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The Most Scathing Book Reviews of 2025
Pans, glorious pans. No end-of-year roundup would be complete without them. Read more
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The Best Noir Fiction of 2025
Yes, the category is nebulous, but maybe it’s just a matter of mood and great writing. Read more
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Joanna Trollope, Bestselling Chronicler of Ordinary Life, Dies Aged 82
Trollope published more than 30 novels during a writing career that began in 1980. Her early works, written under the pseudonym Caroline Harvey, were historical romances, but from the mid-1980s onward, she turned to contemporary fiction, a shift that would define her reputation. Read more
Last Call for Mass Market Paperbacks
The decision made this winter by ReaderLink to stop distributing mass market paperback books at the end of 2025 was the latest blow to a format that has seen its popularity decline for years. According to Circana BookScan, mass market unit sales plunged from 131 million in 2004 to 21 million in 2024, a drop of about 84%, and sales this year through October were about 15 million units. But for many years, the mass market paperback was “the most popular reading format,” notes Stuart Applebaum, former Penguin Random House EVP of corporate communications. Read more
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‘Confessions of a Shopaholic’ Novelist Sophie Kinsella Dies Aged 55
Madeleine Wickham, known for writing the bestselling novel Confessions of a Shopaholic under her pen name Sophie Kinsella, has died aged 55. Wickham, dubbed “the queen of romantic comedy” by novelist Jojo Moyes, wrote more than 30 books for adults, children and teenagers, which have sold more than 45m copies. Read more
Fern Michaels, Prolific Author of Romance Novels, Dies at 92
Fern Michaels, a mother of five in suburban New Jersey who responded to her husband’s request to get a job by taking up writing, only to blossom into a best-selling author of more than 200 romances and thrillers, died on Nov. 12 at her home in Summerville, S.C. Read more
‘Midnight Somewhere’ by Johnny Compton
Readers who enjoy the imaginative yet unsettling horror of John Langan and Ananda Lima should bask in the uncanny visions of Compton’s haunting tales. It is a solid collection with no weak stories. Read more
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The 10 Best Audiobooks of 2025
Including explosive tell-alls, dreamy fantasy, and what may be the best fiction narration out there. Read more
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