BookLooks, RatedBooks, and Other Unprofessional Book “Review” Sites to Know: Book Censorship News, January 10, 2025
“One of the trends we’ll see in book censorship over 2025 is the increased use of unprofessional, politically-driven book review websites like BookLooks to make decisions in professional library and educational settings,” writes Kelly Jensen for Book Riot.
I can’t even . . .
Amid 2025 Reading Challenges, 75 Hard, & Letterboxd Movie Quotas, Let’s Read and Watch Like No One Is Looking
“Because despite ubiquitous reading challenges and stacked Letterboxd reviews, no one is monitoring how much you read or watch.”
P. Claire Dodson, associate director of culture at Teen Vogue, has some good advice for readers: “these platforms [such as Goodreads for books and Letterboxd for movies] have become an extension of how we present ourselves on social media.” She advocates reading a book or watching a movie “for the pure fun of it” rather than for the opportunity to post about having read or watched it.
Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025
If you’re still putting together a reading list for 2025, Lit Hub has some suggestions—291, to be exact. And that covers only the first half of the year.
Our most anticipated books of 2025
Book Page also has some thoughts on books coming out in 2025.
From Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Pope Francis: the books to look forward to in 2025
This calendar of the books of 2025 from The Guardian takes us through November and includes nonfiction, fiction, and poetry.
Why Alice Munro’s Biographer Left Her Daughter’s Abuse Out of His Book
The scandal surrounding the late Alice Munro still swirls. Here’s a new slant on the issue. Robert Thacker, author of the biography Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives, published in 2005, discusses why he chose not to include in his book the allegation that Munro had known that her husband had sexually abused her youngest daughter. Thacker writes, “my decision in not including it was that I was interested in her life as a writer and what she did as a writer.”
Did a Best-Selling Romantasy Novelist Steal Another Writer’s Story?
Katy Waldman examines a lawsuit for copyright infringement within a genre known as romantasy—romance plus fantasy. The genre, according to Waldman, “crystallized as a market category during the pandemic.” These books sell well.
“Romantasy’s reliance on tropes poses a challenge for questions of copyright,” writes Waldman. “Traditionally, the law protects the original expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves.” Further, “[t]he wild proliferation of intensely derivative romantasies has complicated this picture.”
Why I’m Making 2025 My Year of Dead-Tree Books
Harry McCracken, global technology editor for Fast Company, declares that he loves e-books. Nonetheless, he announces here that he’s going to read more print books in 2025 because “[i]f you’re into the full visceral experience of reading rather than skimming and searching, can deal with the bulk, and aren’t in a dimly lit room, paper books are just better.”
Writers voice anxiety about using AI. Readers don’t seem to care
Tiernan Ray, senior contributing writer for ZDNET, reports on a study carried out by researchers for Microsoft into whether artificial intelligence (AI) affects a writer’s unique voice. The study involved 19 fiction writrs and 30 readers using “short passages written with the help of OpenAI’s GPT-4.”
© 2025 by Mary Daniels Brown
