Need a dose of inspiration? Allow us to point you to the new PBS documentary, Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World. You won’t find better motivation to get out there, touch some grass, and really live your one wild and precious life. More on Oliver, who would have been 91 today, below.
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THE HEADLINENetflix wrangles Lonesome Dove seriesSaddle up, pals. Netflix has ordered a series adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.
- The beloved western doorstopper was a smash hit upon its publication in 1985 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the following year.
- Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones starred in a popular TV miniseries adaptation for CBS in 1989.
At the helm of the new series are Zoe Kazan and Jeb Stuart, whose adaptation of another epic—Steinbeck’s East of Eden—lands on Netflix next month.
- Jinny Howe, head of scripted series for the U.S. and Canada at the streamer, praised the duo: “After East of Eden, we know exactly what they’re capable of — the depth of character, the sweep of place, the emotional precision. This material deserves that level of care. In their hands, it’s going to be something extraordinary.”
Production details, including casting and release date, are TBD. We’re betting on fall 2028.
In the meantime, you can join our guided read-along of East of Eden.
BOOKSHELF TIME MACHINEPower ranking the books of 2006Twitter was brand new. Wii Sports took over your living room. “SexyBack” was on the radio—we still listened to the radio—and The Devil Wears Prada ruled the box office.
The year was 2006, and the books were, well, the books were as they always are: all over the place.
- Eat, Pray, Love gave white ladies everywhere a new way to explain their divorces, and The Secret promised a new way to happiness.
- The Road ran the awards circuit alongside The Inheritance of Loss, which claimed trophies and hearts.
- Indie booksellers propelled Water for Elephants to word-of-mouth bestsellerdom.
- The Audacity of Hope announced the arrival of a serious presidential contender and a new view on the American Dream.
Listen as we power rank these and more of the books of 2006 on the Book Riot Podcast.
RESISTING THE FEEDCelebrating 25 years of Feed by M.T. AndersonThe iconic YA dystopian novel Feed by M. T. Anderson will turn 25 years old next year, and today, Book Riot is revealing the new cover!
Check out the high-resolution version, plus some behind-the-scenes insight into its design, in the What’s Up in YA newsletter.
We also interviewed M. T. Anderson about the impact of his novel 25 years later. Here’s an excerpt:
Feed is dedicated to “All those who resist the feed.” What does resisting the feed look like in 2026?
It’s harder now than it was then! So much of the way we live our lives and conduct business has been subsumed by the algorithms. Seriously, the other day I was trying to buy some bed pillows, and I was exhausted by looking online for something that you really need to handle to judge appropriately, and I thought to myself, I wish there was just like some PLACE where you could go and there’d be a bunch of pillows and you could compare them. For a millisecond, I literally found myself reinventing the store. (One old-fashioned note in Feed, by the way, is that you can detect that I myself am not fully able to shake the centrality of the mall as the place we go to buy. Now, of course, I’m nostalgic for malls!)
Resisting the feed means being aware of all the choices we’re actually making, even the ones we’re not invited to recognize. At this point, for example, we should all be aware of the way that the cognitive off-loading onto AI has a very real neurological cost. Without literally inserting any feed-like device into the wetware, we’re in danger of rewiring ourselves even further for corporate subservience and the kind of blindness that comes of accepting a corporatized reality. Considering the other dire issues that face our world at the moment, that blindness will be absolutely disastrous. AI, as in Feed, is always willing to whisper to us, “All shall be well. All manner of things shall be well.”
Read the full interview at Book Riot.
TRENDSNonfiction isn’t selling like it used to.This observation from Sean Delone’s recent post in his newsletter called Dear Head of Mine caught my eye:
“What has happened in the last ten years is that the overall industry has grown modestly, but fiction and nonfiction have basically flipped positions. In 2015, 6 of the top 25 bestselling hardcover books—this is a not-perfect but useful proxy for new books published—were fiction. In 2025, 18 of the top 25 hardcover books were fiction, meaning only 7 were nonfiction, almost an exact inversion of ten years ago.”
Broader industry data is perhaps more conclusive: over the last four years, adult fiction sales are up 30%, whereas adult nonfiction sales are basically flat.
- Denone thinks this a gender story, which would generally comport with historical splits between men and women when it comes to non-fiction consumption.
My first thought was podcasts, which several of the commenters suggested as well. But then I remembered this post by Tim Ferriss (The 4-Hour Workweek), which has has been rattling around in my brain. Ferriss has seen sales of his portfolio of nonfiction tiles, which he called a kind-of annuity for its regularity, drop 80% since 2022. His culprit seems much clearer and more ominous:
“ChatGPT, powered by the updated GPT-3.5 model, launched on November 30, 2022.”
And my guess is that these forces are all at work. Men are reading less, people are listening to more podcasts for their non-fiction adjacent content, and they are using LLMs to get longer-form, Google-on-steroids information. Cannot say I love this. — JO
AUDIOBOOKSThe latest and greatest at AudibleWhat’s next in your listening queue? Need a little help deciding? Here are three new audiobooks available for Audible members, including an Audible exclusive.
- The Disappearers by Marlon James, read by a full cast: James’ highly-anticipated novel about the murder of a gay man in 1980s Jamaica and its tragic, far-reaching consequences is being lauded as a modern masterpiece. It has already been longlisted for the Booker Prize.
- Tell the Ghosts I’m Gone by Kalynn Bayron, read by Jordan Cobb: A horror novel about a group of teens who each possess special gifts, where “special” just might mean deadly. We get queer found family, ghost-hunting, spiritualist lore, and a supernatural mystery, too.
- The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie, read by a full cast: The Christie classic that introduced the world to the iconic Miss Marple is worth revisiting for this fact alone: this new Audible Exclusive version features full-cast narration led by an icon in her own right: Toni Collette. —VD
Daniel Gawthrop is the author of Cutting Edge: Hockey as Queer Culture, out this week from Arsenal Pulp Press. Below, he describes responses to the Heated Rivalry TV series in the LGBTQ+ community. (Spoilers ahead!)
After season 1 of Heated Rivalry began streaming late last year, queer community response to the series ranged from unqualified raves to critiques about sex scene authenticity and obsession with the sexual identity of its two principal actors. For many of us, Heated Rivalry was a breath of fresh air from a mainstream TV world hardly abundant with stories of queer happiness—never mind gay male athletes in hypermasculine sports who are unafraid of being vulnerable with each other.
Season 1’s episode 5, where Scott Hunter calls his lover Kip down from the stands to the ice after he’s won “the Cup” to kiss him on live television, was huge. Outsports reported that viewing parties for that episode led to groups of gay men buying tickets to their first NHL games and others watching TV hockey despite knowing little about the sport. For the Cutting Edges, Vancouver’s LBGTQ+ hockey association, there was a massive surge of interest from queer folk wanting to return to hockey or play it for the first time.
Some even used Heated Rivalry to come out. 40-year-old Minnesota native Jesse Kortuem, who left the sport at 17 and later played competitively from the closet, had returned to hockey by playing in queer tournaments as a guest of the Cutting Edges and other teams. A Facebook post citing the Edges’ warm welcome and Heated Rivalry as factors in his decision to come out went viral, landing Kortuem an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show. His host surprised him with a video greeting of congrats by Hudson Williams, who plays Shane Hollander. (Williams later reported that real-life closeted pro athletes, including hockey players, had reached out to him for inspiration.)
For others, Heated Rivalry was triggering. Former Ontario Hockey League and minor pro goaltender Brock McGillis—now in high demand on the speaking circuit—had a panic attack while watching the first half of episode 1, which reminded him of the years he’d spent fearful of exposure. He came to enjoy the series, but said it wouldn’t convince closeted NHL players to come out. So far, he’s right.
HAPPY BIRTHDAYMary Oliver, born September 10, 1935Did you know? As a teenager, Oliver became friends with Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sister, Norma, and spent several years helping her go through her sister’s papers.
CRITICAL LINKINGYou are now free to roam about the internetThe cast of the the upcoming Bell Jar adaptation is stacked.
Let’s talk about what you’re reading in September.
Authors are getting their settlements from the landmark Anthropic AI lawsuit, and it’s not going great.
Sure, here’s a list of books for lingerie lovers.
Get a book rec based on your favorite Stephen King novel.
END NOTESWritten by Rebecca Schinsky, Jeff O’Neal, Danika Ellis, and Vanessa Diaz. Thanks to Kelly Jensen for copy editing.
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