Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.<\/p>\n
Barnes & Noble\u2019s Best Books of 2025<\/p>\n
You\u2019re not imagining it; Best Books of the Year season is getting earlier and earlier. PW has been first out of the gate the last few years, dropping their list in the final days of October. Barnes & Noble beat them to the punch<\/a> on Friday with not one, not two, not seven, but 19 lists. Both the number of lists and the way they\u2019re arranged are reminders that Best Books season isn\u2019t just about highlighting great work. It\u2019s also\u2014maybe even primarily\u2014about holiday shopping. While I still have a knee-jerk \u201care you kidding me?\u201d to seeing a best-of list before Halloween (and tbh, I probably always will), I want bookstores and publishers to succeed. If releasing best-of lists early helps them prepare for the season and compete with the Big A, I can\u2019t be mad at it.<\/p>\n Self-Publishing is a Haven for Trans Authors, and It\u2019s Under Threat<\/p>\n The Verge is running a terrific series about the future of being trans on the internet<\/a>, and it\u2019s a sobering reminder about the vast ocean of space between the internet as it is and the internet as it should be. The whole series is worth your time, and readers of this newsletter will be particularly interested in Talia Bhatt\u2019s exploration of the ways trans authors have used self-publishing<\/a> to push back on and work around institutional gate-keeping. Now, some of the online channels that claimed to offer democratized access to publishing tools and audience-building are caving to right-wing pressure to censor and outright ban trans content. When my colleague Kelly Jensen says that school book bans are not really about the books, this is what she means. <\/p>\n Today In Books<\/p>\n Sign up to Today In Books to receive daily news and miscellany from the world of books.<\/p>\n Reviews Roll In for Guillermo del Toro\u2019s Frankenstein<\/p>\n I\u2019ll admit to having been skeptical about Guillermo del Toro\u2019s new adaptation of Frankenstein. He\u2019s been working on it for more than a decade, and that\u2019s often not a great sign for a work of art, be it a movie or a book. The first trailer didn\u2019t show anything meaningful, the press roll-out felt a little too scripted to me, and it took the studio forever to commit to a release date. The movie hit theaters in limited release on Friday, and I\u2019m delighted to report that the reviews are good. The NYT\u2019s Alissa Wilkinson declares it the movie del Toro \u201cwas clearly born to make<\/a>,\u201d and NPR\u2019s Glen Weldon elaborates<\/a>: <\/p>\n ..the resulting film captures the tone and spirit of the original novel in all its breathless zeal and hie-me-to-yon-fainting-couch deliriousness, the many narrative tweaks del Toro has made \u2014 some of which work, some of which don\u2019t \u2014 ensure that you\u2019d never mistake his\u00a0Frankenstein\u00a0for anyone else\u2019s.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n We\u2019re in the thick of Oscar Movie Season, and it looks like Frankenstein will be a contender. If you\u2019re not ready to commit movie theater dollars to it, sit tight. Frankenstein was produced by Netflix and will hit the streaming service November 7.<\/p>\n The Best Bathtub Trays for Reading in the Bath<\/p>\n\n