Welcome to The Best of Book Riot, our daily round-up of what’s on offer across our site, newsletters, podcasts, and social channels. Not everything is for everyone, but there is something for everyone.
Holiday Book-to-Movie Adaptations for 2024
Every year, I spend my November and December watching pretty much every new holiday movie I can feast my eyes upon. Cookie cutter Hallmark movies about the big city gal who falls for the small-town guy who owns a Christmas tree farm? Sign me up. But you know what? Inside, I’m always chasing that high of the best holiday movie of all time, The Muppet Christmas Carol. Not only is it the best adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, but it’s also just a stellar book adaptation that really sets the mood for the season. Will there ever be another holiday book adaptation better than The Muppet Christmas Carol? Maybe not, but these new holiday book adaptations coming out this year that are throwing their hats into the ring to potentially become the next Christmas classic.
We Gotta Get Out of This Place: 5 Fabulous Sci-Fi Books About Leaving Earth
Earth, amirite? The place is a hot, (probably) unfixable mess! But imagine, instead of having to clean your place when it gets too dirty, you get a whole new house instead. Getting a shiny new planet and leaving Earth behind is not something many scientists think is possible, but it’s an idea that sci-fi authors have been writing about for decades.
The Books Most Likely to Be on THE NEW YORK TIMES 100 Notable Books of 2024 List
We consider The New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year list to be the book list of record. In this episode, we make our picks for locks, likelies, and would-like-to-sees ahead of the anticipated release of the list next week.
The Most Unrealistic Part of Romance Novels (It’s Not the Amazing Sex)
As someone who’s read hundreds — honestly, probably thousands — of romance novels, I disagree with the discourse about what is unrealistic about these books. The amazing sex, the grand romantic gestures, and even the handsome, kind billionaires aren’t the most unrealistic part of romance novels. Much has been made about every romance novel needing a happy ending. And this is very true! But there is actually something else that every romance novel needs: a reason the two (or more) main characters can’t be together.
2024 Cookbooks and Food Books Perfect for Gifting This Holiday Season
Leading up to this holiday season, I’m sharing some of my favorite books that I think are PERFECT for gift giving. Like a lot of book lovers, I have my go-to recommendations. And as someone who loves to cook, a lot of them highlight all things food and cuisine. This year was an incredible year for food writing and cookbooks. Three authors of some of my go-to gift books came out with new titles this year.
10 Perfect Gifts for Book Lovers (That Aren’t Books)
The prices in this gift guide range from “extremely affordable” to “on the pricier side”, so there’s something for all budgets. There’s also something for all tastes: is your loved one a dark academia person at heart? You’ll find something for them. Are they more into cottagecore? Ditto. And who knows, perhaps after reading this post, you’ll decide that you simply need one of these ten items yourself. If that means blowing your gift-giving budget on yourself, well, that’s between you, me, and your bank account.
The Bestselling Books of the Week, According to All the Lists
To get these numbers, we look at the USA Today overall top 10; Publishers Weekly overall top 10; The New York Times top 10, both Combined Print & E-Book Fiction and Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction lists; Amazon Charts top 10, both Fiction and Nonfiction; and Indie Bestsellers top 10, Fiction and Nonfiction, both Paperback and Hardcover. New additions to the list this week are bolded.
The Best Kindle Page Turners & Tablet Stands for Reading Under the Covers
This set of devices—because a clip and a remote control should be paired—don’t use Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, but rather radio frequency or RF, so they work right out of the box. Bluetooth doesn’t work here because Kindle ereaders still don’t support Bluetooth page turners; they only work with Amazon Fire tablets and other Bluetooth-enabled devices when scrolling on TikTok, using it as a shutter for your iPhone’s camera, or reading on the Kindle app. Unfortunately, Kindle ereaders can only accept audio input via Bluetooth. The same is true for Kobo, though many independent developers have discovered ways to hack its Bluetooth connection to work with Bluetooth page turners.
YA Nonfiction and Comic Releases for November and December 2024
As we turn the corner on 2024, so, too, we see the publishing world slow down for its late fall/early winter slumber, too. This is less obvious in the world of fiction, but when it comes to nonfiction and comics, it is far clearer. Where often there are a dozen or more titles to share in YA nonfiction and comics each month, November and December combined bring a grand total of four new titles—all four of which are comics, though one is a graphic memoir.
Bengali (Bangladesh) · 
English (United States) ·