It’s National Library Week, which means that the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom (OIF) has shared their data on the most challenged books in U.S. libraries from last year.

• The OIF uses “challenged” to represent any book that has received some kind of complaint.
• The outcome of a challenge can differ: a book may be ultimately banned, but it may also be relocated, redacted, or restricted. There may be no action taken at all, either (that’s the ideal situation!). 

Eleven titles topped the Most Challenged Books of 2025 List. They include: 

1. Sold by Patricia McCormick 
2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky 
3. Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe 
4. Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas 
5. (tie) Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo 
5. (tie) Tricks by Ellen Hopkins 
7. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas 
8. (tie) A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess 
8. (tie) Identical by Ellen Hopkins 
8. (tie) Looking for Alaska by John Green 
8. (tie) Storm and Fury by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Other findings from 2025:

• 4,235 unique titles were challenged in the last year. This is the second highest number documented by ALA; the highest number was in 2023.
• 5,668 books were banned from libraries, which represents 66% of the total number of challenges documented. This is the highest number of banned books in a single year documented by the ALA.
• 920 titles were restricted; they were either relocated in the library or require parental permission slips to access.
• 40% of the challenged titles featured LGBTQ+ people or people of color.
• 92% of all challenges were brought by pressure groups and government officials, which is up from 72% just one year earlier. Less than 3% of challenges originated from individual parents.

🚫 Read more about the OIF’s methodology, as well as where and how this data differs and complements the data found by PEN America every fall. — KJ

Cultural crises take the spotlight in this week’s new releases. In Screen People, Megan Garber explores how the modern media landscape is changing the way we see other people. What happens to humanity when everything—and everyone—is entertainment?

Technology might not be wholly to blame for the ways in which American men are not okay, but it’s certainly a contributing factor. Jordan Ritter Conn examines modern masculinity through the lens of four American men’s lives, and what he finds is more complex and humanizing than the internet would have you believe.

Also hitting shelves this week:

• 🌆 Xochitl Gonzalez’s latest novel, about a young woman who moves to Brooklyn in 2007 with dreams of an artistic life, finds herself drawn into a neighbor’s secret, and encounters the dark side of the American Dream.
• 🏗️ An architectural designer presents the history of the world in ten buildings
• 😎 An elder millennial shares her coming-of-age advice and early-middle-aged wisdom in a new collection of essays
• Groundbreaking journalist Jodi Kantor offers strategies and inspiration for finding your life’s work

🔓 Unlock our New Release Index and customize your TBR when you join All Access.

Recommended by Dolly Parton. Beloved by over a million readers.​

Cussy Lovett returns home in The Mountains We Call Home, a standalone companion to Kim Michele Richardson’s New York Times bestselling series, chosen by countless book clubs and cherished by fans across the country.

Rich with Kentucky life, this powerful new novel examines incarceration, class, fractured family bonds, and the enduring magic of the printed word. It’s an essential read for returning fans and a perfect entry point for new ones.

Percival Everett’s generational hit novel James is exactly what it says on the tin: a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, the enslaved man who accompanies Huck on his journey down the Mississippi River.

And it’s a whole lot more than even the best editor could wrangle into jacket copy: a philosophical reckoning with Enlightenment humanism and a meditation on language as survival, with one of the most electrifying endings in recent literary memory.

One of only eight novels to win both the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, James was an immediate hit with critics and rank-and-file readers alike. After more than two years in hardcover—a rare feat for any book, much less a work of literary fiction—James arrives in paperback this week.

🎧 Hear our conversation about what makes James so special and whether you need to read Huck Finn first on Zero to Well-Read.

High-profile literary adaptations made headlines during last week’s CinemaCon convention, as film industry professionals and media from around the world gathered to rub elbows and get the latest news on upcoming releases. Here’s the highlight reel:

🏛️ The Odyssey: Christopher Nolan treated attendees to an exclusive look at extended footage of his adaptation of Homer’s epic, hitting theaters July 17. The teaser revealed the Trojan horse and a first glimpse of the Cyclops, and it sounds pretty epic. Hot Greek Summer, here we come.

🤖 Klara and the Sun: Taika Waititi’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel told from the perspective of an “artificial friend” made headlines when the deal was announced in 2023, and we’ve been worried about it ever since. Sony Pictures revealed this week that the film, starring Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams, will hit theaters October 23.

📘 Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum: Warner Bros. and New Line unveiled the cast for the next installment in the Lord of the Rings extended universe. Jamie Dornan has stepped in to play Strider (aka Aragorn), since Viggo Mortensen has declined to return to the role. Leo Woodall and Kate Winslet have also joined the ensemble. Ian McKellen and Elijah Wood will reprise their iconic turns as Gandalf and Frodo. Mark your calendars for December 2027.

🔥 Children of Blood and Bone: Paramount shared a first look at footage from its long-awaited adaptation of Tomi Adeyemi’s beloved YA fantasy novel. Adeyemi co-wrote the screenplay with Gina Prince-Bythewood, who also directed the film. Cynthia Erivo, Idris Elba, Amandla Stenberg, Damson Idris, and Regina King lead the cast. The film hits the big screen January 15, 2027.

👻 Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol: No one asked for this, but Paramount is doing it anyway. The studio shared a first look at Johnny Depp (why???) playing Scrooge in its upcoming adaptation of Charles Dickens’s holiday classic. We can only hope studio heads will be visited by three ghosts and have a change of heart before the film’s planned release on November 13. — RJS

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This weekend at BookCon, Veronica Roth announced two new books set in her Divergent universe, beginning with the publication of The Sixth Faction this fall.

• These books are not sequels, prequels or “interquels,” but rather set in an alternative universe in which Tris Prior, the series’ protagonist, experiences an alternate history from the original series. 

This is not the first time Roth has dipped back into her blockbuster series. More than a decade ago, Roth released Four, a collection of stories about the earlier life of Tobias (Tris Prior’s love interest in the Divergent series). While that book came out just one year after the final book in the Divergent series, The Sixth Faction comes a full dozen years later.

Roth has continued to publish regularly in the intervening years, with several new series and a handful of standalone works. But none of them have approached the success of Divergent, and the sputtering out of the filmed version of that series has left the franchise in a strange cultural position. 

What do we call these post-peak works that return to the original story, but don’t advance it? At this point, we have a mini-library’s worth of examples: E.L. James, Stephanie Meyer, Suzanne Collins, not to mention Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and on and on. Creating one breakout series is hard enough, but it seems harder still to figure out what to do next. — JO

Daniel Hahn is the author of If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation, a nerdy deep dive into the magic and mishaps of translating Shakespeare. It’s out today from Knopf. Below, he discusses the unexpected challenges of narrating his audiobook.

I’ve never recorded a whole audiobook before, but I always assumed it would be fun. Also, probably, quite easy. So when invited to narrate my new book, I said yes. It seemed like a good idea at the time…

If This Be Magic is about Shakespeare and how he expands into other languages when great translators use their particular linguistic resources to do whatever he’s doing in English — line by line, pun by pun, metrical irregularity by metrical irregularity.

My book, written in my own voice — which is to say, the voice I’m writing for you here — leaps about enthusiastically between examples from every play, and 49 languages.

The richness that comes with this exploratory range (verse-making for a Polish-language Hamlet, a single troublesome word in a Māori-language Macbeth, the relentlessly punning opening to Romeo and Juliet now recreated in Thai) was part of the fun in researching and writing it, and I hope my readers get similar pleasures from that. Only… did I mention I agreed to record the audiobook?

Most of the languages in the book I don’t speak, so a crash course in pronunciation followed. The writing process had involved two years of messages to friends (“Hey M, got time for a quick coffee to explain Hungarian commas to me pls?”) and frequent Facebook posts (“Anyone know where the stress falls on this Finnish curse word?”). And so it was with the audiobook.

While Lauren, our heroic producer in New York, was recruiting 20 brilliant actors to record extracts in their dozens of languages, I was in London, leaning—once again—on the kindness of my fellow-translator friends. The days were spent recording my narration, with Antonia/Charlotte/Mark/Paul popping into the studio to donate odd lines in Polish/German/Hungarian/Danish; each night was spent frantically learning for the day ahead.

For a few hours on a Wednesday, I knew quite a lot about Azeri vowels. My friend Mairi speaks Scottish Gaelic, so she sent me a late-night voice note teaching me how to say MacGilleMhoire. (It’s surprising.) I learned fast.

As with my original book, the audiobook taught me inspiring things about Shakespeare, and about languages, but also—especially—about my infinitely generous friends. Translators are great.

Thriftbooks‘ 500 Billion Page Challenge ~ #GetYourPagesIn
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Did you know? The Brontë sisters created an elaborate fantasy world called Glass Town, for which they wrote more than 20,000 words of backstory.

📚 Your journey to being well-read starts with these books.

🏒 Catch up on everything Rachel Reid has revealed about Heated Rivalry’s next season.

🎣 Consider: could A River Runs Through It be a hit today?

🏖️ See the Beach Read adaptation casting that has fans big mad.

📬 If you’ve read this far, you should check out Book Riot’s other newsletters, covering everything from book clubs to Latine Lit to romance recs.

Written by Rebecca Schinsky, Kelly Jensen, Jeff O’Neal, and Danika Elis. Thanks to Vanessa Diaz for copy editing.

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