Don’t tell our TBRs, but we love movies and TV almost as much as we love books. Luckily, 2026 is going to be packed with page-to-screen adaptations to give us the best of both worlds.

🍿 Big-screen highlights worth leaving the house for:

• The Dutchman (in theaters now) : Kate Mara and André Holland star in this thriller based on Amiri Baraka’s play of the same name.
• Wuthering Heights (February 14): Saltburn creator Emerald Fennell serves up a spicy, unconventional spin on Emily Brontë’s gothic romance, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.
• Project Hail Mary (March 20): Ryan Gosling goes into space on a mission to save Earth in this spiritual successor to The Martian.
• The Odyssey (July 17): Get ready for Hot Greek Summer! Christopher Nolan brings Homer’s epic to the biggest of screens with a cast absolutely bursting with star power.
• Sunrise on the Reaping (November 20): The Hunger Games extended universe continues with Haymitch Abernathy’s origin story.
• Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew (November 26): Daniel Craig and Carey Mulligan lead us into the world beyond the wardrobe in Greta Gerwig’s latest outing as writer-director.

📺 Add these to your home-viewing queue:

• People We Meet on Vacation (Netflix, January 9): Emily Henry fans get their first look at one of the rom-com phenom’s many anticipated adaptations.
• Bridgerton, season 4 (Netflix, January 29): Benedict Bridgerton gets his moment in this season based on Julia Quinn’s An Offer From a Gentleman.
• Like Water for Chocolate, season 2 (HBO Max, February 15): Produced by Salma Hayek Pinault, the adaptation of Laura Esquivel’s novel wraps up in six final episodes.
• The Count of Monte Cristo (PBS Passport and Amazon Prime, March 1): Sam Claflin, no stranger to adaptations, stars as Edmond Dantès in the classic adventure story
• Margo’s Got Money Troubles (Apple TV, April 15): Elle Fanning, Nicole Kidman, and Nick Offerman lead in this unexpectedly wholesome story about a young mother who starts an OnlyFans account to pay the bills.
• The House of the Spirits (Amazon Prime, TBA): Isabel Allende’s multigenerational family saga makes its adaptation debut in an eight-episode Spanish-language series. – RJS

We’re back in it now, folks. There was no one It Book of the Year in 2025, but we’re getting a couple contenders for 2026 in January alone.

The ideal It Book rings four bells:

• 🔔 Art – Is it good?
• 🔔 Acclaim – Will it contend for awards and best-of lists?
• 🔔 Sales – Where’s the money?
• 🔔 Zeitgeist  – What’s the buzz?

This month, Jeanette McCurdy ( I’m Glad My Mom Died) returns with a debut novel guaranteed to get tongues wagging, Thrity Umrigar shakes up domestic suspense, and Booker Prize winner George Saunders offers a contemplation of death, morality, and what it all means.

🎧 Listen as we play a knockout round with 10 of the most interesting new releases of January.

Looking to read more in the year ahead? ThriftBooks is here to help you reach your reading goals. The ThriftBooks Reading Challenge is designed to inspire you to explore more stories, discover new favorites, and build a reading habit that lasts all year long.

✅ Start planning your next reads with a mix of new and used books, and enjoy FREE shipping on domestic orders over $15 as you grow your bookshelf and your love of reading.

It’s that time on the bookish internet where we wrap up the previous year in books and share our goals for the year ahead. It’s also the time when book influencers on every platform can look forward to a barrage of comments that subtly—or not-so-subtly—imply that the creator didn’t really read 50 or 100 or 400 books last year.

Commenters rush in to litigate those numbers: audiobooks don’t count. And graphic novels don’t count. And romance doesn’t really count. Neither does YA. Or novellas.

Some people even make their own TikToks to reassure others that no one is reading hundreds of books by any definition: they’re all lying about it. They’re making up those numbers to brag.

If you’ve been on the bookish internet for long, you’ll realize the truth: there’s always someone reading more than you. I read about 100 books a year. By normal standards , that’s a huge amount of books. But I personally know multiple readers who get through 500+ books a year. (Yes, really.)

There is always going to be someone out there who reads more pages per minute, who is able to set aside more time in their day, who can listen to audiobooks faster than you. It’s also impossible to meaningfully compare two people’s reading, between the different formats, styles, genres, reading speeds, and more. Reading isn’t a competition.

If you’re one of the people who feels compelled to question others’ reading totals in monthly or yearly wrap-ups, maybe it’s time to step away from social media for a while. Try a new hobby. Might I suggest picking up a book? —DE

The Pitt returns tonight . If, like me (and everyone with a beating heart), you sobbed your face off during Dr. Robby’s speech last season about how to say goodbye to a loved one, you might want to do some deeper reading. Here are three books about how the reality that we will die can shape the way we live.

• On Living by Kerry Egan : A longtime hospice chaplain offers wisdom gleaned from years of sitting with people during their final days, sharing the hopes, fears, regrets, and gratitude she witnessed in life’s most vulnerable moments.
• Being Mortal by Atul Gawande : A clear-eyed and deeply humane consideration from a practicing surgeon about how modern medicine often confuses prolonging life with preserving meaning and what it might look like to choose dignity, agency, and care that centers individuals’ values
• Briefly, Perfectly Human by Alua Arthur : A leading death doula (yes, that’s a thing) reveals lessons about how thinking about your death can bring new energy to your life. Warm, surprisingly funny, and a wonderful conversation starter. – RJS

If you’re serious about your 2026 goals, you need more than just good intentions—you need a roadmap. Papier ’s planners are here to help you break down those “big picture” resolutions into manageable, weekly bites. Whether you’re tracking fitness, finances, or just finally finishing that book, writing it down makes it real. And right now, take 20% off almost everything at Papier.

In 2024, Utah passed one of the strictest bills related to books in public schools. House Bill 29 bans books from all public schools if those books have been deemed “objective sensitive material” or “pornographic” in at least three public school districts or two public school districts and five charter schools statewide. The list began with 13 titles, and as of this week, it’s up to 22. 

Three books were banned on Monday, January 5. They are:

• Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire 
• Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Utah has officially surpassed South Carolina in the number of books banned statewide for public school students. Utah and South Carolina are two of the three states with such a state-sanctioned book ban mechanism. While Tennessee has not yet triggered their own, last fall, Tennessee’s Secretary of State demanded that public libraries remove books deemed out of alignment with a number of presidential executive orders (despite those not being laws). 

Because Utah’s law is retroactive, we’ll see more titles show up as the year continues. See the full list of books banned in Utah public schools and more information about these bans here.

The ACLU of Utah has filed a lawsuit in response on behalf of several authors and public school students. – KJ

📬 Subscribe to our (free) Literary Activism newsletter to stay informed.

Book Riot All Access membership comes with a host of benefits, including unlimited reading on bookriot.com, recommendations for the Read Harder Challenge, and access to our New Release Index to curate your TBR. Here are a few recent highlights:

• 😱 January horror releases to kick off your year in reading
• 🌈 The queer books on a Book Riot editor’s TBR
• 💕 8 swoon-worthy new romances
• 👧 The best new children’s books of January
• 📘 An easy-to-read nonfiction book about the psychology of racial bias

🔓 Unlock access for just $5/month.

Ready to make 2026 your best reading year yet? We’ve teamed up with our friends at Penguin Random House Audio to give one lucky reader a 12-credit bundle to Libro.fm ! That is a full year of audiobooks (one per month!) waiting to hit your earbuds. Even better? Libro.fm allows you to buy audiobooks through your local independent bookstore, so you can support your community while you listen. To enter for a chance to win, subscribe to the Audio Insider newsletter from Penguin Random House Audio.

Did you know? Terry Brooks ( The Sword of Shannara) has sold more than 25 million copies total worldwide.

🧂 Stay salty! Bring your favorite dishes up a notch when you build your own three-pack of Jacobsen Salt Co.’s infused sea salts.**

🌶️ Keep it spicy with a new audio romance series featuring the stars of Heated Rivalry.

👀 Read up on the scandal that birthed the modern literary fraud.

📈 Keep an eye out for these bookish trends in 2026.

🏛️ This is why authors can’t let go of Greek myths.

_{**This is a product recommendation from the Book Riot team. When you buy through these links, we may earn a commission.}

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

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