To mark the end of the year, ITI NewsBreaks, Information Today, and Computers in Libraries contributors are sharing the books they loved in 2025 and the books they are most looking forward to reading in 2026—whether for pleasure, education, or both. I hope this helps you find your next great read! —Brandi Scardilli, editor in chief
This year’s winner for me was easy to pick—Mark Twain by heavy-hitting history writer Ron Chernow. I’ve been reading about Twain for half a century now, but this thoroughly researched work brings a lot of new information to the table. Chernow manages to write in a way that does not call attention to itself, but shines a bright light on his subject. When writing about Twain’s boyhood, he always manages to tie his subject’s actions and personality to what would come later—particularly the boy’s craving for an audience. It was well-known that Twain was perpetually unhappy with his publishers, even when he recruited them from the ranks of his own family. As each new publisher was hired, they were praised to the skies, and then, like clockwork, accused of cooking the books. Given that record, his greatest blessing was finding Livy—the unlikely pairing of a wild, outspoken, cigar-chomping Bohemian with a genteel and loving woman who would stand by him through many storms in the next three decades. The key 20 years of Twain’s happy life were the times spent at their house in Hartford, living the life of a Renaissance lord and raising three picture-perfect, intelligent, and talented daughters.
Chernow warns us that things are going to get really bad. Even I didn’t comprehend just how bad. Due to a steady stream of bad financial choices (Twain had a lifelong addiction to get-rich-quick schemes), the family had to move to a long-term exile in Europe. The eldest daughter stayed behind in Connecticut, got seriously ill, and died in the Hartford house. I hadn’t realized what a complete mess her life had become, with poor health and a scandalous romance with a female classmate in college. In the late years of his life, Twain famously set up a society of preadolescent young ladies to be his special friends. Lots of writers gloss over this chapter because there was no evidence of foul play, but Chernow points out how tough this was on his actual surviving daughters. In spite of its subject, there are not a lot of laughs in this book, but I expect this will be the definitive book on Twain for years to come.
A book I plan to read is Jon Meacham’s new title American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union. This is an anthology of key writings in American history, presented with the author’s knowledgeable and even-handed approach to the struggles of Americans for three centuries. It will be a good book to read while watching episodes of the new Ken Burns series The American Revolution.
A second book takes a similar, if darker, turn: The Unfinished Business of 1776: Why the American Revolution Never Ended by Thomas Richards discusses revolutionaries who continued to demand greater liberties after the Constitution was adopted.
—Terry Ballard
.
This year has been one of the best reading years I’ve had in quite some time, and I plan to read much more before the end of the year! Here are a few favorites that are helping me stay sane in the insane climate we are living in:
Books are something that I always look forward to, and we need things to look forward to more than ever right now. Here are a few titles I’m anticipating most in 2026:
—Jessica Hilburn
Tsundoku is the Japanese word for buying books but not actually reading them. I think I have mastered that skill. Also, at a time when AI is supposed to be the end of writing as we know it, I find myself entrenched even more deeply in the world of writing and books.
My book, co-authored with James Cooper, A Short & Happy Guide to AI Governance and Regulation, is just out. Our call to action is straightforward: Countries must move beyond good-on-paper strategies to real legislation before AI tools are deployed at scale in unethical, irresponsible, or dangerous ways. This is the second book in our trilogy; A Short & Happy Guide to Artificial Intelligence for Lawyers was first, and next up is a casebook on AI and law.
It has been the year of books in our family. My teenage daughter Kavya’s new book, 404 Girl Not Found—a murder mystery with a twist—found both critical and commercial success.
And my M.B.A. students added their own entries to the bookshelf: While last year, one group published a nonfiction ebook, Leveraging AI in MBA: Stay Relevant, Stay Ahead: The Essential Guide to AI in Business Leadership, this year, another group published a fiction ebook, The Eternal Tide, as part of their coursework.
I ran an AI workshop for writers at a literature festival, and one of my favorite authors, Gurcharan Das, dropped in. His The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma remains a timeless classic. At the business literature festival I help organize, the best book award went to Alok Sama’s The Money Trap: Grand Fortunes and Lost Illusions Inside the Tech Bubble. I reviewed the book The Stoic Capitalist: Advice for the Exceptionally Ambitious by Robert Rosenkranz. I recommend all three.
In 2026, I want to read a lot more about China. On my list are Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang (It has an interesting premise: Lawyers run America while engineers run China), I Deliver Parcels in Beijing: One Man’s Quest to Speak the Truth About the Global Gig Economy by Hu Anyan (about gig work), and The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China by Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li with Claire Cousineau (about the nationwide test for college admissions, for which students start preparing years in advance).
I am also looking forward to books by friends and family that will come out in the new year. My wife Divya’s CFO AI Compass, a practical guide to finance leaders, will be out in early 2026. My friend Amit Guha will release his labor of love, Tapestries in Brick, based on his two decades of research about the terracotta architecture of Bengal.
I’m happy to be surrounded by writers who simply persist. May you also find your Zen in words and books.
—Kashyap Kompella
As 2025 dawned amid a surge of book challenges across the country, I felt compelled to read Amanda Jones’ powerful memoir, That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America. Jones, a Louisiana librarian and lifelong resident of the town she served, became a target after publicly advocating for inclusive literature in her middle school. What followed was a harrowing descent into personal harassment. Outsiders, emboldened by online campaigns, labeled her a pedophile and weaponized book challenges to bully her out of her profession. Jones’ account is raw and courageous, detailing the emotional and physical toll of standing up for intellectual freedom.
A more soothing read with a library theme, What You Are Looking for Is in the Library, is a novel by Michiko Aoyama, translated from Japanese. Each character in this novel is at a crossroads in life when they happen upon a small community library with a very odd librarian. She gives them books they didn’t think they needed, paired with another cryptic gift. I have recommended this to several people experiencing difficulties who requested comfort reads.
Two 2024 releases got me thinking about how class, race, and gender impact opportunity. Entitlement, a psychological thriller by Rumaan Alam, explores the question of when ambition becomes expectation. Is Brooke, a young Black Vassar graduate, really being groomed as the protégé of her white billionaire boss, or is the truth more disturbing? The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl follows an American in Paris trying to unravel the mystery of Victorine Meurent—the muse behind Manet’s Olympia—a talented but impoverished painter whose work fell into obscurity. Both novels touch upon the role of privilege in success.
On a lighter note, although not typically drawn to beach reads, I devoured Chesapeake Crime Club: A Minxy Banks Mystery, a 2025 release by CeCe Lamont. Protagonist Minxy, a former CIA operative and diagnosed Dark Empath, is as sharp as she is morally complex. Her manipulative tendencies make her a brilliant detective, but it’s her dry wit and reluctant sense of justice that make her oddly endearing. When the body of her neighbor is found gruesomely draped over a locally famous mermaid statue, Minxy—despite disliking the victim—refuses to let a killer escape justice or an innocent man take the fall.
There were some not-so-new books I finally got around to in 2025. The Blind Contessa’s New Machine by Carey Wallace is a gem of a novel. An Italian contessa in the early 1800s is losing her eyesight, but no one believes her, including her fiancé. As her sight continues to dwindle after marriage, her friendship with a local inventor deepens, and he designs a writing machine to enable her to compose letters. This is based on the true story of one of the oldest known typewriters. (The machine does not survive today, but letters from Contessa Carolina Fantoni describing it do.)
Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses by Bess Lovejoy offers surprising tidbits about the remains of some of our most beloved princes, priests, and poets. Does Thomas Becket’s body really remain at Canterbury Cathedral? Who left a bottle of cognac at Edgar Allen Poe’s grave on his birthday every year until 2010? Why was Albert Einstein’s brain stolen, and where is it now? The coffin-shaped book is a compelling medley of history, biography, and horror.
In The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, two misfit geniuses navigate parallel lives in a luxury apartment building in Paris. One is the dowdy concierge who fades into the background (both by profession and on purpose). The other is a 12-year-old girl from a wealthy family who, having determined life to be futile, is calmly planning her exit. The two cross paths when a sophisticated Japanese man moves into the building and befriends both.
2025 marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, so I revisited an old favorite, Pride and Prejudice, on audiobook. Having read all of her novels on paper decades ago, it was a treat to enjoy Austen’s prose with Regency English accents and voices that bring her wonderful characters to life. So, I decided to revisit all of Austen’s novels on audio: Persuasion, Emma, and a modern retelling of Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope. I especially enjoyed the audiobook version of Emma, a finalist for an Audie Award—the narrator does a delightful job with the Eeyore-like voice of woeful Mr. Woodhouse.
For the coming year, I look forward to listening to the last two Austen books on my list—Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey.
I also plan to return to one of the most unique nonfiction books published in 2024: Slippery Beast: A True Crime Natural History, With Eels by Ellen Ruppel Shell. Who knew the eel trade was a hotbed of international scandal? From Maine’s freshwater elver hunters to the mysterious Sargasso Sea, Shell uncovers a shadowy world of “eel people” and black-market dealings that are under federal investigation. It’s bizarre, brilliant, and something I’ll be diving back into in 2026.
—Suzanne LaPierre
.
I realize I’m late to the party on this one, but I just finished reading The Thursday Murder Club. I picked up the book from a sale table in Dublin, so it’s the British English version (think zimmer frames not walkers) then compared it with the American English version I borrowed from my public library. Not much else changed. Sainsbury’s is still Sainsbury’s. I appreciate Richard Osman’s wry sense of humor (humour?) and how he can create memorable characters and make outlandish situations seem absolutely plausible. To feed my hunger for new titles from favorite fiction writers, Charles Finch just released his latest Charles Lenox mystery, The Hidden City, and Charles Todd has a new Ian Rutledge novella, A Christmas Witness.
On the nonfiction side, I’m in the middle of Stan Garfield’s 12 Steps to KM Success: A Guide to Implementing Knowledge Management. Looking forward to 2026, I’m eagerly anticipating David Weinberger’s new book, to be titled (at least so far; it’s early days) Beautiful Particulars: How AI’s Attention to the Smallest of Differences Is Reshaping Our Biggest Ideas. I edit his columns for KMWorld and have read all of his other books, all the way back to The Cluetrain Manifesto.
—Marydee Ojala
Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser: At first it seems that Murderland can’t work. Its main plot is based on unproven science. A secondary plot explores the unfortunate history of bridges in Tacoma, Washington. Finally, the author weaves in her own troubled personal story. Yet Caroline Fraser makes it work. Fraser is an accomplished journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Critics Circle Award for Prairie Fires, her biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. She also grew up in the same Tacoma region where most of the book takes place.
In the 1960s and 1970s, an unprecedented cluster of serial killers, including the notorious Ted Bundy, haunted the far Northwest and Washington state. Fraser points out that Tacoma was then a major center for lead smelting, where weakly regulated polluters covered the area with vast amounts of lead and other poisons, which are known to acutely damage the brain. Fraser proposes that the male predators who killed hundreds of women were themselves victims of lead poisoning. This premise has been challenged, but Fraser makes a very strong case.
Tacoma is also a bad place to drive on bridges. Fraser thoroughly traces the accident-ridden history of the poorly designed Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge and its outrageous rate of crashes. (Tacoma is also the site of “Galloping Gertie,” the famous Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge that tore itself to pieces in a 1940 storm.) Finally, Fraser tells her own story, growing up in a rigid and confining Christian Science family that lived not far from the Murrow bridge.
Murderland is a harrowing read, with wrenching descriptions of the killers’ crimes and a backdrop of greed and corruption that permitted the smelters to work, even when their dangers were understood. Yet, with Fraser’s exhaustive research and superb storytelling, you can’t look away.
—Mick O’Leary
I am still in the social justice book club at my church, Hope United Methodist, which—shoutout—just marked its 35th anniversary in November. Hence, this year, I’ve read quite a few books that could be labeled “heavy.” I keep saying to the group leader, “All of these books are making me mad.” And that is true. Some of the information I have been aware of to a degree, but much has been quite eye-opening—and mostly not in an uplifting way. Two recent books, The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby and My Body Is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church by Amy Kenny, fall into the category of getting me really riled up. I am taking heart that the leadership at Hope is becoming more intentionally aligned with the social justice movement (I am now on the expanding social justice team), so I can see progress even in small steps. As for these books, I’m just going to give you the basics and hope you will want to check them out on your own.
The Color of Compromise is akin to a history book, as it goes back to when Europeans started to settle in the New World. From Day 1, the attitudes of those entering this vast land were that those already here were assuredly not of the same intellect as those arriving. That I knew. However, Tisby, president emeritus of The Witness, Inc. shows how the church (not one denomination, but almost all of them collectively) has been complicit in racism at every turn. Each time there was an opportunity to take a stand against racism, the church chose to either support it (the Civil War) or remain silent (the Civil Rights Movement). I found the sections of the book that compared the inactions of the Rev. Billy Graham to the actions of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. especially telling. If you have not considered the way Christianity has mostly failed, in a colossal way, to support those who are not fair of skin (failing to recognize that Jesus was not blonde-haired, blue-eyed, or white), this book will give you a lot to think about and help you to more fully understand why people of color still often choose to worship in their own churches.
The short author bio on the back of My Body Is Not a Prayer Request shares that “Kenny is a disabled scholar and Shakespeare lecturer [and] a scribe for Freedom Road Institute for Leadership and Justice. …” This book was hard for me to read because it often felt personal. While I have been able to empathize with the authors of all of the social justice books I’ve read in the past 18 months, this one I could relate to. While I don’t feel I can claim the “disabled” moniker, I am hearing-impaired and also have visual difficulties that are getting more pronounced as I age. I also know what it’s like to be judged initially and sometimes solely on your physical appearance. Kenny doesn’t hold anything back when sharing her often degrading experiences in Christian communities, from her Christian high school to a variety of churches she has attended throughout her life. Once again, it is most disheartening to see how a group that you would expect to be showing the most loving-kindness is often the one not wanting to have to accommodate any type of special needs (in case you did not know, churches are exempt from complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act) for members or attenders. Sometimes Kenny sounds beyond angry (and it’s seldom hard to understand why, especially when she’s having a heated debate with her pastor about his use of words such as “lame” and “crippled” as adjectives in nondisabled dialogue). But her book shows that instead of embracing ableism, Christ followers need to embrace the “crip community.” This means not assuming, among other things, that when they get to heaven they’ll be “healed” instead of welcomed with their canes, walkers, wheelchairs, and other assistive devices.
OK, phew. Let’s lighten the mood, shall we? And I have just the book, especially if you grew up watching the TV show that was based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House book series. Back to the Prairie: A Home Remade, a Life Rediscovered by Melissa Gilbert will make you laugh (sometimes uproariously), cry a bit, and learn about how COVID helped Melissa and her husband Timothy Busfield buy a dilapidated house in the Catskills of New York and find peace, hope, and renewal amid a lockdown, political and social upheaval, and, for Melissa, medical and family crises as well.
Starting with how she met Busfield, Gilbert gives the reader a short, but not always sweet, story of her life, which began when she was given up at birth and adopted. While she shares her personal and career arcs, which both had peaks and valleys, Back to the Prairie mostly tells of her recent past and how finding love again with Busfield at a time when she was least expecting it and following a path that wasn’t focused on maintaining her career, and thus her appearance, gave her a new, and much happier and healthier, perspective on life.
Gilbert is a good storyteller and writes in an engaging way that draws you in and makes you feel like you are watching all of her adventures and misadventures unfold. And she’s often self-deprecating. Although only credited with writing the Foreword, Busfield’s personality comes through in the pages as well, for it’s really the story of how the two grew together while tending crops, interacting with wildlife, and raising chickens. Speaking of chickens, if you don’t split your side laughing from Gilbert’s “fowl” writing, I’ll be shocked. Also amusing throughout were the times her husband had to rein in her enthusiasm with a well-timed “Now, Half Pint …” admonition.
If you watched Little House on the Prairie back in the day and loved the portrayer of its main character—and if you have a fondness for Elliot Weston’s portrayer from Thirtysomething as well—this book is for you. It’s charming and fun and is a great way to de-stress.
As for 2026, I was excited to recently find out that Jan Karon, author of the Mitford series, finally has a new title out: My Beloved. It sounds like it will pick up the story of Father Tim and his wife Cynthia, along with the next generation through his adopted son Dooley and his growing family.
I also am looking forward to getting a copy of Prairie Man: My Little House Life and Beyond, written by Dean Butler, who played Almanzo Wilder, the man Gilbert’s Laura Ingalls would end up marrying on Little House. While Butler was pleasing on the eye, I also enjoyed how he brought Almanzo to life. But in recent months, having caught a few of his Facebook Reels, I have a new appreciation for how he carefully sought to work with Gilbert, who was several years his junior (still in her mid-teens) when he was brought on the show to play Laura’s love interest. He’s gone on to produce entertainment, sports, and documentary programs, but Little House and its cast still hold a special place in his heart, and he has become the organizer of many fan events around the country. This book came out in 2024, but I’ve just found out about it. I’m hoping it will be as entertaining and interesting as Gilbert’s.
—Lauree Padgett
So far, in 2025, I’ve read 46 books, and I’m poised to tie or maybe surpass my all-time high of 58 in 2019. Not sure that’s such a good thing. Clearly, I have had more time on my hands in 2025, which comes as no surprise, as I and scores of other writers I know deal with decreased demand and rising competition from alien (aka generative AI) sources. I love to read, though, and I’ve used the time to re-explore some old favorites (sometimes intentionally and sometimes because I forgot that I’d already read something!).
One that I returned to purposefully was Wuthering Heights. I remembered, or thought I did, that I absolutely loved that book when I read it in junior high. Unfortunately, it didn’t have that same impact this year and ended up being a did not finish (DNF). What in the world did I ever see in Heathcliff, and why did I think it was such a great love story?
Then there was one that I reread accidentally, not realizing I’d already read it until I was halfway through, but deciding to finish it anyway: Plainsong. A very good book, even the second time around. I also discovered that there were two additional books in what I hadn’t realized was a series by Kent Haruf, so I read those as well.
My top three favorites of 2025, though, were The Kitchen House and Glory Over Everything by Kathleen Grissom and The Briar Club by Kate Quinn. They each received a 5-star rating from me, which I give sparingly. They’re the only three I rated 5 stars in 2025.
I failed miserably at reading more business books in 2025, unfortunately. Maybe next year …
In 2026, I plan to revisit the Fourth Wing (aka The Empyrean) series. I didn’t enjoy it last year, but it’s being made into a series that “is primed to beat ‘Game of Thrones’ in Scope, Scale, and Dragon Battles,” so I figure it’s worth another chance.
—Linda Pophal
In 2025, I personally discovered two already-popular authors: Freida McFadden and Katherine Center. Center writes rom-coms, and I really enjoyed The Bodyguard. Leighton Meester and Jared Padalecki will be starring in the Netflix adaptation, and that is unexpected yet inspired casting for the tale of a female bodyguard going undercover to protect a male movie star. McFadden writes thrillers, and I finally wanted to see what all the fuss was about when it came to The Housemaid. Turns out the fuss was warranted, and that movie adaptation, starring Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney (also perfect casting), arrives Dec. 19. I will be seated for both!
ECW Press has a series called Pop Classics, in which writers analyze pop culture from a variety of intersectional lenses. In 2025, I read Clever Girl by Hannah McGregor and Ugh! As If! by Veronica Litt. McGregor discusses the (canonically all-female) dinosaurs of the Jurassic Park series in relationship to feminist theory, the patriarchy, and the divine feminine—i.e., the different approaches that define how women move through the world. It’s a memoir too, in the ways McGregor looks at how women are perceived as monstrous; she has embraced the label instead of feeling shamed by it. In her book, Litt articulates so many thoughts I’ve had about the movie Clueless over the past 30 years as well as introduces ideas I hadn’t considered. I think this quote from the book’s conclusion sums up her points: “Clueless is, all at once, a sharp comedy about privilege, an unwitting indictment of color-blind approaches to race, a buoyant celebration of love and femininity, a poisonous enforcement of the classed world order, a hopeful meditation on community building, and a great movie to watch if you want to be entertained and challenged in one fell swoop.”
Podcaster Nora Princiotti wrote a book called Hit Girls: Britney, Taylor, Beyoncé, and the Women Who Built Pop’s Shiniest Decade. If you know on sight the middle and last names of the three women in that title, this book is for you. (Jean Spears, Alison Swift, and Giselle Knowles-Carter, FYI.) What a nostalgia trip this is, with Princiotti expertly tracking the rise of the pop stars of the late 1990s/early 2000s and explaining how the music industry has changed as their popularity has waxed and waned. There are interviews with music industry insiders and even analyses of the anatomy of the songs. Ending with Carly Rae Jepsen’s 2011 release of “Call Me Maybe” as the last song of “pop’s shiniest decade” feels right to me.
I’m giving the award for the year’s most misleading cover to Exquisite Things by Abdi Nazemian. The cover makes the book look like a racy romance novel, and while there’s nothing wrong with those, that’s not what this story is—it’s the tale of two young men’s search for meaning, belonging, and companionship. I’ve always loved Nazemian’s books, but this one is really special. It’s a decades-spanning, continent-sweeping, all-kinds-of-love story, with queer joy (and pain) at the center. Especially now, it’s important to remember how far society really has come and yet how far it still has to go when equality and dignity for everyone really still doesn’t mean everyone yet. But this book is hopeful, and heartbreaking, and lovely, and so well-written. It makes you want to believe in a better future.
In 2026, I’m looking forward to Kerr Smith’s memoir of his time on a seminal teen series, which is called I Don’t Want to Wait: My Journey on Dawson’s Creek Without a Paddle. (I’m all in on ’90s nostalgia, as you can probably tell!) I’ll also be reading Making Disney Magic … From a Mermaid to Moana by Ron Clements, which was originally supposed to publish in 2025 and is now scheduled for August 2026.
In the mid-2010s, I was obsessed the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series from Wiley. A quick scan of my Goodreads profile shows I read House of Cards and Philosophy, Superman and Philosophy, The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy, The Hunger Games and Philosophy, Twilight and Philosophy, Veronica Mars and Philosophy, and Inception and Philosophy. I don’t know why this series fell off of my radar, but I was really excited to stumble across the fact that Wiley has a new title coming out in 2026: Bridgerton and Philosophy: Dukes, Debutantes, and Deep Questions by Jessica P. Miller, publishing just in time for the debut of the second half of Bridgerton’s fourth season.
I’m noticing that I have a heavy emphasis on books about movies and TV in 2025 and 2026, and I think it’s because the real world can be so terrible that I want to immerse myself in things that have multiple properties to keep me busy. Here’s a segue for you—do you know what will be keeping the Computers in Libraries managing editor busy in 2026? She’s publishing a book! I can’t wait to get lost in her poems of “archetypes, magick, and myths.” Offerings for Ordinary Gods by Ali Trotta is available for preorder now. Check out her book recommendations in the next entry.
—Brandi Scardilli
.
Well, I love books. And I want to read them all. Alas, I only have one brain and limited hours, so my TBR pile is larger than is even close to reasonable. That said, here’s a sample of what I’m looking forward to reading in 2026! Deanna Raybourn’s A Ghastly Catastrophe, which is the latest installment of her Veronica Speedwell series: Her books are smart, feminist, and riveting. Roshani Chokshi’s The Swan’s Daughter: A Possibly Doomed Love Story: Her books are lyrical, gripping, and beautiful. Sera Gamble’s poetry chapbook is out 2026, and you should definitely snag a copy of Our Lady of the Sick Girls: Gamble is as concise as a scalpel and as smart as a universe.
—Alison Trotta
