In 2024, we were very demure, very mindful. We watched the Olympics, but mostly for the muffins. And Raygun. And the pommel horse guy. We played Connections. We held space for the lyrics of “Defying Gravity.” We held space for the ending of Challengers. We had to keep throwing out food, including all those cucumbers we bought from Eminem. We reached peak Big Pants (maybe). We blamed it on Moo Deng. We meant “your favorite artist’s favorite artist.” Everything was maroon. Everything was “Espresso.” Unless it was “Not Like Us.” (Sorry, Drake.) We had a brat summer, and the warmest fall on record. Donald Trump got a boo boo, and also we elected him again, for some godforsaken reason. We mourned Flaco. Luigi became an instant folk hero, tapping into all our fears and anger over the demented, inhumane American health care system. Lookalike contests were a thing. We thought a lot about thighs. There was also literary news. Here are the book-world-adjacent stories that thrilled, disgusted, amused, and otherwise occupied our group chats this year.
50.
Nicholas Sparks made chicken salad with a certain amount of Splenda.
49.
A little website called Literary Hub started its own podcast, and it was like, so cool.
48.
Saul Bellow became a stamp.
47.
Feeld and Hinge, which are dating apps, both launched literary zines, because sure.
46.
Are any writers on the internet even who they say they are anymore?
45.
An Italian robbery was averted by a book.
44.
Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan accidentally visited the world’s largest publishing trade fair.
43.
Jonathan Safran Foer put his Ditmas Park mansion on the rental market . . . at $35,000 a month.
42.
Anna Sui showed her Agatha Christie-inspired collection at the Strand.
41.
Melania Trump’s memoir arrived in the hands of some readers covered in “mysterious goo.”
40.
Stanford fired all of the Creative Writing Department’s Jones Lecturers (over Zoom).
39.
Westminster Abbey’s memorial to the Brontës finally got its missing umlaut.
38.
Romance Writers of America filed for bankruptcy.
37.
The libraries of New York City got their funding back (after Eric Adams slashed it last year).
36.
Barnes & Noble bought legendary Denver indie bookstore Tattered Cover.
35.
Some writers cheated on each other, which is not news, but then they wrote books about it, which sort of is.
34.
Joe Arden, popular romance novel narrator, got nailed (sorry) for inappropriate sexting, emotional manipulation, sexual misconduct, and overall being a jerk.
33.
Tavi Gevinson zined Taylor Swift, Nabokov-style.
32.
The Lieutenant General of Delhi granted police permission to prosecute Booker Prize-winning novelist Arundhati Roy under a draconian anti-terrorism statute called the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.
31.
RuPaul launched a whole online bookstore to support his memoir.
30.
Even literature was ‘brat.’
29.
The Internet Archive lost its appeal.
28.
The queen of literary pans got a pan of her own, and the literary internet experienced the joys of schadenfreude.
27.
A clinical pharmacist accidentally discovered a lost Bram Stoker story in a Dublin library.
26.
The cast of Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights adaptation was announced, and the internet was displeased.
25.
Romance bookstores boomed.
24.
Two literary (IP) “experiences” turned out to be shabby disasters, earning the creative nicknames Wonka Fyre Fest and Bridgerton Fyre Fest. (And let’s not forget Readers Take Denver, “the Fyre Festival of Books.”)
23.
The people’s hero Keanu Reeves published a novel (with China Miéville), and it was actually pretty good.
22.
Disney’s production of The Graveyard Book was paused after Neil Gaiman was accused of sexual misconductby several women.
21.
J.K. Rowling was named in the cyberbullying lawsuit filed by Olympic champion boxer Imane Khelif.
20.
The FTC made it illegal to buy or sell fake reviews for books (or other things, but who buys those).
19.
A new publisher called Authors Equity promised to bring more profit to authors…but at what cost?
18.
Despite his express instruction that it be destroyed, Gabriel García Mårquez’s final, unfinished novel was published in 30 countries.
17.
It was the year of Divorce Books.
16.
Small Press Distribution imploded, sending independent publishing into a tailspin.
15.
High-profile Black editors and publishing executives continued to lose their jobs, rather calling the industry’s DEI self-back-patting into question.
14.
Ta-Nehisi Coates was aggressively, awkwardly grilled by an anchor on CBS News during an interview about his latest book, sparking controversy.
13.
Korean novelist Han Kang won the Nobel Prize in Literature—and refused to celebrate it in the face of violence in the Ukraine and in Palestine.
12.
Taylor Swift self-published a coffee table book, The Eras Tour Book, and offered it for sale only at Target (sorry, indie booksellers), and only full of so many “typos, low-quality images, and graphic-design blunders” that it was dubbed The Errors Tour Book (sorry, fans).
11.
Colleen Hoover’s BookTok juggernaut It Ends With Us became a movie, but the real drama was behind the scenes.
10.
The Hugo Awards were beset by scandal: first self-censorship, and then fake (and paid) voting.
9.
Anna Wintour threw a party inspired by a 1962 J.G. Ballard short story.
8.
Vanity Fair published an exclusive about Cormac McCarthy’s “secret muse,” though any revelatory value therein was promptly overshadowed by everyone making fun of the piece’s florid prose and romanticization of abuse.
7.
Sally Rooney published a novel, and was the only one who was chill about it.
6.
Project 2025 is going to be very bad for books.
5.
The New York Times published a list of the 100 best books of the 21st century, and they missed a few. Or maybe more than a few.
4.
Celebrated Canadian short story writer and Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro died, and after her death, her daughter Andrea Robin Skinner wrote about her mother’s failure to protect her from sexual abuse, a story that sent shocks of horror and recognition through the literary world.
3.
Book bannings increased again—but so did resistance.
2.
AI continued to plague the publishing industry—or more specifically, the human writers who give it value. But authors (and certain websites) are pushing back.
1.
The Israeli siege on Gaza continued, and continues, to result in the deaths of poets and journalists, and the destruction of publishers and libraries; in this country, a growing contingent of writers protest and speak out against the atrocities.
