Today Shelf Awareness is introducing a new design for Shelf Awareness for Readers, our weekly publication for consumers, to make it easier for readers to discover books to buy at indie bookstores. With the new look, book reviews are featured prominently, and each reviewed title includes an image of the cover and a summary of the review. The reading experience is smooth: the new design helps readers easily find great books in many genres, learn more about their favorite authors' creative processes, and rediscover great backlist titles.

The new design offers advanced customization for our bookstore partners, who now have more options for tailoring their messages, choosing which books to highlight, and choosing features to include or exclude. Stores that want a free, professional review publication to send to their customers without having to labor over it can do so.

Shelf Awareness for Readers continues to allow partner bookstores to feature information specific to the store (such as a list of author events) and provides a special click-through system that sends customers directly to the store's listing of books on its own website.

If your bookstore would like to learn more about deploying this powerful, free marketing tool, please write to bookstores@shelf-awareness.com.

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Early reports from booksellers about the holiday season have been positive.

John U. Bacon signing copies of The Gales of November at Schuler Books in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Though indies mentioned worse-than-usual problems with the supply chain--including late shipments, incomplete shipments, and damages--many booksellers stated they were pleasantly surprised with the season overall. Customers seemed eager to support independent bookstores despite increased prices and broader economic concerns.

Asked about standouts, booksellers consistently mentioned The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon; The Correspondent by Virginia Evans; 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation by Andrew Ross Sorkin; and The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai. Prize-winners and books that made various best-of-the-year lists also proved popular. 

More detailed reports from indie booksellers will be published in Shelf Awareness next week.

At Bert's Books

As New Year's Eve and New Year's Day approached, many indie booksellers were in a reflective and grateful, as well as celebratory, mood in their social media posts, including:

Parnassus Books, Nashville, Tenn.: "As has become tradition, the last Laydown episode of the year is all about gratitude. Gratitude for writers and readers, for librarians and activists, for the Parnassus staff and our community. We've been making these videos for over 5 years now, and the fact that you all continue to tune in both astounds and humbles us. Thank you for watching, thank you for shopping local, and thank you for reading. We'll see you in 2026!"

Murder by the Book, Houston, Tex.: "This year has felt like a whirlwind, but we have made a lot of good memories.... We wish y'all the best in the new year. If you're going out tonight, stay safe and have fun. Our bookstore crew will see you in 2026."

Source Booksellers, Detroit, Mich.: "As we approach this new year expecting new possibilities, we pause to think about the year we are leaving.... Thank you to everyone, everywhere in the Source Booksellers' orbit. We wish you joy in the coming year and all blessings during this season of holiness. We wish you more curiosity in your literary life. We wish you happiness as you discover more books and ideas in the books you read and the people you meet."

Betty's Books, Webster Groves, Mo.: "Happy New Year's EVE!! We are open today until 3 p.m., so feel free to swing by for the LAST time in 2025!"

Type Books, Toronto, Ont., Canada: "We, as booksellers, are professionally inclined to use metaphors like 'turning pages' and 'new chapters' more often than most, but never more than these bleary days before the end of the old year and the beginning of a new one. We're reminded of the few blank pages that are sometimes included before the end of a book; we feel like we're living inside them now. It is from those blank pages that we are writing to you this morning. We're grateful to be using this time to think about the year that has passed and to project ourselves with optimism and grace into 2026.... We'll see you on the other side of the stacks."

The Wandering Page Cafe, Omaha, Neb.: "Thank you for an incredible year of stories, coffee, community, and shared moments. We can't wait to write the next chapter with you."

Twisted Spine bookstore, Brooklyn, N.Y.: "It feels weird to do a yearly recap before we've hit our 4 month mark, but 2025 has been the wildest of years for The Twisted Spine!... The one constant in a year full of unexpected changes was being surrounded every day by the most generous people who have been as excited by our crazy idea as we are.... we truly wouldn't be here without you. Wishing you all the very best for a spooky and safe new year."

Perpetual Books, Chicago, Ill.: "Welp here it is, our sappy new's year post. We are so so so so grateful for all of the support during our first year of existence that it makes us want to cry (more than we usually do).... Cheers and happy new year xoxoxo perpetual books."

Glee Books, Sydney, Australia: "2025 was one for the books (see what we did there).... Instagram is a place where we share the big and exciting highlights, but the reality is the vast majority of bookselling is made up of exchanges like... [q]uiet conversations, shared laughter and joy over a great book. It's what has kept us going for 50 years, and what keeps us keen for another one. See you in 2026."

Analog Books, Lethbridge, Alb., Canada: "As the year comes to a close, we find ourselves reflecting much on the five since we opened. They seem to have passed in a whirlwind, yet with deliberation, intention, and intensity.... We now look forward to the next five years, and the five beyond that."

At Prologue Bookshop

Prologue Bookshop, Columbus, Ohio: "Thank you for your continued support of Prologue Bookshop this year! 2025 was a difficult year for so many, but I hope that our store managed to provide a bit of respite, of hope, of education, and of community, all of which are so important and so needed. We're looking forward to some fantastic things ahead in 2026... we're so happy you're with us for the times ahead. Onward to brighter days."

Bromley's Books, Marquette, Mich.: "This time last year, I had no idea what 2025 would bring and the magic that awaited.... I don't yet have the words to describe how incredibly grateful and awestruck I am by this whole experience and the incredible community that has rallied around us to create this bookshop together.... Cheers to it all, we can't wait to see you in 2026!"

The Portobello Bookshop, Edinburgh, Scotland: "What a year!... Of course, thanks most of all to every single member of our wonderful team... all of whom make the shop feel like such a special place to come to work each day. We hope that each of them, as well as all of you reading this, have a lovely end to the year.... We hope to see you soon in 2026!"

Búho, Brownsville, Tex.: "And just like that, our 2025 year has come to a close!...  We would like to thank everyone who showed up to today's End of the Year Final Flash Sale. Our revenue from the month will help make our final deposit with our contractors and will allow us to start acquiring our coffee equipment.... Búho will start the year strong to strategize for our Phase 3 Coffee Bar, and our very mysterious Phase 4."

Nottawa Cottage Bookstore, Collingwood, Ont., Canada: "Closing the door on 2025. And what a beautiful chapter it's been. Our very first full calendar year at the cottage has been filled with more magic than we ever could have imagined.... As we gently close the door on this chapter, we're stepping into 2026 with full hearts, big dreams, and endless excitement for what's to come. The best stories are still being written."

Neighborhood Reads, Washington, Mo.: "In the story of Neighborhood Reads, Chapter 2025 comes to a close. It was a great chapter, filled with exceptional characters, a lovely setting, and just enough challenges to keep us all growing! We can’t wait to turn the page and begin Chapter 2026. Thank you all for reading."

Pearl Street Books

Pearl Street Books, La Crosse, Wis.: "As the year comes to a close, we just want to say thank you. This year was wonderfully busy--with 187 events, so many meaningful connections, and stacks upon stacks of great books. We're endlessly grateful for this community and can't wait to turn the page to a new year with you."

Third Street Books, McMinnville, Ore.: "We will be closed tomorrow, January 1st, so our staff can start 2026 by resting and recharging. But we are open today if you need to find the perfect book to start the new year with! We so appreciate all the love and support we've received this year.... Thank you for keeping us going. Happy new year!"

Newnan Book Co., Newnan, Ga.: "Only tearing up a little bit writing this. Thank you all for your support and for making Newnan Book Co. such. a wonderful place to be! Happy New Year to all!--Liz."

McNally Robinson Booksellers, Winnipeg, Man., Canada: "Our Booksellers' ins & outs for 2026! Swipe for a more legible version. What are YOUR reading ins & outs for 2026?"

Sundog Books, Seaside, Fla.: "Ending the year surrounded by books, just how we like it. No better way to close the chapter on 2025."

Ten Trees Books, Natick, Mass.: "2025 has been one for the books!... We are so grateful for all of you! We're excited for 2026 and our next chapter together!"

Subterranean Books, St. Louis, Mo.: "Our New Year's Eve tradition continues! As another year comes to a close, we say 'goodnight books.' "

The Last Word Bookstore, Mount Airy, Md.: "There's an old Irish tradition of opening the door at midnight on New Year's to let the old year out and the new year in. The idea is to let go of the past and welcome in the future. Modern translation: So long, 2025. Don't let the door hit you on the way out."

Monarch Books, Arroyo Grande, Calif.: "2026, year of the Book!!!!!"

Main Street Books' new location (photo: Emily Schroen)

Main Street Books, a 32-year-old indie bookstore in St. Charles, Mo., near St. Louis, is moving to 337 South Main St., just six buildings south of its current location. The bookstore will be in a historic brick building that was constructed in 1870 by stonecutter Joseph May, whose monument carving business was on the first floor. May also carved the intricate Corinthian columns framing the front doors. 

Co-owners Emily Schroen, her husband, Ian Schroen, Ellen Hall, and Andy Hall, were presented with the opportunity to purchase the property in September. They noted that the decision to move from their long-time location at 307 South Main St. was not made lightly, but the prospect of a permanent home for the bookstore was a chance the owners could not pass up. 

"It's been a bittersweet process, deciding to move to a new building," said Emily Schroen, who is Main Street Books' general manager. "We have loved our time at 307, and we have so many wonderful memories here, but the longevity of Main Street Books is extremely important to us, and to move forward with that goal in mind, we needed our own space."

Moving is scheduled to begin on January 12. The staff is planning a book brigade and will invite customers, authors, and local media to help them transport books between locations. A grand reopening is tentatively scheduled for early March. The bookstore's offsite offerings, including author events and author school visits, will continue without disruption.

"We know that change is hard, but Main Street Books will still be the same at heart--just with some fun new updates in beautiful new surroundings," said Schroen. "Our customers are the reason we're still here after nearly 33 years, and we are so grateful for their decades of support. We encourage them to visit us as we begin our next chapter."

Main Street Books was founded in 1993 by Mary Fran Rash. Initially located at 621 South Main St. in a historic schoolhouse, it served the community with general-interest books shelved in quirky ways as necessitated by the unusual space. In 2006, Rash sold the business to Vicki and James Erwin and helped move the store to 307 South Main St. Vicki Erwin had been a sales rep for Scholastic for many years before taking ownership of Main Street Books. She and James sold Main Street Books to Emily Schroen, Ellen Hall, and Andy Hall in early 2014.

The Halls and Schroen also founded a partner nonprofit organization--the Main Street Books Literacy Foundation--in 2024, to help get free books into the hands and homes of children attending under-resourced schools in St. Charles.

John Carey, an author, literary critic, and academic, "who lobbed contrarian hand grenades at high-culture snobs and ossified elites who, in his view, revered lofty affectation over accessibility and saw appreciating the arts as a path to moral superiority," died December 11, the New York Times reported. He was 91. 

A Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford from 1975 to 2002, he wrote several books, as well as reviews for the Sunday Times of London--for nearly 50 years--in which he challenged sacred cows and received wisdom. In The Intellectuals and the Masses (1992), Carey accused modernists like Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence "of writing abstrusely with the express purpose of preventing the rabble from understanding their books," the Times noted. "This book is richly stocked with people whom any person of decent instincts will find loathsome."

"He truly dislikes, and helps us to dislike with him, the bleating toffs, the scented scribe agonizing over his weightless sonnet, the glassy metropolitan snobs, the varsity idlers in their pleated gowns," noted critic James Wood in the London Review of Books (2001), adding that Carey's "complaints vibrate with an appealing, nonconformist" outrage.

His early books include studies of Milton, Dickens, and Thackeray. In 1975, he published an essay in the New Review titled "Down with Dons," which began: "From the viewpoint of non-dons, probably the most obnoxious thing about dons is their uppishness. Of course, many dons are quite tolerable people. But if you ask a layman to imagine a don, the idea will come into his head of something with a loud, affected voice, airing its knowledge, and as anyone who has lived much among dons will testify, this picture has a fair degree of accuracy."

Noting that Carey "bestrode the ever-narrowing bridge that connects the academic teaching of English literature to the world of literary journalism like a colossus," the Guardian wrote that "he combined his professional duties with a half-century-long stint on the books pages of the Sunday Times. All this gained him a formidable reputation as the most erudite and possibly the most pugnacious critic of his generation."

Carey wrote, edited or compiled more than two dozen books, ranging from anthologies (The Faber Book of Reportage, 1987; The Faber Book of Science, 1995), to John Donne: Life, Mind and Art (1981); What Good Are the Arts? (2005); and William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies (2009), which was awarded the 2010 James Tait Black memorial prize. 

In the Guardian's obituary, D.J. Taylor observed that Carey "was a generous and courteous man, much admired by his students--with whom he was prepared to take infinite pains--and revered by fellow critics, here in a world of declining print circulations and squeezed space, as the last great book-world don." He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1982 and fellow of the British Academy in 1996.

Booklegger in Eureka, Calif., welcomed a visit from two-time Grammy winner, multiple Tony and Emmy nominee, Eureka High graduate, and book lover Sara Bareilles. The store added: "It was such a treat to meet her. Thanks for stopping by, Sara!"

Heartleaf Books in Providence, R.I., shared "1 pic of Penny from every month in 2025. Thank you all so much for your support! We're open today (NYE) til 6 p.m., closed tomorrow, and back to our regular schedule this weekend! Let's sell 100 books. woot woot."

Steve Israel

Steve Israel, former U.S. rep. (D-N.Y.) and owner of Theodore's Books in Oyster Bay, N.Y., shared "Book recommendations from members of Congress" in the Hill, noting:

"As an independent bookstore owner, one of my favorite New Year's projects is asking key members of Congress to share the most influential books they've read during the year. It's a heartening effort, reminding me that books provide some bipartisan connectivity; and that in an age of algorithms and AI, our policymakers continue to rely on real books to influence their judgements. Here, lightly edited for brevity, are this year's top selections."  

"New year, new TBR." That was the chalkboard message in front of the Book & Cover in Chattanooga, Tenn., which noted: "Stop by for a warm coffee and your next read to start the new year on the right foot!"

Today:
Good Morning America: Virginia Evans, author of The Correspondent: A Novel (Crown, $28, 9780593798430).

Today: Michelle Obama, co-author of The Look (Crown, $50, 9780593800706).

The View repeat: Jonathan Haidt and Catherine Price, authors of The Amazing Generation: Your Guide to Fun and Freedom in a Screen-filled World (Rocky Pond Books, $14.99, 9798217111916).

Sherri Shepherd Show repeat: Hoda Kotb, author of Jump and Find Joy: Embracing Change in Every Season of Life (Putnam, $30, 9798217043880).

For 2026, Deadline invited readers to "on a trip around the world of literature as we survey the international titles that are coming to the big and small screen." Among the highly anticipated titles: 

Argentina: The Future Is Ours, a limited series inspired by Philip K. Dick's The World Jones Made (Netflix). 
Brazil: The Pilgrimage, a movie based on Paulo Coelho's novel, directed by Vicente Amorim (Senna).
Canada: Last Night in Montreal, adapted for the big screen by author Emily St. John Mandel and Semi Chellas. 
Canada: Flesh, a film based on the Booker Prize-winning novel by David Szalay.
France: Lucky Luke, a Disney+ TV project based on the classic Morris and Goscinny comic book series.
Germany: Momo, a film adaptation of Michael Ende's (The Neverending Story) book, starring Martin Freeman, Alexa Goodall, Claes Bang, and Laura Haddock. 
Greece: The Great Chimera, a series adapted from the novel by M. Karagatsis, starring Fotinì Peluso, Andreas Konstantinou, and Dimitris Kitsos. 
Iceland: Fury, a series inspired by the legendary Icelandic Sturlunga saga, directed by Benedict Andrews (Seberg). 
India: The Revolutionaries, inspired by the nonfiction book Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom by Sanjeev Sanyal (Prime Video). 
Ireland: Grown Ups, a series adaptation of the novel by Marian Keyes (Netflix). 
Italy: No Place to Be Single, a movie based on the book by Felicia Kingsley (Prime Video). 
Japan: Faking Beethoven, a film adapted from Shiho Kagehara's nonfiction book Faking Beethoven: The Great Producer Lies (Prime Video).
Mexico: Mal de Amores (Lovesick), a film based on the book by Ángeles Mastretta (Netflix). 
Norway: Jo Nesbø's Detective Hole, a series adaptation based on Nesbø's Detective Harry Hole books (Netflix). 
Poland: Pionek, a series based on the second novel in the crime series by Małgorzata Fugiel-Kuźmińska and Michał Kuźmiński (SkyShowtime). 
Saudi Arabia: Traveler's Hell, a movie adapted by Osamah Almuslim from his book. 
Spain: The House of the Spirits, a series based on Isabel Allende's novel (Prime Video). 
Sweden: When the Cranes Fly South, a film adaptation of the book by Lisa Ridzén.

Longlists have been released in six categories for the National Book Critics Circle Awards. Finalists will be revealed on January 20 and winners named at an awards ceremony in New York City on March 26. See the complete longlists here.

In Dream Facades: The Cruel Architecture of Reality TV, Jack Balderrama Morley presents a fascinating take on the houses that have been the backdrops of popular reality television shows, and how these have shaped not only programming for the genre but also reflect wider social, historical, and cultural trends in the United States.

Morley, managing editor of design magazine Dwell, examines the homes featured on several shows, including Selling Sunset, The Kardashians, and The Real World, and considers how these spaces were moved through by both their occupants and the audiences that enter them vicariously. He offers the concept of the "physical-digital hybrid home" to describe residences that are "more than stage sets for drama; they're real places swollen with the fantasies projected onto them." As our culture has become oversaturated by the projection of these fantasy spaces, Morley continues, "our homes have changed, too, with these dream facades sutured onto them."

As he considers shows that put viewers in the midst of the private moments and spaces of the rich and famous, such as the Kardashians or the Osbournes, Morley's exploration goes deeper into their infrastructure and impact. Dream Facades discusses aspects of shows--like the conflicts that are driven by houses and home ownership in The Real Housewives of Atlanta--and then carefully describes the contexts that surround the construction of these houses, where they are located geographically, and the path that led to both their aesthetics and how they have entered the culture. He shows how the home-improvement phenomenon of Trading Spaces begat the home-flipping shows that obscure the redlining and other policies that make property available to gentrifiers and private equity by pricing marginalized communities out of their own neighborhoods.

Morley investigates the relationship of the U.S. to the land and to the colonization and dispossession of Indigenous peoples, not to name an original sin, but to call for a different way of imagining how we might live in the future. Houses are more than structures; they are a reflection of ideologies and aspirations. Dream Facades makes those connections explicit while also proffering ideas for future concepts rooted not in aesthetic choices, but in choices that foster communities and empower people to live supported and fulfilled lives. In other words: "If shellacked modernity can become boring enough, it can lead its audience to ask for something different. It can let us realize that we should demand more from our screens, ourselves." --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

Shelf Talker: Jack Balderrama Morley examines the phenomenon of reality television through the houses featured in popular series, and considers what these homes say about the world we might all yet live in.