This is the weekly feature where we look at the biggest bestseller lists — the New York Times, both Combined Print & E-Book Fiction and Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction lists; Amazon Charts, both Fiction and Nonfiction; and Publishers Weekly — and combine the results to get an overview of the bestselling books of the moment. Each list uses their own set of criteria and data, so by looking at the overlap, we can get a better idea of the overall bestsellers.

December is a slow month for new releases, so it perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise that precisely zero of the books listed are new releases from this week. The only book that wasn’t on previous weeks’ lists is Atomic Habits, presumably because people are looking to jumpstart their new year’s resolutions, but that’s far from a brand new release. This is also a list dominated by white authors, with the exception of Michelle Obama’s memoir.

For some new releases that deserve a lot more attention, check out How to Turn Into a Bird by María José Ferrada and Ace Voices by Eris Young.

Books On All Three Bestseller Lists:

The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama (NYT #1, Publishers Weekly #1, Amazon #1)

It Starts With Us by Colleen Hoover (NYT #1, Publishers Weekly #2, Amazon #1)

It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover (NYT #2, Publishers Weekly #3, Amazon #2)

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (NYT #3, Publishers Weekly #5, Amazon #3)

The Boys from Biloxi by John Grisham (NYT #5, Publishers Weekly #6, Amazon #4)

Verity by Colleen Hoover (NYT #4, Publishers Weekly #8, Amazon #5)

Fairy Tale by Stephen King (NYT #6, Publishers Weekly #10, Amazon #6)

Books On Two Bestseller Lists:

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (NYT #2, Amazon #9)

Atomic Habits by James Clear (Publishers Weekly #9, Amazon #4)

Where the Crawdads Sings by Delia Owens (NYT #7, Amazon #10)

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (NYT #10, Amazon #7)

It’s January, which means it’s out with the Best Books of 2022 lists and in with the Most Anticipated Books of 2023 lists! Goodreads has gathered up the new releases already getting the most buzz in a variety of genres, including horror. They note that horror has increased in popularity in recent years, and that there has been a big influx of talented new authors in this genre, including more Indigenous authors, like Stephen Graham Jones, Jessica Johns, and Nick Medina.

Here are just a few of the most anticipated horror books out in 2023. Click the links for the descriptions as well as the publication dates.

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

All Hallows by Christopher Golden

The Nightmare Man by J.H. Markert

Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez

The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro

Don’t Fear the Reaper (The Lake Witch Trilogy #2) by Stephen Graham Jones

Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown

Vampire Weekend by Mike Chen

Lone Women by Victor LaValle

She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran

A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

See all 39 titles at Goodreads.

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.

Because New Year’s was on a Sunday this year, we’re taking today off to recover. But don’t worry, we’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, we wish you luck in your 2023 reading goals, and we hope your year is filled with a fireworks display worth of five-star reads.

Whether or not you believe in the power of a new year to change your life or your habits, there’s something to be said about the flipping of a calendar year to help you take stock in what is important to you and where and how you wish to grow in the coming year. As the year comes to a close and we’re riding out 18-plus months of ongoing book bans and censorship across public schools and libraries in the U.S., this is the perfect time to sit down and develop your anti-censorship resolutions.

None of these actions need to be big or grand. Small actions can have big impact. But today, take a few moments to develop a checklist of tasks you can do in 2023 to help combat book bans. We’ve been sharing tips, tricks, and insights, so you don’t need to do any reinventing the wheel. Grab a notebook or open up a Google doc and your calendar, and sketch out plans for how you can help end book censorship in the new year.

Set up recurring tasks for actions such as: reading the latest news on book censorship, perusing school and library board agendas and minutes, showing up to and/or writing letters to your school and library board, and requesting books by and about marginalized people at your local library.

Then, write down key dates for other tasks: voting in local elections, running for office if you’re able to, in-person and virtual events exploring book bans and censorship, meetings and events held by local or regional anti-censorship groups, workshops and trainings related to anti-censorship/intellectual freedom/First Amendment Rights, and events at local institutions exploring censorship (such as a book talk at an indie for an author whose work has been censored).

And finally, pool together the tremendous number of resources to help with this ongoing issue and share them liberally. There is great work being done by so many groups, with toolkits and guides aplenty. Likewise, there are excellent follows across social media to help you stay informed, engaged, and active.

Once you’ve done that, assess what might be missing and determine what you can offer to fill those holes. Maybe you decide you’re going to take two friends with you to a school board meeting or that you’re going to donate to a group like EveryLibrary or PEN America or a librarian’s Go Fund Me, or purchase swag that benefits a group like We Need Diverse Books or Florida Freedom to Read Project to help in the on-going fight for the First Amendment. Maybe use your own book club to aid in the fight against book banning.

We need you in the coming year and beyond. 2023 is going to be a watershed year for book bans and censorship, and anything you can do now to prepare to help in preserving intellectual freedom for all is important and valuable.

This is the feature where we look at the biggest bestseller lists — the New York Times, both Combined Print & E-Book Fiction and Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction lists; Amazon Charts, both Fiction and Nonfiction; and Publishers Weekly — and combine the results to get an overview of the bestselling books of the moment. Each list uses their own set of criteria and data, so by looking at the overlap, we can get a better idea of the overall bestsellers.

Unlike last week, there are two new additions to the bestseller list this time, though neither of them came out in December. Colleen Hoover continues to hold onto several spots, and as usual, this a very white list, with the exception of Michelle Obama’s new book. Publishing still has a long way to go until the bestseller list even remotely represents the demographics of the USA — never mind the larger reading population.

For some new releases that deserve a lot more attention, check out A Million to One by Adiba Jaigirdar and A Death in Tokyo by Keigo Higashino, translated by Giles Murray.

Books On All Three Bestseller Lists:

It Starts With Us by Colleen Hoover (NYT #1, Publishers Weekly #2, Amazon #1)

The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama (NYT #1, Publishers Weekly #1, Amazon #2)

It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover (NYT #2, Publishers Weekly #4, Amazon #2)

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (NYT #3, Publishers Weekly #8, Amazon #3)

Verity by Colleen Hoover (NYT #4, Publishers Weekly #10, Amazon #6)

The Boys from Biloxi by John Grisham (NYT #5, Publishers Weekly #7, Amazon #4)

Books On Two Bestseller Lists:

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (NYT #2, Amazon #6)

Interesting Facts For Curious Minds by Jordan Moore (Publishers Weekly #5, Amazon #3)

Fairy Tale by Stephen King (NYT #6, Amazon #5)

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry (NYT #3, Amazon #7)

Diper Överlöde (Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 17) by Jeff Kinney (Publishers Weekly #3, Amazon #8)

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (NYT #9, Amazon #7)

Go beyond the bestseller lists with made-for-you book recommendations from TBR, our book recommendation service!

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.

Because Christmas was a Sunday, we’re taking today off. But don’t fret! We’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, happy holidays to all who celebrate, and we hope you’re keeping warm, cozy, and well-read.

It’s the end of another year and that means we’re being treated to another look into the reading life of former President Barack Obama. Like previous years, it’s a diverse mix of titles and includes both fiction and nonfiction. This year includes a powerful graphic memoir as well.

Of little surprise, Obama’s first pick is one that might be pretty familiar to him: Michelle’s The Light We Carry.

The rest of the titles on the list include:

• Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
• Trust by Hernan Diaz
• The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff
• The Furrows by Namwali Serpell
• South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon Line to Understand the Soul of America by Imani Perry
• The School for Good Mothers by Jessamin Chan
• Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
• Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton
• An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong
• Liberation Day by George Saunders
• The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
• Afterlifes by Abdulrazak Gurnah

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.

“Trauma” has become a bit of a buzzword around the internet. This is the case in part because more and more research and understanding of trauma has come to light, and we’re better articulating the impact of trauma on the body and mind. Trauma is an emotional response to an event; it is not the event itself. Perhaps the easiest way to think of trauma is that the body’s natural fight, flight, or freeze response — which normally is a short lived experience — does not dissipate once the triggering incident ends. It is being consistently on guard, with less and less opportunity to shut down the body’s sympathetic nervous system. There are many life situations that create trauma for a person, and because it is so individual, some are more sensitive while others are more resilient. It is, of course, much more likely for those living in the margins to have more trauma than those who fit the cishet, white, Christian mold. Young people are especially vulnerable to trauma, as those experiences directly impact their development (and if this is a thing you’re interested in knowing more about, dig into the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study*).

Trauma is a public health issue.

It’s been fascinating to watch teachers this year talk about how unmotivated and disinterested in learning their students are. This is a real concern, but there is a lot to be said as to why: today’s students have had one of the biggest trauma-inducing events happen to them with the pandemic. Imagine during your early developmental periods (be it preschool or elementary school, middle school or high school) that everything is pulled out from beneath you. Suddenly, you’re being removed from school and put into a variety of virtual learning environments. Imagine on top of that being sick from COVID or having a loved one die from it. Over eight million children across the globe had this happen between January 2020 and May 2022. While there are many children who will bounce back, as many, if not more, will not. They do not have the same brains as adults, and those experiences lead to trauma that not only impacts their thinking, it impacts their physical body and health (this could be why we’re seeing so many sick kids right now — the lack of care for their wellness throughout this experience has weakened their immune systems, and the body keeps the score).

We have to stop thinking about these kids as the same kids from 2019. They aren’t. They’re kids who have had so many traumatic experiences pile up. Add to that the reality today’s kids worry they won’t come home alive because of our culture’s fetishization of guns, it is absolutely not surprising they do not care about their grades or about turning in homework or about how if they fail they won’t get into college.

So what does this have to do with censorship and book bans?

The ongoing fight over the rights of young people to access books is contributing to their trauma. This is especially true for queer kids and kids of color, who are seeing grown adults fight against their rights to live their lives. Who are witnessing adults who began their Joyful War against access to literature saying that kids were struggling in school because they were “muzzled” by masks. Who kept it going, saying that requiring vaccinations was an invasion of bodily autonomy for children. Who then moved on to fighting against the very books on school and library shelves under the guise of “caring for the kids,” because teachers and librarians were not actually interested in the well-being of young people but are instead “groomers” who are “sexualizing them” at young ages.

These messages are being piled on top of the trauma already circulating within young people from the past two years. They’re further confused and, if they’re from groups already under the spotlight of bigotry and racism, they’re wondering if they’re even safe to go to school. If they can show up as they are. We’ve seen schools wanting lists of students who identify as queer and we’ve seen states eager to shut down any gender-affirming healthcare young people desperately need to be their truest selves.

Imagine the kids seeing their parents showing up to these board meetings and creating a scene. Especially if those young people identify with the very groups targeted by their parents in public ways. In ways that get them their 15 minutes of fame on social media.

These young people are living every moment in fight, flight, or freeze. And when they speak up, they’re sometimes ridiculed by the adults who should be nurturing them.

Further, it’s worth some concern that today’s young people, who are dealing with this level of trauma and who understandably lack the motivation to put in the effort in their education, are also those more easily recruited by these right-wing groups. These groups, with their talking points and handy “research,” can influence the self-same young people they’ve had a hand in traumatizing. It’s not that young people do not want to think for themselves; it’s that the trauma is so deep in their body and mind they can’t think for themselves. The cheat sheets these groups offer are a way of filling in gaps with the same lies used to traumatize them in the first place.

And of course, this situation impacts educators, anti-censorship groups and individuals, parents who aren’t under the influence of Christian nationalism, and other adults whose lives involve working with young people. It impacts the authors whose books — and identities — are deemed inappropriate, pornographic, explicit.

Is there a solution? I’m not sure. But it is vital we talk about this and sound the alarm on the reality of our current generation of traumatized young people…and the ways book banners are contributing to their trauma and profiting from it.

Trauma is real, and our young people are aching for the opportunity to see and be seen wherever they can with it. Book bans are only making it worse.

Book Censorship News: December 23, 2022

• Incredible work from The Marshall Project showing every book banned in prisons across the country.
• All of the LGBTQ+ books in the children’s section of Crawford County Public Library (Arkansas) are being moved because right-wing Christian nationalists demanded that happen. “Van Buren Library Director Deidra Grzymala said she believes everyone is reaching a compromise and the books have been moved to their own section at each of the Crawford County Library System’s five libraries.” That’s not a compromise; it’s called censorship.
• While we’re in Arkansas, here’s the current status of “the library wars” in Jonesboro.
• I’ve kept tabs on my book being challenged and banned, but this was a new one to me. Wilton-Lyndeborough Cooperative Middle/High School (New Hampshire) decided to keep Body Talk on shelves, but middle schoolers need parental permission to access it. The gold in this one is the parent complaining about how white men are demonized in the book and her two citations are…the white men in the book.
• Granville Independent School District (Texas) is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education for their removal of LGBTQ+ books.
• At the Wayne County Public Library (Ohio), children’s books that have been targeted will not be removed.
• Clark County Public Library (Kentucky) has put a restriction on Gender Queer and to borrow it, students need parental permission.
• Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me will be removed from all middle school libraries in Robertson County (Tennessee).
• 79 books are under fire in St. Tammany Parish public libraries (Louisiana). Close to 100 books are now being “sequestered” behind the reference desk as they undergo review for appropriateness. This is still censorship.
• “Tennessee’s textbook commission has wide new powers to determine which books students can and can’t access in public school libraries. But members say the panel doesn’t have enough resources to finish its most pressing new task: providing guidance to school leaders on how to comply with several recently enacted library laws.” Huh, who’d have guessed a volunteer committee made up of non-professionals would have a hard time doing the work of professionals?
• Ten books — all of which are named in the article — are being challenged formally at Old Rochester Regional School District (Massachusetts).
• The teacher who had a copy of Gender Queer on her desk in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, will not face criminal charges because SURPRISE, there is nothing criminal about it.
• It’s bizarre that the Darien Public Schools (Connecticut) did NOT have a formal procedure for book challenges in place prior to now. This is a crucial policy to have and to keep updated, as it is a living document.
• Cranston Public Schools (Rhode Island) did not have a policy, either, but now they do.
• One Parent complained about a social justice unit in her student’s high school English class and now the entire unit has been ended. The parent tossed out the usual CRT buzzwords. ONE PARENT in Lansing, Kansas.
• “In response, Gallagher said that there are already policies in place to address these issues, including a resource policy to weed out inappropriate material and disciplinary action for teachers who engage in “political and sexual indoctrination.” He also said that parents are notified if their child requests a name or pronoun change. But his reassurances did not appease everyone. This is a bizarre report about the last school board meeting at Souderton Area School District (Pennsylvania). Apparently books that are inappropriate are simply “weeded” and students’ parents are alerted when they change pronouns?
• State Representative Mike Soboleski of Maine showed up to the MSAD 58 school board meeting, demanded more than the allotted three minutes for public comment, and used it to complain about books…including Gender Queer, which is not even in the district.
• An English teacher in Florida is part of the book banning club, wanting 150 books removed from school libraries.
• Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry wrote a letter to the paper about why he thinks having a tip line to complain about teachers and librarians who “indoctrinate” students is essential.
• As of writing, there has not been an update, but the Carroll County School Board (Iowa) discussed another title of the ten being formally challenged in the district.
• “Amber Smith said parents are called hateful bigots and homophobic fascists because they don’t want sexually explicit materials in the classroom.” It could be because that’s what they are, especially as this story was one that garnered attention from Fox News and led to a FAKE BOMB THREAT toward a queer teacher with an LGBTQ+ classroom library (California).
• Abilene Public Library (Texas) has been dealing with several book challenges this year and finally updated their materials policy. Now, the city manager has significant power in determining whether or not a book is banned. City managers are known for their background in literature, literacy, and intellectual development of young people.
• “A new flurry of requests to ban or relocate books and library district activities in the Gunnison County Public Libraries [Colorado] has been filed with the district through its ‘Request for Reconsideration of Materials’ form. In addition, the Gunnison County Sheriff’s Office and Gunnison Police Department were asked recently to remove some books and file charges in connection with books that two library patrons considered obscene.” The police were asked to remove books. The police. Were asked. To remove. Books.
• GLAAD released a new report this week that showed at least 140 drag shows were targeted with protests this year. Texas, Illinois, Virginia, and New York were among the top places where protests occurred.
• Speaking of Drag shows, “Most of the drag story times have gone on smoothly. But in November, four neo-Nazis protested outside the library during that month’s drag story time, Connell said. And on Dec. 10, about two dozen people who appeared to be members of several different neo-Nazi groups congregated outside the library, holding signs condemning the event as pedophilic and shouting anti-LGBT slurs and accusations of pedophilia at people going into and out of the library.” This is Fall River, Massachusetts.
• This article is from October but it offers some insight into the current motivations of Moms For Liberty, as the chapter in Tarrant County, Texas, decided to leave the national organization and regroup.
• In Augusta, Georgia, a parent is trying to get a book pulled from Ollie’s Bargain Outlet because she was “shocked” that it depicted sexual intercourse. Ma’am, this is a private business.
• Love the stretch to not call a book ban a book ban in this editorial from Millard County, Utah.
• In Beauford County School District (South Carolina), The Lovely Bones and Stamped will remain on shelves for high schoolers. Stamped will be pulled from K–5 shelves (this is the young reader edition). Ten more books are currently under discussion for the January school board meeting.

*There is a lot to be said about the limitations of this study and how fat people were the initial research participants because of their lack of “initiative” in a weight loss program. But it is groundbreaking work that has been built upon for the last couple of decades.