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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
The 2025 Booker Prize Finalists
The finalists for the 2025 Booker Prize have been revealed. The prize honors “the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland.” The finalists include Book Riot favorite Audition by Katie Kitamura and The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai, who won the Booker in 2006. Flashlight by Susan Choi, Flesh by David Szalay, The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller, and The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits are also vying for the win. The winner will be announced November 10.
The 25 Best Picture Books of the 21st Century
It was news to me that the New York Times declared picture books dead 15 years ago and that a group of creators responded the following year by writing a manifesto to reshape the industry. It seems to have worked! After surveying more than a hundred pros and reading 200 picture books, Slate‘s Dan Kois and Rebecca Onion present the 25 best picture books of the last 25 years. Along the way, they document the combined impact of the 2011 manifesto, the We Need Diverse Books movement, and the animation boom brought about by Pixar, which have created a children’s book landscape that looks very different than it did at the start of the century.
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Publishing Remains Torn About AI
New research from the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) indicates that while nearly half of industry professionals are using AI tools, almost everyone (98%) is worried about it. It’s a predictable and justifiable response in an industry whose products have been pirated to train large language models and are now competing against AI-generated slop in online marketplaces. In addition to concerns about copyright and protecting intellectual property, responses indicated that “the majority of organizations that are using AI lack formal policies or guidelines, and many have yet to institutionally adopt closed and enterprise models to better protect their data.” Publishers may not be able to do much about the copyright issues on their own—that will require legal and judicial intervention—but it would be wonderful to see them address AI guidelines in-house.
15 Debuts by Latine Authors to Read This Year
It’s hard out there for debut authors, and as Book Riot’s Vanessa Diaz reminds us, “Even on a good day, Latine books don’t get nearly enough shine.” Here are 15 debut books by Latine authors to read this year.
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