Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. We’ve got big literary lawsuit news, Oprah’s next book pick, and more.
Five Publishers and Scott Turow Sue Meta and Mark Zuckerberg
It’s likely that as soon as you read the headline, you can guess what the lawsuit is about. Publishers Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier and Cengage, alongside bestselling author Scott Turow, are suing Meta and Mark Zuckerberg for copyright infringement, claiming that the company and its founder illegally used works to train its artificial intelligence program, Llama. As an author, I welcome this kind of action and hope we see a resolution akin to what happened with Anthropic. We teach children in school that you can’t copy and paste someone else’s work without attribution because that’s called plagiarism, but AI companies don’t seem to heed that very simple standard.
Where and How to Watch The Librarians Film
The highly acclaimed (and must-watch!) documentary The Librarians will only be streaming on PBS for a few more days. If you want to watch it from the comfort of home, don’t miss it before it goes away on May 9. The good news is that the film will continue to be shown at screenings across the country, and you’ll be able to catch it on the Kanopy streaming service beginning May 22. The Librarians will get a much broader release come this fall.
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And Oprah’s Next Book Club Pick Is…
It’s that time: Oprah’s Book Club has selected John of John by Douglas Stuart for her next pick. This one isn’t necessarily a surprise, as Stuart’s book has been highly anticipated. But in a sea of possible book club options for May, perhaps it’s not the one many thought she’d go with–Kathryn Stockett’s first book since her 2009 debut, The Help, called The Calamity Club, came out, too, and seemed prime for this (and other) celebrity book clubs.
“I felt transported,” Winfrey said in a statement Tuesday. “I could feel every aspect of this remote community where tradition and judgment quietly shaped everyone’s life. Douglas Stuart brilliantly weaved a layered, compelling and yet so intimate a story of identity, what it means to belong, and the courage to claim your own truth.”
This is Oprah’s 123rd book pick and the third pick for 2026. Her previous picks for this year include the buzzy Marie Semple book Go Gentle and the next book by beloved author Tayari Jones, Kin.
Look Again: 5 Awesome Recent Fantasy Books You May Have Missed
I was recently compiling a list of my favorite books of the year so far, and there are a few fantasy books that are definitely going to be on my end-of-the-year list. A couple of these are so good, I wish I could read them again for the first time! But since that isn’t possible (yet), I’m sharing them here in order to bump them up on your TBR, so you can experience them for yourself. Subscribe to All Access for the full list of can’t-miss 2026 fantasy reads.
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Source:
bookriot.com
