Bookmarked 2026 Week 21: Magical Librarians and Top Authors and Books

How was your week? What are you reading? Here’s a look at what I read last week and links to ineresting bookishness.

What I Read

Lask week, I posted about 15 Award Award Nominated Novellas in 2026 and so of course I started working my way through them – 3 down, 12 more to go. My plan is to read a few each week until I’m through them all (and in preparation for Novellas in November #NovNov hosted at 746 books and Bookish Beck).

The novellas I read were Automatic Noodle, Annalee Newitz, a story about autonomous robots who work in a kitchen owned by a shady corporation who seemed to have abandoned them.

Then The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar, about 2 sisters who tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. I strongly suggest the audiobook over the printed copy. It’s narrated superbly by Gem Carmella. The sisters singing to the magical Willow trees daily is their duty – and the audiobook captures this and more musical elements of the story beautifully – featuring music performed by the author and her sister, Dounya El-Mohtar with Amal and Dounya on harp, flute, and vocals; and songs sung by the narrator, Gem Carmella. In fact, it is the 2026 Audie Awards winner for Best New Voice and for Production & Sound Design.

And my favorite of the 3, Cinder House, Freya Marske. This is a Cinderella fairy tale retelling, but where Cindy is a ghost haunting the house where she was killed by her step-mother. Color me intrigued – and the author did not disappoint in following up with a can’t-put-down-until-the-last-page story.

Currently Reading

I switched gears after 3 novellas and picked up the audiobook of The Diamond Eye, Kate Quinn. I’ve been meaning to read this for months – and it also works for the May Key Word Challenge (for “eye”).

In 1937 in the snowbound city of Kyiv, wry and bookish history student Mila Pavlichenko organizes her life around her library job and her young son–but Hitler’s invasion of Ukraine and Russia sends her on a different path. Given a rifle and sent to join the fight, Mila must forge herself from studious girl to deadly sniper–a lethal hunter of Nazis known as Lady Death. When news of her three hundredth kill makes her a national heroine, Mila finds herself torn from the bloody battlefields of the eastern front and sent to America on a goodwill tour.

BookLinks

Magical Librarians

⮕ Book Date No. 22 shared an interview with the Chief Public Librarian of the Brooklyn Public Library, Edwin Maxwell. Reading this so soon after finishing the Astral Library by Kate Quinn (Bookmarked 2026 Week 20) somehow has me thinking of him as magical and I cannot unthink this

⮕ Coincidentally, The Brooklyn Public Library released a list of 250 influential books in honor of America’s 250th anniversary – a 250 for 250 Booklist. It’s a very ecclectic and diverse list – one I’ve saved to come back to in the future and read more books from. To pick just 1 of the 10 or so that I’ve read to recommend – it would be The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot.

She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her enslaved ancestors, yet her cells – taken without her knowledge – became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons – as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

⮕ The story of a traveling book store has been making the rounds on the web, This Bookstore Gets Good Mileage and it is really such a unique way to be a bookseller, and promote reading.

Top Authors & Books

⮕ The Guardian published their best of all time novels list … “a countdown of the greatest literature ever published in English, as voted for by authors, critics and academics worldwide“. Middle March, George Eliot came out on top. What do you think of the list? I haven’t read many but I’m also not inclined to read most of them.

⮕ Three novelists are on the 2026 TIME100 list of the most influential people – Tayari Jones, Freida McFadden and Yiyun Li. Have you read any books from these authors? I haven’t read aything by Li, but I’ve loved the 2 books by Tayari Jones that I’ve read – An American Marriage, and most recently, Kin. Freida McFadden is a prolific author having written more than 30 books! I’ve read 7 of them – my favorites so far are The Housemaid and The Teacher.

⮕ Also from Time, 25 Books That Capture This American Moment. “… (we) asked 25 literary luminaries to each pick one book that they believe reflects where American life is headed or speaks to the present in a meaningful way.” Some really interesting choices on there.

⮕ 2026 British Book Awards Winners have been announced. The Book of the Year winner is Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Amy Wallace (co-writer). There are many other categories to check out – so many books to add to your reading list.

⮕Lit Hub had a bracket competion for the Best Literary Film Adaptation. After six rounds of voting, and thousands of votes cast, the winner is The Princess Bride, which prevailed over The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King with 60% of the vote. Thoughts?

—- That’s it from me. Cheers to the week ahead!