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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.
What’s Entering the Public Domain in 2025
If your response to the recent wave of Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse horror was to ask, “Why here? Why now?” the answer is copyright law. Copyright protections in the U.S. extend for 95 years, after which works enter the public domain and become fair game for (re)interpretation. Steamboat Willie and Winnie the Pooh saw their copyrights expire in the last few years, making the beloved mouse and bear fodder for these horror remixes and other adaptations. On January 1, 2025, thousands of works from 1929 will join them in the public domain pool, including cartoon characters Tintin and Popeye and books like A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, and The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie.
Nightbitch Now Streaming on a TV Near You
After weeks spent trying to find a showing at a local theater as homework for an episode of the Book Riot Podcast, I fired up Hulu over the weekend and discovered that Nightbitch was already available for streaming. The horror comedy starring Amy Adams first made its theatrical premiere on Friday, December 6, landing on Hulu less than a month later on December 27. Based on the bestselling 2021 novel of the same name by Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch follows a former artist turned stay-at-home mother who, though enamored of her child, is bone-tired and deeply unsatisfied with the daily trappings of suburban domesticity. Things take a surreal turn when she exhibits some canine behaviors, and then the situation gets full-out feral. You can stream Nightbitch on Hulu now and look for the podcast episode next week.
50 Wonderful Things from 2024
I look forward to NPR’s annual list of 50 Wonderful Pop Culture Things every year, a lighthearted reminder of the good stuff that happened in books, TV, and film. The list isn’t of a “best of” flavor like so many things are this time of year, but just a compilation of good stuff. Good can mean moving or hilarious, inventive or irreverent, achingly beautiful, or just plain fun. This year has felt heavy, and there’s a lot of uncertainty as we head into the new year. But, as Linda Holmes points out, “it never hurts to look back on the year and realize that in fact, delight was upon you over and over.”
Some bookish highlights: the TV adaptation of Presumed Innocent; the first sentence of Tracy Sierra’s novel Nightwatching; the film adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Nickel Boys; FX’s historical epic Shōgun based on the novel by James Clavell; and Liz Moore’s mystery, The God Of The Woods.
10 Contemporary Romance Novels Where Consent Is Hot
Consent isn’t just non-negotiable; it’s hot. No definitely means no, but the yes is so very important, especially at this moment when women’s bodies and rights are under attack in the U.S. As Ann Mai Yee Jensen explains, “how our society understands the role of consent in love and sex is in a perilous place, and romance novels contribute important messages about these dynamics.” These 10 contemporary romance novels all contain examples of enthusiastic—and very sexy—consent.
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