BookBitch Diary: January 1, 2026

Wishing you a very happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year filled with lots of good books!

Book News

The Supreme Court Just Opened the Door to a New Era of Book Bans

So many best books of the year lists! Here are some I found useful, and hope you do, too!

The 10 best books of 2025 (The Washington Post)

50 notable works of fiction from 2025 (The Washington Post)

The 10 Best Books of 2025 (New York Times)

100 Notable Books of 2025 (New York Times)

Best Books 2025 (Publishers Weekly)

Editors’ Picks of the Year | Best Books 2025

Books We Love (NPR)

New York Public Library Best Books of 2025

Food News

The New York Times Cooking Most Popular Recipes of 2025

This is the first year that I haven’t tried most of these recipes. The only one on the list that I love is the Porcini Ragu – that one is on repeat in my family, I make it about twice a month. (My husband hates chicken, so that eliminated probably half of these recipes.)

Please ask me for any recipe you can’t access!

Our top 25 recipes of 2025 (The Washington Post)

Pizza Pasta Salad! No Churn Ice Cream! Rao’s Marinara Sauce! And many more!

14 of our favorite cookbooks of the year (The Washington Post)

The 14 Best Cookbooks of 2025 (New York Times)

The 26 Best Cookbooks of 2025, According to Serious Eats Editors

Our Favorite New Cookbooks of 2025 (Bon Appetit & Epicurious)

Good News

This musician taught an octopus to play the piano

Takoyaki, an octopus, plays piano keys with its eight arms. (Mattias Krantz)

As always, thanks for reading, and stay safe.

Thanks to The New York Times and The Washington Post for allowing me to “gift” my readers with free access to these articles, a lovely perk for subscribers.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 1st, 2026 at 9:00 AM and is filed under Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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