News of note for readers: July 22, 2026

Catch up quick with the bookish news of the past few days ... or take a deeper dive into each story. Your choice! 

• Wicked star Jonathan Bailey will narrate a new audio version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, serving as the title character; the star-studded cast also includes Maggie Gyllenhaal as Professor Van Helsing (People).

• Speaking of book adaptations, Book Riot staffers believe these screen versions of books to be the best of this century, so far (Book Riot).

• Hadi Matar, already convicted on state charges of attempted murder and assault against author Salman Rushdie, will face a federal trial on terrorism charges (The Guardian).

• Japanese author Haruki Murakami is expanding an essay he published in 2019 into a memoir called Abandoning a Cat: A Personal Story; the book, which focuses on Murakami's relationship with his father, comes out in English on October 20 (Book Riot).

• Poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib has been chosen as the 2026 Indie Bookstore Ambassador, tasked with bringing attention to independent bookstores for the next year (American Booksellers Association).

• AI companies are increasingly searching for books printed before LLMs began generating text, both of necessity (newer text contains AI-generated text) and fear (writers opposed to the use of their work to train AI could write text that manipulates or sabotages AI models); a company called ISBNdb purports to have the answer to that in the form of plentiful old, printed books (404 Media).

• A survey commissioned by audiobook platform Storytel found that, among the 5,000-plus adults in five European countries surveyed, a higher percentage of book readers/listeners reported their well-being as "good" or "very good" than did those who weren't consuming books (Book Riot).