News of note for readers: August 5, 2026

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

• The New York Times surveyed nearly three hundred crime novelists, editors, booksellers, librarians, and other book lovers to determine the top fifty thrillers of the 21st century; you can also see the (shorter) lists submitted by some of those authors. 

• Yes, we still have another month (or more, depending on the climate where you live) of summer, but Libby has put out a list of the summer’s most-listened-to audiobooks (Book Riot).

• This week marks the 420th anniversary of, probably, the first-ever performance of William Shakespeare's Macbeth (Literary Hub).

• George R.R. Martin admits that he's fallen "further and further behind" with the next Song of Ice and Fire book, The Winds of Winter (People).

• Jason Arday, the youngest Black person to become a professor at the University of Cambridge, has written a memoir about his remarkable life story, but the publicity surrounding it has stirred up some old and new questions about him and his work (The New York Times).

• Poetry sales in the United Kingdom are on track to set a sales record this year, something that's being attributed to the film adaptation of The Odyssey (The Guardian).

• Read an excerpt from Whyteface by A. Igoni Barrett (Electric Literature).

• Mary de Rachewiltz, the daughter of poet Ezra Pound who translated his work into Italian and worked to defend his literary legacy against his antisemitism and support for fascism, died July 24 at age 101 (The New York Times).