Recs if you like The Emperor of Gladness...

Books We Love from NPR began in 2013, always boasting over 200 books (almost 400 in recent years) featuring genres from memoirs, to cookbooks, to graphic novels, to children’s literature, to nonfiction, to novels. Check out NPR’s website to filter this massive list.

The list is in reverse alphabetical order directly from NPR.

All of the books seen on display in Episode 1 of The Vampire Lestat, "Detroit," during Lestat's trip to the independent bookstore in Montreal, encountering some snotty cashiers.

An on-going attempt to track Asian authors in my Interested/TBR (and hopefully Finished) categories. Books are generally fiction/lit fic/fantasy with some memoirs. Authors span West to East Asia, the Asian diaspora, and mixed-race folx.

spotlighting some incredible books by Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander authors

If you’re not familiar with Mychal, he is the new host of The Reading Rainbow and he has been spreading “library joy” on social media for years. Mychal has a book club on Fable that is for a more mature audience than The RR. He has posted a new book monthly since March 2024. I have enjoyed every book I’ve read from his club! I am not Mychal Threets and I do not know him personally. I am creating this list to help share a bit of Mychal’s Library Joy with Pagebound.

don’t you love it when poets write novels, nonfiction, memoir! the language they bring!!

A collection of the next wave of influential Classics of our generation. These books will become staples in homes and schools contain themes that will always be relevant. Inspired by Pagebound Club Post I made.

Works of literary fiction that blur the line between poetry and prose.

Books on my TBR with LGBTQIA+ characters or themes.

bildungsroman if ya nasty

my attempt at collecting queer books so our history doesn't become lost + to hopefully interest others within it too.

*please note I'd love recommendations on works i may have missed!!

Nominees and winners of every category of the Good Reads Choice Awards for the year of 2025. Some books overlap so they were only entered once.

Goodreads 80 of the Past Decade’s Very Popular Fiction from 2016 - 2025

2025 Broken Country - Isola 2024 The Women - Real Americans 2023 Tom Lake - Weyward 2022 Demon Copperhead - Diamond Eye 2021 Reading List - Cloud Cuckoo Land 2020 My Dark Vanessa - Vanishing Half 2019 Giver of Stars - Girl, Woman, Other 2018 Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell - Where the Crawdads Sing 2017 Stay with Me - 7 Husbands of Evelyn Hugo 2016 Lilac Girls - Behold the Dreamers

Shamelessly yoinked from a certain other reading app that shall not be named... this is a list of recently published (2025-2026) LGBTQ+ fiction across a spectrum of genres and identities!

(Disclaimer: I haven't read most of these, but so many compelling covers made me want to save them all in a list to continue referencing into the future.)

I love love love a novel written by a poet — imaginative beautiful prose galore!

Inspired by Autostraddle's Queer Books Across America list

this is purely based on vibes