BCAC is thrilled to welcome guest contributor Matthew Galloway, a buyer for Anythink Libraries! Matthew curates books, DVDs, and digital content with an eye on what readers are craving right now—so he knows the trends, the breakout authors, and the genres you won’t want to miss. This month, he’s sharing recommendations to jump-start your reading life in 2026. Warning: reading can be habit-forming!
By Matthew Galloway
Even though I’d consider myself an experienced reader, I found myself drawn to Hwang Bo-reum’s latest English language release: Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books.
This nonfiction book–composed of 53 essays about different aspects of reading–starts with how to become a reader if that’s something you want to do. This book has me inspired to recommend a few books related to Hwang’s topics. These are all late 2024 or 2025 releases.
Her first essay, titled “Read Bestsellers,” talks about how it’s hard to recommend a book to burgeoning readers because they haven’t learned what they like best yet. It can be helpful to start with bestsellers because those titles appeal to many people, so will likely catch the attention of a new reader too.
In libraries, “bestsellers” are measured by checkouts. To that end, Anythink’s top bestseller ebooks on Libby (an online library of ebooks and audiobooks, available for free with your Anythink Library card) this year are:
- Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
- The Women by Kristin Hannah
- The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins
- Say You’ll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez
- Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry
Hwang’s next essay is “Read Beyond Bestsellers” – this is where once you’ve read a few books you can start pinpointing what makes a great read for you. Maybe you loved the emotional impact of The Women or the excitement of Onyx Storm. Maybe you think Emily Henry’s way with words speaks to you, makes you laugh, or makes you swoon. You can use these observations to start pinpointing the books likely to give you exactly what you want, whether you’re browsing shelves and reading first pages, asking library staff, or using a resource like the Novelist database, a free resource many libraries, including Anythink, offer. Novelist categorizes books by a variety of traits that allow it to give excellent recommendations for similar books. Some of the traits are extremely specific such as “books about books,” “octogenarian women,” or “academies of magic,” so it can be incredibly useful for finding the exact story you want to read.
Obviously, I can’t recommend books to your specific taste without chatting with you first, but I can give you an example of books that fit my taste perfectly this year. Included are a hard sci-fi novel exploring a world’s ending and alien intelligences, a man who wakes up from a two-year coma and returns home to his family to start life over again, a tour bus of people exploring the U.S. after they learn they’re part of a simulation, robot crimes in a future reunified Korea, and ex-teen detectives all grown up and forced to investigate a new series of murders in their home town.
- Slow Gods by Claire North
- I Leave It Up to You by Jinwoo Chong
- When We Were Real by Daryl Gregory
- Luminous by Silvia Park
- We Had a Hunch by Tom Ryan
As a side note, Anythink’s Huron Street branch offers the Busy Lives Book Club, based around books that are 200 pages or less, and the Brighton location offers its own book clubs. Morning people may enjoy the Brighton Book Lovers club, which meets at 10am on the third Wednesday of the month. They’ve chosen When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka for January. The library’s Evening Book Club meets at 6:30pm on the first Monday of the month and will discuss The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise by Colleen Oakley next.
You can see lists of Brighton’s and other locations’ book club picks for 2026 on Anythink’s website.
Please check out the rest of Hwang’s book yourself if you’re interested in reading about the value of big books, having a book always on hand, book discussions, not finishing books, and many other reader topics.
I do have to mention Hwang’s thoughts on “Visiting the Library,” of course! As someone who loved to buy books, Hwang didn’t visit libraries for a long time. Once she did, she became addicted to the joys of slowly browsing the shelves, letting titles and covers jump out at her. Other days, she says she felt adventurous and grabbed something she usually wouldn’t read because, after all, there’s no wasted money if you don’t finish a library book!
I invite you to visit your local Anythink Library to just browse, to look for something specific, or to ask one of our staff members to make some recommendations based on your interests. There’s always something new and interesting to help you “get closer to books”!