Welcome to 2026
The Year We Need Books For Real
Oof.
We’d barely batted away the silly string on New Year’s Eve before we knew: 2026 is going to be the year we need book support badly. Statistics show that when times are tough, people read things that let them escape reality, and a lot of the time, the way to escape is through the genre of horror.
Horror, it is true, makes a great distraction, because you can’t really be too worried about the state of the world if you can shut your brain down and only worry about the monster under the bed. But better than that, horror gives us a feeling of control. In an unsent letter to the poet Howard Nemerov, horror queen Shirley Jackson once famously said, “I delight in what I fear.” Sounds weird, but sometimes fear can be delightful. Think of all the times you jumped at a jump scare - and then laughed yourself silly and told the story over and over again about how you nearly peed. Or, think of all the times you groaned at a book or a film where the TSTL (too stupid to live) characters decide to split up to investigate a weird noise or whatever. “Nooooo!” you shout at the book or screen. And yet they always seem to do it anyway. It’s all familiar and controllable, those horror tropes. They scare us a bit, but it’s within a framework that we know. When the country is disintegrating… that’s not something we can as easily recognize or categorize in our brains, and while our brain is looking for a pattern, and a way to make sense of things, it is extremely stressful.
So, even though we hit you with an October-November horror list, we’re back with another. Because we believe that sometimes, it’s okay to take a deep breath, pull the covers over your head, and escape.
You can get back to saving the world tomorrow.
2026 is also a year when we’re going to need to take care of our mental health. Between the Snowpocalypse and a rapidly tumbling news cycle, life feels like a lot so far in 2026. A lot of us are doing what we can - protesting, being part of sing-ins, donating, writing letters, making calls, embracing community - and while we take part in this continuation of the modern Civil Rights movement, we need to guard our hearts and minds. Friends, remember to breathe. Listen to your body, and take a break when you need one - and that includes a break from the news, voices, and images of people who disagree and agree with your beliefs. Prioritize sleep - and get in as many unplugged activities under your belt as you can. Read. Play video games. Walk. Binge British baking shows. Make snow angels. Skip rocks. Do some light bouldering or offer to race your local toddlers or walk the neighbor’s dogs. Remember that civil unrest and civic engagement have been necessary since 1776 and will be again, and if you’re not in the U.S., civic unrest has happened before where you are, too. Kingdoms, republics, democracies rise and fall. It’s not comfortable to be there when history’s being made sometimes, but it’s survivable. Please take care of yourselves.
The Lunar New Year begins on the 17th of next month, and it’s the Year of the Fire Horse🐴 which sounds amazing, as this winter has already been kind of a lot in terms of cold, and anything we can toast marshmallows on sounds like a win. The Fire Horse in the Chinese zodiac also signals a time of momentum, movement, change, and a refusal to be held back or caged. Sounds like good vibes for our current moment, no?🐎We wish you good horses, a good ride into this year, good communities and friends, and the very best of books!
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