October 10, 2026

by Andrew Limbong, host of NPR's Book of the Day podcast

Hey newsletter readers! Last week we chatted about the writers we love with long career arcs. Some of your emails below. As always, the inbox is bookoftheday@npr.org. And if you want to hear the latest author interviews from across NPR, subscribe to NPR’s Book of the Day podcast. Here’s this week’s letter!

Passing the torches of dystopian fiction

The famed YA author Lois Lowry came by my neck of the woods in Baltimore to do an event at the library, and talk to kids about her new book Building 903. But not just kids, she’s quick to remind me – parents, too. She’s seen this a lot at book tours – parents who grew up reading The Giver bringing their kids to these events and sharing the story of the boy in the colorless world with the next generation.

On the one hand, it’s heartwarming, right? What can be better than a parent and a child talking to each other about the ideas and arguments presented in a book? Then again, when I spoke to Lowry, and she mentioned how relevant The Giver still was to kids all around the world, I couldn’t help but ask: Isn’t that kind of…. a bummer? After all, no spoilers, but it’s not the happiest ending to a YA book.

We spoke with Lois Lowry about her return to dystopian fiction. Jared Soares for NPR/Clarion Books

Building 903 is Lowry’s first return to writing dystopian fiction in more than a decade. You can listen to our full conversation here but she told me that, in some ways, the ending to this new book (which, for the record, isn’t a super neat and tidy happily ever after, either) is a response to the more ambiguous ending of The Giver. It’s wishful thinking for a better future.

Have you read The Giver? Have you passed it down to your kids, grandkids, great grandkids, nieces, nephews, the precocious kid down the street? Or do you plan to? Tell us about the experience – bookoftheday@npr.org.

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TBR Pile

Poet Anne Carson in 2024. Andy Kropa//Invision/AP

The Nobel Prize in literature was announced this week! The Canadian poet Anne Carson won the prize. So dust off your copies of Autobiography of Red or Men in the Off Hours to find out what she’s all about.

The Pulitzer-Prize winning writer Ayad Akhtar is back with a new novel, The Radiance. It’s about a writer/academic type who gets hit by a car while bicycling. But instead of anger or distress, he’s entered into a state of, let’s call it, elevation? It’s a piece of autofiction, along with a campus novel, along with a book about sexual politics. It’s a lot – and critic Heller McAlpin says it all adds up to a “profound reading experience.”

If you have a YA reader in your life, you might already know but there’s a new book in the Divergent universe just out this week from Veronica Roth. It’s the highly anticipated book The Sixth Faction. Does it live up to the hype? Here’s one line from our reviewer Dhanika Pineda that might give you a clue – “I really wanted to love this novel.”

Mailbag!

Last week we talked about writers with long career arcs who you enjoy. Here’s what you had to say.

Erikka J. wrote: “I have yet to meet a book by Louise Erdrich that I didn't like but most of my favorites have been from her early 2000s era (i.e., The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, The Master Butchers Singing Club, The Plague of Doves). And yet, The Night Watchman, a relatively recent publication in her long career, might be my number one!”

Lee H. wrote: “The current writer with a long career arc that I admire most is Anne Tyler. Her really early books were pretty good. A standout is Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Then she found real success with The Accidental Tourist and Breathing Lessons. But the most recent novels, like French Braid and A Spool of Blue Thread are absolutely dazzling.”

Kathy M. wrote: “My favorite author, Ilona Andrews, is actually two people: husband and wife team Ilona and Andrew Gordon! Their first book was published in 2007, and they have written [dozens of] books. I think that qualifies as having a long career arc, yes? The thing I love about this duo is….everything! I can see their writing has improved so much over the years but even their earliest books are amazing, like nothing I have read before. All Ilona Andrews’ books can be relied on to include incredibly creative and complete world building (no detail goes unnoticed by them!), extremely thought-out and researched plot (so much is based on actual ancient history or cultures!), and characters that are so vivid and complete that I forget they are fictional characters in a book! They have a wonderful way of writing even the bad guys in a way that is so nuanced and multidimensional that I find myself feeling sorrow or compassion for them…and I am thrilled for the bad guys that over the course of a series grow, change, and end up being one of the good guys!”

See you next week!

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