Best source of short blurbs of newly released books?

December 20, 2023 9:25 AM

I like flipping through lists of books with one-two paragraph descriptions to see what I want to read yet. Something like gizmodo's or the New York Times top books of the year they are publishing now. However, I want more. Are there other sites that publish something like this weekly? I am mainly interested in new fiction and science fiction.
posted by hermanubis to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

Best answer: There's Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews (which is twice monthly, not weekly, but reviews a huge percentage of the commercially published fiction that comes out); if you have a local public library, they might already have a subscription to one or both.

You might also be interested in LitHub's seasonal lists, like their most anticipated of the year or their summer reading list. (More lit fic, less science fiction.)

Tor.com has very good coverage of what's new in science fiction (and they don't exclusively cover Tor books, though obviously their coverage does lean in that direction.)
posted by Jeanne at 10:02 AM on December 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Seconding Kirkus Reviews.
posted by wicked_sassy at 10:19 AM on December 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Emily C. Hughes has a website with a thorough list of blurbs for new horror, which she used to publish on the Tor Nightfire website. It has some overlap with SF/F.

It's not weekly, but Largehearted Boy continues to maintain annual 'meta' lists like "Essential and Interesting 'Best of 2023' Book Lists."
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:36 AM on December 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Bookmarks aggregates book reviews and provides snippets and then links to the full review.
posted by tofu_crouton at 1:08 PM on December 20, 2023

Best answer: The Fantastic Fiction website has a science fiction section.
posted by Zeedog at 9:49 AM on December 21, 2023