The return of the reader as tastemaker

For years, literary taste was often imagined as something that travelled downwards. Review sections, prize lists, critics, established media, and publishing gatekeepers shaped the conversation, and readers received it. That version was never entirely true, but it held enough power to feel convincing.

Now the flow looks messier, faster, and far more interesting.

Readers are not just participating in book culture. They are actively shaping it. In many cases, they are driving it.

The BookTok canon is getting older, and that is not an accident

There is a particular kind of TikTok video that makes me laugh and then immediately makes me suspicious. You know the one. Someone holds up a book that looks like it could do structural work in a small house, says they were “not prepared”, and then cuts to a string of reactions that suggest the novel has personally rearranged their internal organs.

Sometimes it is a brand new release. Increasingly, it is not.

Reading in the gaps: Why we return to books that broke us

There are books we finish and put down, and for a while, we are unable to speak. These are books that pull the air from our lungs. That leave us raw, like skin rubbed thin. And yet, somehow, we return to them.

Not immediately, of course. Often, we need time. Months. Years. Distance to recover from the ache they left behind. But they are on our minds, and the pull is there. Like gravity drawing us back to earth.

The annotated life: Why marginalia is back in style

Marginalia, you either love it or hate it. Once considered the mark of a disrespectful reader, someone scribbling on the pristine pages of novels, marginalia has returned with an unexpected flourish.

Instagram is full of annotated pages, complete with underlines, post-its, and impassioned scribbles. On TikTok, readers film themselves reacting in real time, pen in hand. Even published authors are weighing in, sharing how marginal notes shaped their early reading lives.