PSA: you can read the short story that inspired Wicker—a modern fable as sweet as it is horny—for $1.99. We didn’t get paid to tell you that, we’re just so happy the ladies finally have an alternative to choosing the bear.

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Elon Musk’s “historically accurate” The Odyssey is not it.

As threatened, Grok posted the first installment of its “historically accurate,” AI-generated version of The Odyssey, created in partnership with Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker.

Here is my review of the seven-minute episode: it is technologically impressive and artistically bankrupt. And if I were Christopher Nolan, I’d be thrilled that Musk decided to show this off.

First of all, historical accuracy gets thrown overboard from the jump, as our narration (which lasts for the first minute or so then disappears completely), is in English. The characters, of whom we learn almost nothing and who emote with video game cut-scene levels of nuance, seem lifted out of a Game of Thrones establishing shot, with grime, wet hair, and a few suspiciously Northern European visages apparently satisfying Musk’s vision of what The Odyssey, a 3000-year-old myth with sorceresses and one-eyed giants, was “really” like.

Outside of a “hey, that looks pretty good” initial reaction, the clip is astonishingly boring, where it isn’t confusing and muddled. Why are the Greeks going to Troy? “Revenge!” they chant. Huh? Who are these people in cut-scene flashbacks, and what are they doing? Some generic sword-training that means…something.

If you had not read The Odyssey, or at least a Wikipedia plot summary of it, you would have absolutely no idea why any of this is happening. But that would be okay, because you would probably have quit watching after ninety seconds or so of this soulless, vain, own-goal of non-art making.

I have no idea how resource-intensive this was to make, though I suspect it was considerably more than a “hey Grok, make me a seven-minute first episode of a historically accurate The Odyssey.” Musk has a lot professionally and personally at stake that this is as good as it can be.

• As an example of the movie-quality realism that a spared-no-expense demo can achieve, it is impressive.
• I would wager that if you showed this to someone seven years ago, they wouldn’t clock that these aren’t real actors and possibly real settings (or at least studio-lot recreations of real settings).

But it doesn’t matter how impressive the technology looked because what it made wasn’t worth looking at. — JO

The actual biggest book of 2026

Today is basically Black Friday for the publishing industry, as the long-awaited sixth book in Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series hits shelves.

• A Court of Splintered Harmony arrives with a four-million-copy first print run—one of the largest I’ve seen in nearly 20 years of covering the industry—and is projected to reverse the direction of publisher Bloomsbury’s financial trajectory.
• The book introduces The Valkyrie Cycle, a new series-within-the-series, and is meant to be read as one story with A Court of Forgotten Melody (coming January 12) and the as-yet-unannounced eighth (and final book) ACOTAR book.

Other notable releases:

• A doorstopper campus novel 15 years in the making
• Fathers and sons, man. A celebrated novelist reflects on a complex relationship.
• A noted filmmaker makes their fiction debut with a horror story about what happens on the other side of our screens.
• What could be more terrifying than a bad book?
• A celebrated poet shares diary entries from the year after she died and was resuscitated.

More of the week’s most interesting new books.

Unlock our New Release Index to find and track your next great reads when you join All Access. — RJS

Libby’s most popular paranormal romance

October is not only for straight-up horror books; it’s for spooky romances, too, and Libby has shared a list of the most popular paranormal romances on the library app.

Naturally, there’s the modern sparkly vampire classic by Stephenie Meyer, but there’s also a dystopian YA, a cozy, witchy romance with found family, and a vampire/werewolf pairing that gets “knotty,” if you know what I mean.

The books are a mix of cozy and steamy, YA and adult romances, so make sure you double-check lest you unintentionally wind up with a romance that is more grown than you intended.

Libby’s most popular paranormal romances:

• Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi: In this dystopian YA novel, the world is crumbling around Juliette, whose power is feared by The Reestablishment. With this power, she can either bend to their will or fight back on behalf of the people.

• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer: You know Twilight! Even if you haven’t read it, you probably know the gist of it: teen Bella Swan moves to a small town in the Pacific Northwest and falls in love with Edward the vampire. If you’ve ever been curious about the book, this is the perfect season to see what it’s about.

• Bride by Ali Hazelwood: STEMinist baddie Ali Hazelwood dips her toes into an enemies-to-lovers style vampyre/werewolf romance that borrows a bit from the Omegaverse genre (iykyk). Misery Lark, the only daughter of a powerful vampyre, agrees to a marriage of convenience to uphold an alliance.

• The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna: I really loved to see how much this novel made waves upon release (it’s got more than 400k ratings on Goodreads!). It’s a cozy, UK-based romance that follows Mika Moon, an isolated witch, in need of connection.

• The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones by Lex Croucher: This queer YA dark academia romance has The Secret History teas. In it, former childhood besties end up going to the same magical boarding school…and end up as enemies contending with the school’s dark secrets. —EE

The king of horror’s most popular book

A horror story about the worst seasonal gig ever.

After losing his job at a swanky private school in Vermont, Jack Torrance moves with his wife Wendy and their five-year-old son Danny to a remote mountain in the Colorado Rockies, where he will serve as the winter caretaker of the storied Overlook Hotel.

You probably know what happens next: awakened by young Danny’s extrasensory powers, the Overlook terrorizes the young family with ghosts, topiary bushes come to life, and vibes so bad that they reactivate the symptoms of Jack’s alcoholism even though there’s nary a drop of the juice anywhere on the premises.

• King’s third book and his first hardcover bestseller, The Shining has sold more than 10 million copies since it was first published nearly 50 years ago and remains the author’s most popular work with more than 1.7 million Goodreads ratings.

New York Times canon editor and lifelong King fan Gilbert Cruz joined us on Zero to Well-Read for a conversation about The Shining‘s impact and enduring appeal. Find it on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find podcasts.

A pair of perfectly adaptable short stories

Image via Alex Litvin on Unsplash

Short stories are big business in Hollywood, where studios are shelling out major cash for unpublished works.

Here are two I’d love to see on screen:

“A Temporary Matter” by Jhumpa Lahiri

When the young couple at the heart of the opening story in Lahiri’s Pulitzer-winning debut collection receives notice that their power will go out for one hour on each of the next five nights, they decide to make the best of it. By candlelight on the first night, they agree to confess something they’ve never told each other.

What begins as an exercise in intimacy transforms over the following nights into an excavation of the secrets they’ve kept and a reckoning with the impact of a recent tragedy they suffered. Quiet, poignant, and unexpected (also my personal favorite short story of all time), this would be perfect fodder for director Kelly Reichardt.

“Can Only Houses Be Haunted?” by Marie-Helene Bertino

A couple whose marriage is on the rocks spend what is supposed to be a romantic weekend in upstate New York, where they get into their shit and unknowingly buy a crate of haunted peaches. Sounds weird, I know, but Bertino makes it work, bringing humor and a shrugging sense of wonder to her observations about human folly and frailty. (Find this story in Bertino’s 2025 collection, Exit Zero.)

There are a lot of ways a story so tonally surprising could go awry. I’d love to see it in the hands of Widow’s Bay creator Katie Dippold.

While we’re talking short stories, please, studios, I beg of you, pick up George Saunders’s Liberation Day, and don’t let Deesha Philyaw’s Secret Lives of Church Ladies die in development hell. — RJS

A bookseller recommends books set in bookstores

Kim van Alkemade is the author of Upstate, out today from William Morrow. Below, she recommends three books set in bookstores that get the book business right.

As a bookseller, while fictional bookstores can inspire romance and conjure magic, I especially appreciate books that reflect the realities of the business. Here are three of my favorites:

Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore by Char Adams

What role do bookstores play in a community, and how is a community reflected in its bookstore? Spanning 1834 to the present, Adams offers a fascinating perspective on American history through this in-depth exploration of how Black-owned bookstores have served as touchstones of entrepreneurship, identity, and activism. I especially loved the inquisitive and insightful details about the myriad ways Black-owned bookstores anchor and inspire the various communities in which they operate. A must-read for booksellers!

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

There is magic at work in Erdrich’s bookstore novel, but the story encompasses wider issues of social justice, incarceration, rehabilitation, and the legacy of settler colonialism. When COVID-19 shutters the store, the booksellers who have found redemption within its walls bridge the isolation of lockdown through the books they deliver to their loyal customers. Gorgeously written, this novel is a testament to the transformative power of books and the people devoted to putting them in the hands that need them most.

The Bookshop of Yesterdays by Amy Meyerson

A beloved uncle who once delighted his niece with treasure hunts among the shelves of his quirky bookshop dies, leaving his niece ownership of the financially struggling bookshop—as well as a series of clues to her true identity. Romance and revelations are balanced by careful attention to the challenges of running a bookstore as the niece sets out to save her shop’s place as the beating heart of a neighborhood. A beautiful novel that shows how creative solutions enable independent bookstores to exist in our world of drone-delivered distractions.

Zadie Smith, born October 25, 1975

Did you know? Two of Zadie Smith’s brothers are rappers.

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Written by Rebecca Schinsky, Jeff O’Neal, Erica Ezeifedi, and Danika Ellis. Thanks to Vanessa Diaz for copy editing.

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