February 14, 2026

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

Happy Valentine’s Day! Lots of Wuthering Heights fans chimed in last week – 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!

I'd have called it the "Carolyn Keene Catalog," personally.

Were you the type of kid who loved to read, and were into mysteries, you’re probably familiar with Nancy Drew – the clever and crafty teen detective star of books such as The Mystery at Lilac Inn, The Ghost of Blackwood Hall, or The Clue in the Crumbling Wall. She’s been around since the 1930s, and has gone through a number of different iterations. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, there was the edgier, more mature series The Nancy Drew Files. More recently, Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew was a line aimed at younger readers. There’s a lot of Nancy Drew out there and, frankly, it’s a bit of a mess to keep track of.

Enter the Nancy Drew Collection on the Open Library. It’s a catalog entry of nearly every Nancy Drew book published. Some of them (like the ones now in the public domain) are free to read online. For others, the catalog can help you hunt them down at a library near you. The collection is a product of Open Library volunteers, spearheaded by Emily Wilson, a librarian based in Tokyo. She grew up on a farm in rural Canada, and she credits the Nancy Drew stories for showing her new horizon, and expanding “what’s possible.” And so, when she saw that there was no easy access point for people searching for Nancy Drew books in the Open Library, she knew she had to start putting this collection together.

The Open Library, an offshoot of the Internet Archive, faced uncertainty in 2024 over copyright laws.
Beth LaBerge/KQED

The Open Library is an online platform that aims to have a record of every book published. It’s an off-shoot of the Internet Archive, which lost a lawsuit a few years ago for violating publishers’ copyrights. But Elizabeth Mays, the communications lead at the Open Library, tells me that the platform is less about reading books on the platform and more about people exploring books they want to read – or discovering books they’ve never heard of.

For folks unfamiliar with this kind of work, let me tell you, it’s a pain. But Wilson said it was an easy sell to recruit volunteers to help. “They’re really interested in being detectives themselves, detectives of information, and carefully reviewing all of these different clues and finding the trail.”

If you had a sec to peruse the catalog, did it jog any memories for you? Were you a certified Nancy Drew devotee? Have you tried to pass on the bug to future generations? Let us know – bookoftheday@npr.org. And fellas, before you ask – you can find The Hardy Boys catalog, here.

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TBR Pile

For me, there are few writers whose names come up at literal dinner-table conversations as much as Michael Pollan. His dissections of what we eat and how are always fascinating. His latest book, on the light and breezy topic of human consciousness, is included in this week's The Book Ahead.

Book covers of: Autobiography of Cotton, by Cristina Rivera Garza, translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney; Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race, from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson, by Andrew S. Curran; A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness, by Michael Pollan; I Give You My Silence, by Mario Vargas Llosa, translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West; Kin, by Tayari Jones; Brawler, by Lauren Groff

NPR

Sometimes, there just isn’t a solution. That’s the thesis of Dizzy, a memoir about chronic illness by Rachel Weaver. The book pushes back against the clean and tidy “restitution narratives” of healing. In this review, critic Maureen Corrigan compares the book to Robinson Crusoe: “Year after year goes by; occasionally, rescue appears on the horizon in the form of an ear, nose and throat specialist, acupuncturist, neurologist, physical therapist, ophthalmologist, chiropractic integrative healer. Many of these human vessels of hope end up dismissing Weaver with an all-purpose diagnosis of ‘just too much stress.’”

The fine folks at NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour had me on to talk about our favorite book-to-film adaptations. For me it was a coin toss between Starship Troopers and Brokeback Mountain. Find out which one I ended up going with, here.

Mailbag!

And speaking of book-to-film adaptations, how was “Wuthering Heights”? I’m assuming some of you saw it last night, right? Here’s what you all had to say about reading the book now.

Lauren K. wrote: “After my low pressure book club read Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet, we were compelled to keep the adaptation train a'chuggin' and decided to read Wuthering Heights in anticipation of the movie. Despite being an English major two times over (a B.A. and a M.A.), I have never read Wuthering Heights and am really looking forward to coming to the classic with little more than an abundant appreciation for Pat Benatar's 1980 song ‘Wuthering Heights.’”

Juliane M. wrote: “I have been reading about the recent frenzy over Wuthering Heights, and I will not be participating. I read it for the first time several years ago and found it to be one of the most depressing books I had ever read. To my mind, it is not really a love story. But, as they say, to each his own. And by the way, my book group (now disbanded) did attempt American Prometheus, but I don't think many of us got very far.”

Suzanne H. wrote: “My first encounter was the movie remake with Anna Calder-Marshall and Timothy Dalton. He became Heathcliff for me. Then I read the book, then I watched Sir Laurence play the role. Timothy remains my Heathcliff.”

See you next week!

P.S., if a friend sent you this newsletter and you want to sign up, the place to do it is npr.org/newsletter/books. :)

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