Books

by Grady Hendrix Louise pulled into the driveway and got out. Her rental car looked too bright and blue next to the dry front yard. The camellia bushes on either side of the front step looked withered. The windows were dirty, their screens blurry with grime. Dad hadn’t put in the storm windows yet, which

Ken Follett’s next novel will be published on September 26, 2023. It will be titled “The Armor of Light“ and will conclude the eight-volume Kingsbridge series that follows 1,000 years of Western civilization, from “Ethelred the Unready to the election of President Obama.” Readers will follow a group of linked families, starting in the fictional

The books community on Reddit has released their list of the best books of 2022. The books were chosen by individual threads made for each category: Best Debut, Best Literary Fiction, Best Mystery or Thriller, Best Short Story Collection/Graphic Novel/Poetry, Best Science Fiction, Best Fantasy, Best LitRPG, Best YA, Best Romance, Best Horror, and Best

During small talk not long after meeting someone new, inevitably the question “So what do you do?” comes up. When I tell them I’m a librarian, more questions follow. Usually the same ones over and over, such as, “Do people still use libraries?” or “Aren’t you worried about becoming irrelevant?” or “Are you worried about

Banning books has been around since approximately one minute after books themselves. Even if you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years — and let’s face it, who hasn’t in a lot of ways — you’ve probably heard something about the many brouhahas surrounding the availability of literature in local and school

The Scrabble dictionary has been updated for the first time since 2018, and it includes 500 new words — though Scrabble won’t reveal what every one is, telling players to hunt through the new dictionary to find them all. They’ve also removed several hundred slurs and other offensive words, so that they can’t be played

Writing Tips has compiled data from the most popular Google searches based in the USA beginning with “how to pronounce”. Here are the ten words words Americans found the most difficulty pronouncing in 2022. how to pronounce acai (18,000 searches) how to pronounce nguyen (15,000 searches) how to pronounce gyro (15,000 searches) how to pronounce

by Jesse Q Sutanto Vera Wong Zhuzhu, age sixty, is a pig, but she really should have been born a rooster. We are, of course, referring to Chinese horoscopes. Vera Wong is a human woman, thank you very much, but roosters have nothing on her. Every morning, at exactly four thirty, Vera’s eyelids snap open like

One of the pretty consistent staples of a cozy mystery is that the amateur sleuth also has a day job. By that, I mean their detective work is pretty much a hobby. It’s not even a side hustle, since they don’t get paid after they solve the mysteries. Which is a bit disheartening if you

Late last summer, the official email notifying me of my library’s temporary closure for renovations found me capital-D Devastated. Around this time last year, I sat in the breakfast nook pondering the magic of libraries and, more specifically, my deep appreciation for my local branch with the pink camellias outside. There, I browsed and borrowed

Regardless of whether you read ten or 100 books a year, you probably try to keep a record of the books you’ve made your way through. Over the years, many of us have used digital apps for this (often Goodreads, but others like StoryGraph have been gaining more and more support), but have you considered

Who’s ready to take a Judy Blume character quiz? Judy Blume books have been there for me at every age of my life. In elementary school, I laughed as my mom read Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing out loud to me and my sister. I related to Margaret’s quest to discover who she is

It’s a new year, meaning that the groups and individuals creating hell for public educators will be developing their new plans for continued “work.” What began as an attack on “Critical Race Theory” in 2021 — spearheaded by the right-wing darling Christopher Rufo — has morphed into disdain for other categories of teaching and books,

In a fantastic collaboration between two top-notch institutions working against censorship and book bans, high school students across the country are invited to apply to and take part in the Freedom to Read Advocacy Institute. Brooklyn Public Library–named Librarians of the Year from Library Journal for their Books Unbanned program–and PEN America–a leader in tracking

The official trailer for Lionsgate’s Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret adaptation has been released. The new movie is based on Judy Blume’s iconic coming-of-age novel with the same name that follows preteen Margaret Simon as she contends with a new school and longings to fit in. The trailer shows Margaret (played by Abby

Flatiron Books publisher of Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo Wealth. Power. Murder. Magic. Alex Stern is back and the Ivy League is going straight to hell in this sequel to Ninth House, the smash bestseller by Leigh Bardugo. Thick with history and packed with Bardugo’s signature twists, Hell Bent brings to life an intricate world

In addition to a list of the Most Anticipated 2023 horror releases, Goodreads has also released a Most Anticipated list for Science Fiction and Fantasy. They note that 2023 will be a great year for speculative reading, with a mix of releases of very buzzy books and those by popular authors, like Salmon Rushdie, Chloe

While Merriam-Webster declared 2022 the year of “gaslighting,” hundreds of linguistic scholars from the American Dialect Society voted in the suffix “-ussy” as their word of the year. First, there was “bussy,” a portmanteau of “boy” and “pussy”. It was added to Urban Dictionary in 2007, and that entry claims it’s been around in LGBTQ

In 2015, Alex Gino published George, the story of a transgender 4th grade girl learning to accept herself and to come out to her loved ones. In 2021, to remedy their mistake of deadnaming the main character, Gino re-released the book as Melissa. Regardless of title, Melissa has made the American Librarian Association’s top ten

Self-help has been a booming genre for adults for decades, with books available that can teach us everything from how to boost our self-esteem, overcome addiction, and deal with mental illness to how to actualise our wildest dreams. Adults often buy self-help when we reach a turning point in our lives, or find ourselves in

Known for his novels exploring the wintry, rural lands of the Northeast including Sweet Hereafter and Affliction, as well as his award-winning work Cloudsplitter, which followed the life of abolitionist John Brown, author Russell Banks was considered by many to follow in the footsteps of other American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman.

Anytime I’m having trouble focusing on reading, I love to pick up a cozy fantasy book to reset. They’re just pure joy in book form. If you’re not familiar with the genre, welcome to your new favorite fantasy sub-genre. The concept was relatively new to me as well, though I quickly realized these sorts of

It’s 2023, horror fans! Which means we have a whole new year of horror books to look forward to reading. January is starting off with a bang with a bunch of great new horror novels to choose from. Seriously, these books are a great way to start off a whole year of horror. Will you

Book censorship in school libraries continues to rise. A Texas school district pulled 41 titles from the shelves, including the Bible, to put them under further review. Missouri passed a bill that makes any text with “visual depictions” of “graphic material” illegal to have available in schools. This has caused the removal of many graphic

At the start of a new year, I’m always hopeful — nay, overzealous and unhinged — about how many books I can actually read in the whole year. But it’s so much fun to flip the page, start brand-new, and dive right into the challenge! And when I get behind on my reading goals, reading

Paperbacks are the ideal book format for me. There’s no screen glare. There’s no figuring out how or where to store a dust jacket. There’s simply a flexible binding and cover that allow for folding and curling pages. I know — many of you likely flinched at the idea, and that’s fine. You can keep

For a while, I thought I was an expert at recognising by the cover alone if a book was a young adult novel or a novel for adults. Then, one day, I picked up an audiobook I was absolutely convinced was YA, but got to such steamy scenes, that I had to stop in my

On the two year anniversary of the day when right-wing terrorist radicals attempted to overthrow American democracy, it seems fitting to talk a little bit about the groups across the country working to ensure democracy remains a fundamental right for every single person in this country. We’re deep into the second year of seeing books

Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting — who both starred in 1968’s Romeo and Juliet when they were 15 and 16, respectively — have sued Paramount Pictures for more than $500 million. The suit, filed Tuesday in the L.A. County Superior Court, alleges sexual abuse, harassment, and fraud. It comes as a result of the circumstances