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A couple months ago (or was it a thousand years? Hard to say. Is it the second of third Blurnsday of Gnudsgary?) my Twitter timeline blew up with excitement (a nice change after the trashfire the was 2020 and early 2021) over a teaser for an anime called Tokyo Babylon 2021. As someone who’s come to manga and anime a bit later in life for a variety of reasons, I’ve spent most of my time focused on newer books (listen, The Way of the House Husband is perfect and I will not hear a word spoken against Tetsu and my disaster muppet sons in Given are perfect....

Charles’ books have oodles of atmosphere, brilliant representation and enough plot to populate a library. She’s also brilliant on social media (her Goodreads reviews are my new North Star) and has published over 30 books, all good enough to knock every other title off your to-read list. Sound good but not sure where to begin? I’m currently marathoning my way through everything Charles has ever written and these are my top three recommendations to get you started....

Valentine De Landro is an illustrator, artist, and designer who has been working in comics for years, creating art for superhero comic books with Marvel and DC, other licensed properties like Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, and now his own creator-owned comic with Kelly Sue DeConnick. Not sure where to start with his work? We’ve got you covered! I first discovered De Landro through Bitch Planet, the feminist sci-fi prison colony series he co-created with Kelly Sue DeConnick in 2014, and I would recommend you start there....

Using my powers of recollection, I have compiled a list of some of the novels I read as a Sonlight student. There are obvious gaps in my memory, including entire units. Over the years, Sonlight’s curriculum has changed to accommodate different authors and subjects. The books I’ve included are not all of the books in the curriculum, current or former, but merely a selection based on my childhood memory. My family personally stopped using Sonlight when I was 11, which is when more diverse authors are included in the fiction portion of the curriculum....

On a steamy day in June, Jackson is stuck delivering food for UberEats. He’s barely slept because he was up all night driving for regular Uber and accepting jobs on TaskRabbit; all he wants to do is pay off his student loans. He’s about to call it quits for the day when Jamie appears at the door to collect her $19.99 worth of Chinese food. He swoons and fears he may faint from exhaustion combined with swooning....

“And so it seems obvious that food should play a big role in any love story, but somehow it’s often left out of romance novels. The star-crossed characters meet for a dinner, but you rarely hear what they eat. Or they’re so caught up in whatever fantastic plot of events will eventually seal their affections that they seem to forget to eat at all. Between sex scenes, can’t a bodice-ripper let its heroine bust out of her bodice thanks to a nice meal for a change?...

Slow sci-fi can be a peaceful read between more action-packed books, or can give you the chance to grapple with a futuristic or otherworldly concept on multiple levels. Don’t be fooled — slow doesn’t mean shallow, and sometimes thoughtful sci-fi can give the horrors of a dystopia more time to develop, really drawing back before landing that gut punch. Here are some lower-action, thoughtful sci-fi reads to add to your TBR pile....

So what makes a space fantasy comic a space fantasy comic? Essentially, it’s a blending of science fiction and fantasy, though since I’m specifically referring to space fantasy rather than science fantasy, I’ll also be focusing mainly on comics and graphic novels set in an outer space / alien setting that also utilize magic or the supernatural. As for what fits into that genre, it can be a bit up to interpretation....

When I think about why I haven’t ever joined an actual book club myself, I can come up with all kinds of reasons. I have social anxiety. I don’t like debate, or feeling obligated to entertain the opinions of people I don’t know well. Books are personal for me, and sometimes I don’t like to discuss them at all. All of these things are true, and yet, I don’t have a particularly negative opinion of book clubs....

Every so often, however, a very special book—an extraordinary book—comes along, and a Rioter will choose to spend a little more time with it, not to give it a seal of approval or disapproval as such, but because we think it’s important. It may be important because it isn’t what it seems to be and ignites an important debate we as a society should have had long ago. Sometimes it’s because said book touches on current events in some way, even if that way is wearing a cape and tights and flying around in 1946....

Maybe you wouldn’t want to live in the many fantastical locations you find in comics, but these places offer endless opportunities for enrichment and enjoyment. You might be familiar with a lot of the places mentioned here, but you’ve probably never considered them from a tourist’s perspective. That’s what I’d like to do today: run down the attractions each area boasts so you can dream of your perfect, impossible vacation....

For years, Bernardini used his insider knowledge as a rights coordinator for Simon & Schuster UK in a phishing scheme. He impersonated publishing professionals by using things like small changes in email addresses and industry shorthand. Over five years, he targeted well-known authors, debut authors, and authors of lesser-known works alike with the intention of stealing their unpublished manuscripts. The FBI, who arrested Bernardini, reported that he had gotten access to hundreds of unpublished manuscripts by impersonating and defrauding hundreds of people within the publishing industry....

In this memoir-in-essays full of spot-on observations about home, work, and creative life, acclaimed essayist Mary Laura Philpott takes on the conflicting pressures of modern adulthood with wit and heart. She offers up her own stories to show that identity crises don’t happen just once or only at midlife; reassures us that small, recurring personal re-inventions are both normal and necessary; and advises that if you’re going to faint, you should get low to the ground first....

But first, a bit of background on what it actually means to be Grisha, and the many skills you could come to possess as members of the Ravkan Second Army. According to Grisha lore, the powers practiced by Grisha aren’t magic, they’re part of something called the Small Science. It’s a way of manipulating matter down to its smallest and most basic forms. Nothing can be created from nothing, but catalysts, such as combustible elements in the air, can be accessed by Grisha....

Choosing the best YA books of all time (and only 25 of them!) is certainly a daunting task. I’m not going to try to define the word best, because honestly there is no way to write a list like this that isn’t highly subjective. But I will define YA as books where the characters are teenagers that were published specifically for teenage readers; even if publishers know full well adults will be reading them too....

But while innovative horror might feel new, it totally isn’t. Horror as a genre has been growing, changing, and influencing our culture for centuries. From early Victorian literature to new contemporary classics, here are the 25 most influential horror books of all time. These books make the list for the way they’ve redefined what horror means, opened up the doors to explore new possibilities, and influenced other authors to do the same....

But sometimes I need a breath of fresh air and to see what people from other corners of the internet are reading. So here comes Reddit, which I can’t decide is my savior or nemesis, but goodness can I kill an afternoon going down a thread. I love seeing what sort of niche books people are reading and sometimes get a great Reddit book recommendation out of it (which I’ll get to reading…eventually)....

If, like me, you’re not a natural athlete and find it difficult to get into the running mindset, you might find some inspiration in this collection of running-themed fiction and non-fiction. Alternatively, you might need a bit of support and reassurance by reading words from slower, less fit, and less “natural” runners. I know I do. Wherever you are in your running journey, I hope these books for reluctant runners help you stay the course....

—Aurora Lydia Dominguez —Jamie Canavés —Megan Mabee —Casey Stepaniuk —Mara Franzen —Susie Dumond —Jessica Pryde —Rachel Brittain —Ashley Holstrom —Christine Ro —Steph Auteri —Emily Polson

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t really matter what you decide; with these Marvel costumes, you can’t go wrong. America Chavez/Miss America This is a lamentable lack of America Chavez costumes, so we need to rectify that with the easiest of easy DIYs. Just grab one of these blue star shirts from The Monogram Life Co. Pair it with some shorts and a jean jacket and boom, you’re good to go....