What We Liked The music: If you lived through the ’80s, the techno beat and the song choice immediately took you back to neon, swoopy bangs, and pegged jeans. What a decade. So much synthesizer. So. Much. The titles do a great job of keeping pace in both color palette and font choice, creating a whole ambiance that leaves no doubt as to when we are. Diana: Did you see that kick?...
Years later, I ended up moving to a different part of the industry. I have been reviewing science fiction, horror, and fantasy books for Publishers Weekly for three years now. It’s my regular reviewing gig, and I get assigned two books in a month. My reviews, though unattributed, have appeared in many front and back covers. I’ve reviewed authors famous and less known, getting the first dibs on upcoming releases....
Who is Doctor Strange? Stephen Strange is a sorcerer living in the Sanctum Sanctorum, a sprawling mansion filled with mystical artifacts located in New York City’s Greenwich Village. When not saving the world, he is a sort of consultant for occult cases including demonic possession. Cool. What’s his backstory? Stephen Strange was an extremely talented but arrogant surgeon who focused on healing patients who could pay (in the movie this was changed to imply that he worked in research to the expense of saving individual patients)....
Picture Books for Adults Picture books for adults? Sure. Perhaps most famous is Adam Mansbach’s Go the Fuck to Sleep which was popularly read by Samuel L. Jackson to the delight of many. Beyond that are other humorous stories, parodies, and more that make up the catalog of picture books for adults. In fact, we even compiled a list of picture books for adults. Could you read Go the Fuck to Sleep and its spin-offs, You Have to Fucking Eat and Fuck, Now There Are Two of You to your kids?...
One of those tweets was quickly picked up by a Twitter account notorious for reposting content to its right-wing following and encouraging them to harass the person in question. This account was the reason behind the removal of a 3rd grade teacher from her classroom in the fall because she shared LGBTQ+ books on her personal TikTok account available to her students (she was later reinstated). The response was swift and immediate....
The best headline ever written was on December 9, 2011, in The Globe and Mail: “Stylish but illegal monkey found roaming Toronto IKEA.” The article is now behind a paywall, but the story was also published in Smithsonian Magazine the following day, with a nearly identical headline. In short, an 8-month-old rhesus macaque was found in the parking lot of a Toronto IKEA wearing a shearling coat. Local animal services seized the monkey and fined its owner for illegal possession; multiple parody Twitter accounts sprang up; and everyone was left wondering what on earth had led to this moment....
I know I was not alone in the wake of the 2016 election in feeling the desire to do something, anything to protest the results. Many people in the days, weeks, and months following the election made lists of organizations to boycott and began brainstorming various big and small ways to make their discontent known. Money talks in this country, as much as we maybe wish it didn’t, and if companies suddenly start to lose a lot of money, it is possible to make them listen....
My introduction to Agatha Christie started with The Seven Dials Mystery, one of her more underrated books, in which a group of people gather together to decide to get someone to wake up on time, only to find that person dead instead. After reading through that book, I passed it to all my friends and we made a pact to each borrow an Agatha Christie with our limited borrowing capabilities and all read them before they were all due....
The best YA deals of the day, sponsored by Morrighan: The Beginnings of the Remnant Universe by Mary E. Pearson.
Welcome to Finale, the final book in Stephanie Garber’s #1 New York Times bestselling Caraval series! It’s been two months since the Fates were freed from a deck of cards, two months since Legend claimed the throne for his own, and two months since Tella discovered the boy she fell in love with doesn’t really exist. Tella must decide if she’s going to trust Legend. After uncovering a secret, Scarlett will need to do the impossible....
The tragedy of the Titanic is a YA dream plot! The true story is majestic, emotional, hubristic: it is the total dope package for the IRL YA brain. Now, happily, young adult books about Titanic are as prolific as barnacles on the sunken wrecked hull of that ghost ship of dreams. Choose your own YA Titanic subgenre adventure including stories of survival after the tragedy Women and Children First, vampires Unsinkable Vampire or historic-dress The Time Traveling Fashionista On Board The Titanic....
Spoilers to follow, friends! You have been warned. ISTJ – The Inspector: Stannis Baratheon People with this personality type can often appear intimidating at first glance because of their seriousness, strict adherence to rules, and dedication to hard work and responsibility. ISTJs are highly intellectual and analytical. Stannis Baratheon is a classic ISTJ character because he embodies all of these characteristics as a no-nonsense lover of rules, tradition, and hard work....
A couple of interesting facts I learned this year got me thinking about franchise and tie-in novels. First: R.L. Stine, under his Jovial Bob Stine name, published the Space Balls novelization in the ’80s, and Ann M. Martin, beloved Baby-Sitters Club author, was behind a Clue tie-in (yes, as in “flames on the side of my face,” the perfect ’80s film). Film novelizations for tweens and teens seem to have petered out over the last couple of decades; tie-in and franchise works, though, seem to be publishing steady as ever....
With this setup, the director reports to the village board with issues and hears from the village board with issues of relevance to the department. With this setup, it is also easy for books to suddenly disappear from shelves if someone on the village board decides they don’t like it. That is exactly what happened in June this year, when a book that has made the rounds across censorship groups caught the attention of Village Board member Ed Tiesenga....
There were a lot of conversations happening at RWA, including talks about diversity and inclusion—a hot topic in all genres, but a surprisingly contentious one in romance. This came to a head at the ceremony for the RITA awards, RWA’s nearly 40-year tradition of celebrating the best in romance by category. If you aren’t familiar with that particular conversation, let’s talk about the very white history of the RITA awards:...
So, just what is there to do if you’re a time-traveling superhero who has never read A Sound of Thunder? Consider some of the following options before you plan your next journey to the past/get kicked back a few centuries by a malevolent supervillain. Punch Your Way Home In America #1, America Chavez uses a friend’s time machine to cheat on her homework. She ends up shunting herself back to a World War II battlefield by accident....
Kiki’s Delivery Service has always held a soft spot in my heart. This past winter though, I found myself rewatching Kiki’s more than I ever have before, with From Up On Poppy Hill and Whisper of the Heart as close seconds. While this may be related to my brother sharing his HBO account with me, I think it also has to do with how comforting I find the movie. In a Psychology Today article, Jennifer Fayard (2021) discusses why people gravitate towards rewatching something familiar....
That shelf is no more. Self-help books are books. I read them, I catalog them on goodreads, and I go about my life, hopefully with a new skillset or understanding of something. I think we have this idea that self-help is some mushy gushy thing that are only for A Certain Type of Person and that to read them is to admit that you—gasp!—need help on something. I don’t think somebody would be embarrassed to admit they needed to watch a YouTube video to make sure they were putting on their spare tire correctly, or to call a financial manager before making a choice about their IRA, so why is it that as soon as we call it self-help or bind it in a book instead of a blog that we feel squicky about it?...
The first page of the first chapter has a quote that reads: “Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can....
Our ten favorite children’s books about voting range from board books perfect for baby hands to picture books with informative supplementary pages. Ten Children’s Books About Voting For more children’s books that encourage civic participation, check out these activist children’s books and these board books for woke babies.
