Books

I’ve written about my book club for Book Riot before. It’s been one of my favorite things for almost ten years. How our book clubs works, generally, is that each member takes a turn choosing a book. Everyone reads it, and then we meet once a month to discuss that pick. When you choose the book, you lead the discussion. That means, yes, if you choose the book, you ask the questions.  At my book club, each meeting begins with the discussion leader sharing why they chose the book and...

Curious what it looks like to run for school board? Wondering if now is your time to step up and help provide governance for your local education system? Let’s dive in. It’s no secret that school board elections right now are crucial. It’s also no secret that some school board candidates — even in nonpartisan elections — are being funded by right-wing political action committees to infuse the board with specific conservative agendas. Groups like Moms For Liberty run trainings across the country, hoping to get their agenda on the...

Last week, I put together a quiz about identifying sci-fi books based on pixelated versions of their covers. That was entertaining for me to do, and it looks like a lot of people liked taking the quiz, so I decided to do the same thing for famous fantasy books. But this time, to shake things up, I used a Lego Effect Photo Editor to alter the covers. As with the previous post, I tried to pick covers that are recognizable, though some of these have multiple well-known covers. The books...

Nursery rhyme books are a staple of childhood reading for good reason — they’re short and simple to read and remember, but they also carry layers of storytelling that introduce very young children to the ways that stories, rhymes, and language work. Reading nursery rhymes is a great way for parents and caregivers to bond with their little ones; children soon learn the rhythms of these sort-of-poems, sort-of-songs, sort-of-stories, and will quickly have their favourite characters and turns of phrase that they’ll be excited to hear. The spoken-word, interactive nature...

Buckle up, because there is so much fantastic small press nonfiction coming out this fall! Memoirs and graphic memoirs, essay collections, and anthologies, genre-defying hybrid works that blend history, travel writing, science, and more — and all of that is just the beginning. I had to reign myself in, because there are just so many amazing nonfiction books coming in the next few months that I’ve already read and want to shout about, and there are so many more I absolutely cannot wait to get my hands on, and, well,...

I love eating! To me, food is a comfort, and it’s maybe a blessing and a tragedy that I seem to plan everything in my daily routine around meals. When I go on vacation, I wake up thinking about the plan for the day, and when and where we are going to stop for eating. If my travel companions start making plans that seem to forget the fact that we need to eat, I get very confused. We can’t go on a city trip from 10am to 3pm without any...

There were too many times when my mother would catch me reading a book with a flashlight under my sheets, demanding I go to sleep already. I can’t say that romance was ever my go-to genre as I was (ironically) falling in love with reading as a kid. I loved fantasy, mystery, and historical fiction, which I would devour the physical copies of. Some of them are still on my bookshelves, and it’s clear that they were well loved. Romance always felt like that thing that would derail my plans...

Barbara Ehrenreich was an author, journalist, and activist who published more than 20 books, including Nickel and Dimed, which documents several months she spent working the lowest-paying jobs in the U.S.A. and trying to survive on that income. She wrote articles and book reviews for a wide variety of publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, Vogue, TV Guide, The Wall Street Journal, and many more. Ehrenreich passed away September 1st at a hospice in Alexandria, Virginia. Her daughter, Rosa Brooks, has stated it was the...

Banned Books Week is coming, which means that waves of displays in libraries, classrooms, and bookstores are also incoming. We’re already seeing many, and while they are useful for highlighting the reality of censorship across America to those who are not as tapped into the news about it, too many banned books week displays are outdated and do not accurately reflect the reality of censorship right now. Banned Books Week displays continue to rely on older classics that have been historically challenged or removed. But to make a true impact...

Welcome to Book Riot’s September 2022 Horoscopes and Book Recommendations! September and October are two of the biggest months for big, splashy, unputdownable new books. How to choose between all of the amazing new releases? Why, look to the stars, of course! Check out your horoscope below for a glimpse at the month ahead, along with a book recommendation perfect for your sign. BUT FIRST, be ye warned that everyone’s least favorite chaos Muppet, Mercury retrograde, is back in town from September 9 through October 2. Yikes! That means confusion...

What is it to reclaim a word like smut? For readers of romance novels with explicit sex scenes, beloved books have been derided as smut for ages. Scores of romance readers have kept their habits secret, fearing judgment about their intellects, their tastes, even their own sex lives. Reclaiming the word disarms it, making the term a badge of honor rather than an insult. This reclamation within the romance reading community fascinates me. First, it skips over one common defense of romance, namely that stories of relationship arcs are hopeful,...

Nonfiction is great for all kinds of reasons: learning about the world around you, reading from points of view you wouldn’t otherwise have access to, and following timelines of historical events. But for me, it’s all about the weirdest facts nonfiction books can teach me. I love having something outrageous or silly to stick in my pocket once I finish reading a book.  Most evenings, my husband and I go for a walk through the neighborhood, talking about our days and what we’re reading or watching. When I’m in the...

Every once in a while we all need some sweet, low-stakes reads to lift our moods. There are plenty of stories and genres capable of doing that, but there’s something about slice-of-life that stands out. It probably has something to do with the fact that these stories are so quotidian that it’s easy to see ourselves among them, even when they have fantastical elements. Either way, this is a genre that works particularly well with illustrations!  Enter slice-of-life webcomics. I really love reading webcomics. They’re easy to access, and there...

There is not a wrong time to read some great witchy YA books. That said, there is something particularly good about reading new witchy YA books as the seasons begin to shift toward shorter days and nights. Lighting a candle and cracking open the windows to dig into a story about people who have magic powers, who often have cute or terrifying familiars, and who want to change their worlds? Count me in. We’re lucky, too, in that YA continues to offer more and more witchy books that are representative...