Books

“Trauma” has become a bit of a buzzword around the internet. This is the case in part because more and more research and understanding of trauma has come to light, and we’re better articulating the impact of trauma on the body and mind. Trauma is an emotional response to an event; it is not the event itself. Perhaps the easiest way to think of trauma is that the body’s natural fight, flight, or freeze response — which normally is a short lived experience — does not dissipate once the triggering...

It’s the end of another year and that means we’re being treated to another look into the reading life of former President Barack Obama. Like previous years, it’s a diverse mix of titles and includes both fiction and nonfiction. This year includes a powerful graphic memoir as well. Of little surprise, Obama’s first pick is one that might be pretty familiar to him: Michelle’s The Light We Carry. The rest of the titles on the list include: Today In Books Newsletter Sign up to Today In Books to receive daily...

Barnes & Noble has a plan to open 30 stores in 2023, making the bookseller the leader in what’s being called a big-box revival. This expansion comes after more than a decade of shrinking its number in response to competition from Amazon. There are even a couple of the new stores being opened in the Boston area that are, perhaps fittingly, going to be in locations previously occupied by Amazon Books. Expansion this size is possible because of a strengthened interest in books and reading that came as a result...

Granbury Independent School District superintendent Jeremy Glenn was recorded telling librarians in the North Texas libraries under his purview to remove books that dealt with “transgender, LGBTQ and… sexuality.” In the leaked recording, he’s heard saying “I acknowledge that there are men that think they’re women and there are women that think they’re men. I don’t have any issues with what people want to believe, but there’s no place for it in our libraries.” The ACLU filed a complaint in July on the basis that his orders violate Title IX, a...

2022 has been a wild ride. As I reflect back on the year, it seems like 2022 has been filled with truly scary moments. But at least the horror books of this year have been good scary and not fear-for-the-future-of-humanity scary. Horror novels, as always, remain a great way to escape from the terrors of real life. And as real life continues to be full of frustrating (at best) and horrifying (at worst) moments, I continue to be thankful for all the good horror fiction coming out year after year....

New York City is the literary capital of the country, from the abundance of publishing houses based there to the vibrant writing culture. It also has some of the largest public libraries in the United States. We’ve seen a lot of discussion in the past few months of the best books of the year as well as the bestselling books of the year. But what about the most borrowed books of the year? New York City’s libraries have released their lists of the most borrowed books for adults, teens, and...

Yesterday, I was standing in front of my desk, piled high with books I had checked out from the library or received for review, trying to decide what to read next. I shifted from foot to foot and gave myself a pep talk. “Pretend you are a normal reader. You’re just picking whatever book looks interesting. You can read whatever you want.” -record scratch- You’re probably wondering how I got here. Why am I not a normal reader? What does picking out something to read feel like such an intimidating...

Since about 2014, I’ve always kept an eye on Pantone’s Color of the Year. I like this idea of a color defining or giving shape to an upcoming year, much in the way I like thinking not about resolutions but about words or phrases as a means of organizing the next 12 months. Over the years, I’ve found some Pantone Color of the Year choices to be excellent — 2018’s Ultra Violet was great, as was 2019’s Living Coral — while other choices have left me really underwhelmed — the...

Making its rounds on social media over the past two weeks is a story from The Atlantic about the end of high school English class. It’s not necessarily what you think it might be. The author, a high school teacher in Berkeley, California, explores how ChatGPT, a conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) system, might radically alter the future of English education. Students can, for example, feed the system a prompt for class and develop an essay with the help of the AI, never needing to do the actual work of writing...

Here at Book Riot, we publish 8-10 posts every weekday, not counting news stories, deals round ups, and other miscellanea. That’s thousands of posts in a year. Some of them blow up, and some of them are snubbed by social media algorithms. Regardless of the views, likes, or shares, though, our contributors have written some incredible content this year, from posts that made us laugh out loud to journalistic explorations of forgotten moments in bookish history to useful lists and moving personal essays. There are so many posts we’ve loved...

Yesterday, the U.S. Postal Service announced seven new subjects that will be featured on stamps in 2023. Among the list is prolific children’s book author Tomie dePaola (1934-2020) and civil rights activist and author John Lewis (1940-2020). After participating in vital civil rights protests — even becoming one of the Freedom Riders in the early ’60s — John Lewis spent over three decades in Congress continuing the fight for equality. This fight was carried over into the books he wrote, with some of the most recent ones being March, Run,...

‘Tis the season for “best of” book lists, and we’ve rounded up quite a few on Book Riot. The newest addition is the first “The Atlantic 10,” which the magazine defines not quite as the best books of the year, but the books that “impressed us with their force of ideas, that drew us in not because of some platonic ideal of greatness, but because they got our brains working and presented fresh angles on the world. In a phrase, they were good to think with.” The editors introduce their...

About 250 HarperCollins employees have been on strike for more than a month (it began November 10th), fighting for better pay, union protections, and diversity initiatives. An open letter of support for the employees striking has reached 8,500 signatures according to the union, but a separate letter was signed by over 500 authors, both ones represented by HarperCollins and writers who are associated with other publishers. Some of the authors who signed include Barbara Kingsolver, Jacqueline Woodson, and Kwame Alexander. The authors who are published through HarperCollins expressed that they...

Renowned writer Hilary Mantel, who passed away in September at the age of 70, was widely known and respected for her Wolf Hall trilogy, as well as the scores of other books and essays that she wrote during her career. Her treatment of the political machinations of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII inspired legions of readers to pick up the trilogy, which was completed in 2020 with The Mirror and the Light. Mantel’s gift was not just in accurately describing the historic events of the royal court, but...