Books

The holiday shopping season is already in full swing and you might be shopping for a book lover. Maybe that book lover is you! No matter who you're shopping for, if you're looking for ways to shop small this season, check out Libro.fm's Shop Small sale. For a limited time, you can purchase credit bundles at a discount, plus there are hundreds of top-rated audiobooks on sale, too. But wait! There's more! If you're a Libro.fm member, you get 30% off all a la carte audiobook purchases - even on...

The paper of record has released their newest list of top books for the year. Selected by the staff of the New York Times Book Review, 100 books are celebrated as being notable additions to shelves. Spanning five categories, including Fiction/Poetry, Nonfiction, Memoir, History, and Science, the books showcase a wide range of genres, styles, and voices. Among the top 100 notable books include: You can dig into the full list, as well as the reasons behind their inclusion, right here. Today In Books Newsletter Sign up to Today In...

On October 31st, a federal judge ruled against the merging of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, saying that it would “substantially lessen competition” in publishing. While that was a blow to the merger, it wasn’t officially over: Penguin Random House had been planning to appeal the decision. In order to do that, they would need Paramount (Simon & Schuster’s parent company) to extend the deadline for the deal. Paramount has now stated that they will not be extending it from the November 22nd deadline. The deal falling through...

There are a lot of YA books that feature music. This might be the theme of the book or it might be a motif within the book. It could also be what introduces each chapter or a playlist that comes at the end of the book or as a bonus feature as part of the book’s marketing campaign. And then there’s my absolute favorite way we get music in YA books: through their titles. Welcome to another annual edition of YA book title earworms, this time for 2023. If you’re...

A warning: this quiz is not for the faint of heart. It was made for those who know their covers and to which titles those covers belong to. It was made for those who can spot a detail and hold it fast in their memory. It was made for those who like a challenge and are sure they can win it. But it was also made for those who, like me, keep seeing similar covers in stores thinking it is one book we saw previously, and it turns out it...

This week, PEN America sent a letter to Missouri school boards and the state legislature, demanding a reversal to a spate of book bans enacted thanks to the state’s Senate Bill 775. The bill makes any material with “visual depictions” of “graphic material” illegal for schools to have available. This is why so many graphic novels have been banned across the state. My book, Body Talk: 37 Voices Explore Our Radical Anatomy is one of the books pulled by a district in the state for “review.” As of writing, it’s...

British award-winning author Marcus Sedgwick has passed away unexpectedly at the age of 54. Sedgwick wrote over 40 children’s books, was nominated for more than 30 awards, and won the Printz award in 2014 for Midwinter Blood. He described his latest series, Be the Change, as a “brilliant interactive and accessible resources for kids to learn about the importance of empathy and mental health — so they can be the change they want to see.” Other children’s authors wrote about his influence on them on social media: Marcus’ work has...

The 180-year-old private library, the first lending library in London, will welcome Helena Bonham Carter as its first female president. The actress has been linked to members of the library through her career, having played characters in an adaptation of founding member Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, and Netflix’s adaptation of Enola Holmes, itself a retelling of London Library member Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock series. “The library is truly a place like no other, inspiring and supporting writers for over 180 years, many of whom have in some way informed...

“I do trust librarians, I trust our teachers and I want to know that I don’t have to look at this list. But here I am finding multiple books that unfortunately are part of the LGBTQ community,” said Joni Shaw Smith, a member of the Keller Independent School District board at last night’s meeting. Keller ISD, whose board is backed by Patriot Mobile, voted 4-2 to ban any and all books featuring trans and nonbinary people from classrooms and libraries. Among those pushing against this policy was the ACLU, calling...

Kevin Conroy, best known as the voice of Batman in Batman: The Animated Series and numerous other projects, passed away on November 10th after a short battle with cancer. He would have been 67 later this month. Conroy was born in Westbury, New York in 1955. He studied acting at Julliard alongside fellow iconic DC hero Christopher Reeve, and roomed with Robin Williams. For the next two decades, he worked steadily in theater, film, and television. His breakout role came in 1992, when he was cast as Batman in the...

In the 2022 school year, I decided to run a comic book club in the school library that I manage. I’ve run a manga club for 9 years there and decided to start a comic book club to focus on the massive popularity of the comics and graphic novels that we have on the shelves. I’ve talked before about the huge popularity of our annual ComiCon, this is one of our most sought after programs. I felt like having a dedicated, weekly comic book club would be very popular. There...

Library workers are trained professionals. Most librarians spend thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars to earn a master’s degree which helps teach them not only how to serve their communities, but how to access, assess, and make available accurate information for their patrons. It is an art and a science of balancing community needs with factual information. It is a skill that is learned and practiced, rather than one that is inherent. With continued undermining of the field’s professionals via right-wing volunteers developing their own review databases based on...

In October, Barnes & Noble posted their list of the top 11 books of the year, as selected by their booksellers. The list included bestselling novels, a picture book, a New Orleans cookbook, a history of hip-hop jewelry, and more. Some of these books overlap with the previous editorially-selected Barnes and Noble Best Books of the Year list, like Skandar and the Unicorn Thief by A.F. Steadman, but most are not. B&N has just posted the results of the final vote for booksellers’ top book of the year out of...

The 2022 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction has been awarded to Khadija Abdalla Bajaber for her debut YA novel The House of Rust. The novel is a coming-of-age story steeped in Swahili and Hadrami culture in which Aisha, a young girl in Mombasa, Kenya, embarks on a sea journey in an enchanted boat made of a skeleton to rescue her father. As with other prize winners, Khadija Abdalla Bajaber will be awarded the $25,000 cash prize that is given with the annual Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for...