Books

Dear Stephen King: Last week, you had a tweet take off. I’ve seen it everywhere, including on several giant Facebook pages, Instagram pages, even on TikTok. The tweet, about book banning, is nice and sexy, attempting to break down the problem in under 280 characters. And you know, it was successful! Hey, kids! It's your old buddy Steve King telling you that if they ban a book in your school, haul your ass to the nearest bookstore or library ASAP and find out what they don't want you to read....

In the Goodreads monthly roundups of new books to watch out for, they often highlight eye-catching titles, whether they’re poetic, surprising, or particularly punny. Today, they gathered up some of the best new titles (August 2022 to January 2023 releases) in their own post. Goodreads notes that titles long enough to be a complete sentence are in style right now. These kinds of titles have long been common in manga, and perhaps the popularity of that format has brought this convention over to North American publishing. The title that got...

Jesmyn Ward fans, rejoice! We officially have a title and release date for her next novel. Let Us Descend is slated for an October 3rd release from Scribner, a Simon & Schuster imprint. The book will tell the story of enslaved teenage girl Annis, turning an unflinching eye at the terrifying reality of a life violently robbed of physical agency. “It took years and multiple drafts to understand how Annis and enslaved people might have retained their sense of self, their sense of hope, in a time and place that...

Novelist Paul La Farge has died at the age of 52. He passed from cancer on January 18th in Poughkeepsie, New York as confirmed by his wife. La Farge was a New York native whose essays and fiction appeared in publications like The Village Voice, The New Yorker, and McSweeney’s. His debut novel, The Artist of the Missing, published in 1999 and is set in a modern-day, unnamed city where people frequently go missing. The book’s main character paints portraits of the missing, including the parents and brother who disappeared...

Little Free Library is launching the Indigenous Library Program this spring. The new program will distribute LFL book-sharing boxes to tribal lands and other Indigenous communities. Boxes will be shipped to volunteer stewards for free and will come with two sets of books — one set will feature 25 books written and/or illustrated by BIPOC authors and another 25 books will center Indigenous people. The new program has an advisory group consisting of educators, authors, and librarians, most of whom are Indigenous, all of whom have a long history serving...

So far this year, eight states have introduced legislation that makes it easier to prosecute teachers and librarians under “obscenity” and “harmful to minor” laws — these have been weaponizing in recent book banning battles, being used against librarians and educators just for having LGBTQ books or sex education books on the shelves. EveryLibrary, a PAC that lobbies for libraries, has released a policy brief to help educate about these laws as well as outline ways to fight them. It goes over state obscenity and harmful to minor laws, and...

The 2023 PEN American Literary Award Longlists have been announced! This year’s awards will confer $350,000 to more than 100 writers and translators in eleven different categories that include fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, essay, science writing, literature in translation, and more. The winners will be announced at the Literary Awards Ceremony on March 2nd at The Town Hall in New York City. This year marks the 60th anniversary of PEN America’s first literary prize. In PEN America’s announcement of this year’s longlists, Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, chief of literary programs, writes that, “For 60...

2023 may be newly upon us, but that doesn’t mean we have to stay here. That is what is so great about historical mysteries/thrillers: They allow us to dive into another time and place and see how people lived. You get to learn about how their society works, how people eat and dress, as well as the issues of the time. And of course, there is a delicious mystery at the center of it to add that much needed drama. What seems so neat is how the genre has broadened...

January is a great time to read YA books about fresh starts, though I find it hard to believe it is 2023. To be fair, I’m pretty sure that it took me two full years to recover from 2020. Nonetheless, I am ready to acknowledge that we made it through another trip around the sun and that’s worth writing about. However, I am not a resolutions person. It feels like too much pressure to put on myself at the beginning of a new year. I know full well I’m not...

Right-wing politicians got the new legislative year off to an impressive start with several new bills across the country directly targeting books, reading, and intellectual freedom. Of course, we know that these bills aren’t about the books at all, but instead are another avenue to chip away at the rights of marginalized populations: people of color, queer people, and young people. Here are some of the bills of concern, and this is not comprehensive. If you live in these jurisdictions, it is crucial to begin calling and writing your representatives....

Ken Follett’s next novel will be published on September 26, 2023. It will be titled “The Armor of Light“ and will conclude the eight-volume Kingsbridge series that follows 1,000 years of Western civilization, from “Ethelred the Unready to the election of President Obama.” Readers will follow a group of linked families, starting in the fictional town Kingsbridge at the end of the 18th century. The members of the family experience everything from bread riots to forced military recruitment, as well as a British government that enacts new laws restricting criticism...

The books community on Reddit has released their list of the best books of 2022. The books were chosen by individual threads made for each category: Best Debut, Best Literary Fiction, Best Mystery or Thriller, Best Short Story Collection/Graphic Novel/Poetry, Best Science Fiction, Best Fantasy, Best LitRPG, Best YA, Best Romance, Best Horror, and Best Nonfiction. For a book to be nominated, it had to have been published in 2022 and posted as a comment in the thread that matched its category. Voting stayed open until January 15, and the...

The Scrabble dictionary has been updated for the first time since 2018, and it includes 500 new words — though Scrabble won’t reveal what every one is, telling players to hunt through the new dictionary to find them all. They’ve also removed several hundred slurs and other offensive words, so that they can’t be played in official tournaments. Some of the new words reflect changes in technology and culture since the last update, including “torrenting”, “doxxed”, “subtweet”, “pageview”, “unsub”, “stan”, and “vaxxed”. Others are slang words that will have some...