Books

Because New Year’s was on a Sunday this year, we’re taking today off to recover. But don’t worry, we’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, we wish you luck in your 2023 reading goals, and we hope your year is filled with a fireworks display worth of five-star reads....

Back at the end of October, I attended an event called The RRAW Experience — in which the RRAW stood for Romance Readers And Writers (I love a good double entendre!). It was a day-and-a-half affair including author panels, workshops, fun and games, and a closing gala awarding some of the legends of romance. It was coordinated by a Black woman who runs a website and YouTube channel focused on romance by authors of all races and ethnicities, Brown Book Series, and the attendees were mostly Black women. Since it...

As readers, it can be a constant struggle to find space to store our book collections. And if you’re in a smaller space (or your books are housed in a smaller room) it can be difficult to make the best use of the space, or to find book storage solutions for small spaces that actually work. There is also the challenge of filling a small space but not making it look overwhelming or cramped. Personal taste plays a factor as well. At my previous apartment, I had zero space (and...

Whether or not you believe in the power of a new year to change your life or your habits, there’s something to be said about the flipping of a calendar year to help you take stock in what is important to you and where and how you wish to grow in the coming year. As the year comes to a close and we’re riding out 18-plus months of ongoing book bans and censorship across public schools and libraries in the U.S., this is the perfect time to sit down and...

December is just about over and we’re in the final week of the year, and for many, that means curling up inside under the covers with as many books as you can get your hands on. And if you really want to escape the snow and cold weather, transporting yourself to whole new worlds can be the best way to do that. Science fiction and fantasy books are great picks for traveling through time, space, galaxies, and kingdoms, and there are several new releases this month that will help you...

This is the feature where we look at the biggest bestseller lists — the New York Times, both Combined Print & E-Book Fiction and Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction lists; Amazon Charts, both Fiction and Nonfiction; and Publishers Weekly — and combine the results to get an overview of the bestselling books of the moment. Each list uses their own set of criteria and data, so by looking at the overlap, we can get a better idea of the overall bestsellers. Unlike last week, there are two new additions to...

You’ve likely heard of the dystopian novel 1984 and maybe even Animal Farm. Sure, you might have known the author was British writer George Orwell, but maybe you’ve asked: Who was George Orwell, actually? In this article, we’ll explore George Orwell’s life and work so you have all the facts about this important and influential author. When Was George Orwell Born? Orwell was born with the name Eric Arthur Blar on June 25, 1903 in Motihari, Bengal, in British India. Orwell considered his beginning humble, even though his paternal great...

I’ve never paid much attention to literary awards. I’m not the kind of reader who eagerly anticipates the Booker longlist announcement or stays up late watching awards ceremonies. Until recently, when I started spending more time on Bookstagram, it was unusual that I even knew what books had won which awards. Literary awards, as far as I’m concerned, are fairly arbitrary. They don’t excite me. I do, however, love a reading project. There’s an active community of readers on Bookstagram who read various awards longlists and shortlists every year, and...

I’ve been writing a sapphic book blog for more than a decade now. When I first started it, it was harder to find book with queer women representation. A lot of them had been published, but it required some research to find, and they often weren’t considered profitable to publish. Luckily, a lot has changed since then, and far more people are talking about queer books — and especially sapphic books — than they were even a handful of years ago. We weren’t even using the term “sapphic books” back...

“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....