Books

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...

Back in August, Kelly Jensen wrote about how conservative propaganda led to Jamestown, Michigan voting down the library millage (tax) rate that was on the ballot, making it impossible for the library to stay open for more than a few months. Jamestown Conservatives called the librarians “groomers” who were “indoctrinating” children because they refused to take LGBTQ books off the shelves. Some Jamestown residents responded by starting a GoFundMe campaign for the library, which received donations from around the world. It soon raised over $100,000, which is when Nora Roberts...

The 2022 Kirkus Prize Award winners were announced Thursday October 27 in a hybrid ceremony at a public library in Austin, TX. The literary award was first given in 2014 and is among the highest paying, granting each of its winners $50,000. The winners are as follows: Fiction Trust by Hernan Diaz Trust shows the fundamental inequality of wealth by following a wealthy couple in New York, starting in the 1920s. The judges appreciated the “multiple perspectives and forms to push the boundaries of what a novel can do.” This...

Amazon bought Goodreads in 2013, but for the most part, there hasn’t been much integration between the retailer and the social reading site. Recently, though, some authors have spotted Goodreads average ratings showing up on Amazon listings of their books, although Amazon has its own ratings system. So. Amazon is starting to add Goodreads ratings to their book pages. Goodreads notoriously doesn't do enough to moderate bot/spam/sock puppet accounts. They don't even require email address verification before rating. And now this will impact sales in a bigger way than ever....

As you mark your calendar for November events, remember to have your plan to vote in place and a nice stack of books to read, or admiringly stare at. Collecting unread books is also valid — you do you! For this month I’ve got a wide variety of moods and crime books. I’m doing my best to keep up with publishing dates changing so you may remember a book from a couple months ago that got moved for real (hopefully) to this month. There’s a lot of great reading to...