The horror series is a beloved one for tons of kids in my generation, and I’m definitely not the only one who still has visceral memories of being frightened by its original illustrations, even while reading the books in a brightly lit classroom. When news of del Toro’s production first broke on social media, fans speculated which of the original stories would make it onto the screen and in what style....
If you’ve already seen the film, you can consider the activities below ways to follow it up. If you’re going to watch it and are looking forward to it, you can consider them ways to enhance the experience. Going to watch it and dreading it? As Rachel Vorona Cote so succinctly put it in a recent Bitch piece about Vita and Virginia and period romances featuring queer women in general, “There’s an accompanying anxiety to screening queer cinema, because our options are finite, and we cannot assume that there will be more choices in the future....
Kurt Vonnegut is having a moment. His letters are being published today, and a book containing some of his never-before-published fiction came out earlier this month. We love him too, here at the Riot, so we’re hopping on the Vonnegut train to spend a day celebrating one of our favorite authors. Kurt Vonnegut Day Table of Contents Pour another cup of coffee and kick off your day with a special edition of Critical Linking in which it’s all Vonnegut, all the time....
Many of us are probably familiar with classical anarchists like Emma Goldman or Pyotr Kropotkin, but what they discuss hardly reflects the issues we face today in our current political climate. Contemporary anarchism is built upon the back of its prior iterations and still deals with the fringes of society, but today anarchism incorporates our most pressing issues. The basis of anarchism is freedom for all—no one is free until everyone is free....
(An amusing note: when I started writing this article, I first googled the phrase, because I like to see what other sources are out there before I attempt to reinvent the wheel. When I had typed “great American,” Google helpfully autofilled with “great American cookie,” “Great American Baking Show,” and “great American craft beer.” I am particularly interested in the cookies.) The Origin of “The Great American Novel” In 1868 American novelist and Civil War veteran John William De Forest wrote an essay titled “The Great American Novel” (The Nation, January 9, 1968) in which he defined the concept as “the picture of the ordinary emotions and manners of American existence....
Trying to decide between Katherine Hepburn, Winona Ryder, and Saoirse Ronan? Modern take or classic Hollywood? Just answer some questions about your bookish preferences and thoughts on Little Women. We’ll have the perfect answer for you in no time! Dissatisfied with your result? Take it again a time or two—after all, what better time than now to have a full on Little Women marathon? Now that you know which adaptation you need to watch, why not find out which March sister you are?...
Twenty-first century fantasy literature has also leaned into the portal fantasy. L. D. Lapinski’s series The Strangeworlds Travel Agency has protagonists Flick and Jonathan travelling through myriad worlds via magical suitcase. In Karuna Riazi’s The Gauntlet, a group of children use a magical board game to access a dangerous world, where they must win the game or risk being trapped forever. And A Blade So Black by YA author L....
To some extent, I can see how interactive ebooks never took off. They are a formatting challenge, since ePub or AZW is assumed to be mostly text with the occasional static picture, and ereaders and ereading apps are going to be designed around that. They’re harder to produce for writers, too. And maybe that’s just not what readers want from books; maybe the appeal of a book is that it is a text-only medium — the opposite of something like TikTok....
I am not a professional reviewer. That is not one of my job descriptions, but as someone who is quite active on the bookish side of social media, hosting a podcast where I interview authors and talk about books, at some point I had to step back and consider my role as a hobbyist reviewer. Whether we get paid for it or not, reviews are an important part of the book community, and reviews help authors, even when you hold a small Instagram account with just a few followers....
That would be false. There are a trove of stories that amplify the Black immigrant experience. They are just typically difficult to read based on the hardship and strife the narrators face. Just because they make us uncomfortable doesn’t mean they should be avoided. In fact, that is even more reason to read them. Black immigrant literature pushes us to live and experience lives outside of the comfort zone. It’s important that people seek out and read about Black immigrant stories in order to combat the danger of a single story as outlined by Adichie....
Awards are given out in five categories: Red Tentacle for the best novel (£1,000) Golden Tentacle for the best debut novel (£500) Inky Tentacle for the best cover art (£500) Invisible Tentacle for the best natively digital fiction Glentacle, named in memory of Kitschies co-founder Glen Mehn: “a discretionary award for a person or group who, the directors determined, contributed something significant and special to the community” This year, they had 177 submissions to choose from....
With this latest fundraiser, WNDB is raising money to “share love and affirmation” with LGBTQIA+ kids and teens by sending book care packages to states like Texas and Florida to counteract discriminatory book censorships efforts. By doing this, WNDB hopes that the book care packages “will help kids feel some of the love and respect they so deserve.” Each care package will include: a book featuring LGBTQIA+ characters that has been chosen by the WNDB team other goodies like an encouraging note, a temporary tattoo, and a bookmark...
ISTJ (Introversion + Sensing + Thinking + Judging): The Logistician Personality Every Falling Star by Sungju Lee and Susan Elizabeth McClelland As the practical logical person you are, non-fiction is in order. You like to analyze everything and you’re pragmatic and critical, so what about a book on a factual and current issue, but with a bit of a story into it? Every Falling Star is a memoir of a North Korean boy who survived and escaped the country at age 12....
What I’m saying is: I REALLY like sharks. I find them wildly fascinating, and I own dozens of books about them, so it makes me a perfect person to write a list of great shark books in honor of Shark Week! (Although the Shark Week programming is a little out of control the last few years. What’s going to happen this year? A shark will duet with Tony Bennett? John Cena will wrestle a shark?...
The most basic definition of diet is not insidious, but the diet culture that the weight loss industry has built up has turned the whole idea of one’s diet into a reflection on a person’s impulse control, morality, and beauty. An anti-diet mindset has to go hand-in-hand with an understanding of fat activism, because diets are so aggressively rooted in fatphobia. Although there are a lot of tricks in the way the wellness industry presents diets these days (beware the detox), most diets are rooted in the same history of weight loss and anti-fat discrimination....
If you’ve checked out Dickinson and are looking for some more information on the beloved poet, here are ten titles to check out! Descriptions are adapted from Goodreads. Note: Since Emily Dickinson’s lifetime was not a particularly inclusive one for people of color (or women, for that matter), few of these titles were written by authors of color and may not represent the diverse literary atmosphere we strive for here at Book Riot....
You can have the Mountains of Madness featured in your home with this 20″ x 14″ screen printed poster. You can’t have anything eldritch or cosmic horror theme without throwing in a few tentacles with eyes on them for that instantly recognizable aesthetic. You can pick this 14″ x 11″ print here. If you want to be more subtle with it while still inspiring that existential smallness, this print with a Lovecraft quote referencing sleeping horrors is a good place to start....
The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt The protagonist, Ludo, reads and does math at an extremely young age. His single mom encourages him to love art and learning. But she withholds the identity of his father, leading to a fraught search for him. Eventually, he rejects his biological father because he considers him less intelligent than himself. The Jewels of Aptor by Samuel R. Delany Delany started writing fiction in his teens and published books by age 20....
All of these books like The Flight Attendant are in some way or another connected to themes in the book, be it through missing or questionable memory, possible conspiracies at play, or a gripping storyline. Find more psychological thrillers here! As in The Flight Attendant, this book also features a mystery where memory loss plays a role, and it’s interesting to watch the story unfold in layers. A woman-centered novel that deals with themes of alcoholism, this a good mystery to complement The Flight Attendant....
Unfortunately, there are people and groups more interested in an industrious than a thoughtful population. The general public doesn’t agree on the purpose of public education. Neither, it seems, do education stakeholders. During recent remarks, North Carolina state Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt declared 2022 “the year of the workforce.” Truitt explained, “We have got to redefine what the purpose of K–12 education is. Some would say it’s to produce critical thinkers, but my team and I believe that the purpose of a public K–12 education is to prepare students for the postsecondary plans of their choice so that they can be a functioning member of the workforce....
