8 New Epic Fantasy Debuts For 2020

Dive into #SagaEpicSummer with these three new epic fantasies! The Kingdom of Liarsblends the taut crime drama of The Wire with the epic worldbuilding of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time in what Brandon Sanderson calls “an excellent fantasy debut.” Savage Legion captures what lies at the heart of epic fantasy—sweeping journeys, brutal battles, and impossible odds—but with true diversity that defies the status quo. The Vanished Queen is a timely fantasy novel about a country held in the thrall to a vicious king, and one woman’s fight to take him down....

December 25, 2022 · 1 min · 155 words · Martin Ashford

8 Of The Best Books To Read For Scienceseptember

title: “8 Of The Best Books To Read For Scienceseptember” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-20” author: “Richard Noyes” I’m a big fan of finding books on Instagram that I normally wouldn’t know about or pick out by myself. Of all the social media platforms, IG has turned out to be my favorite. Science is one of my favorite things, and I’m always reading science or medical books, in any genre (although memoir and nonfiction are my favorite)....

December 25, 2022 · 6 min · 1153 words · Jeff Gilchrist

8 Of The Best Comic Adaptations Of Classics

Jane by Charlotte Brontë, Aline McKenna, illustrated by Ramon K. Perez I’m a sucker for anything Jane Eyre, so when I saw this stunning cover art and the description of this adaptation, I was sold. A modern reimagining of the classic novel, Jane is in the world of the elite and secretive New Yorkers. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, Miles Hyman Shirley Jackson, thanks to Netflix, is more of a household name, though many may still not have read her classic works of horror....

December 25, 2022 · 3 min · 603 words · Ellen Mancias

8 Of The Best Nonfiction Books About Girls Around The World

Everyone, no matter how you identify, can enjoy these stories. Even if the target age range isn’t for you, you might find yourself pleasantly surprised if you pick up the book — I know that after I’ve read certain nonfiction picture books with my son, I’ve found myself googling for more information and doing further reading. If you’re interested in reading nonfiction about girls around the world, here are some good places to start, in a variety of age groups....

December 25, 2022 · 1 min · 80 words · Maximo Lopez

8 Of The Best Weird Genre Fiction Books By Diverse Authors

One of the best things about speculative fiction and weird speculative fiction is that it is full of diversity. Whether that’s the characters, the inspiration, or the authors, it has everything. Weird genre fiction is a big, busy world full of color and individuality. Authors of weird genre books are unafraid to do what they want and write about anything they can imagine, and you’ll find some of the most talented writers in the weirder end of spec-fic....

December 25, 2022 · 4 min · 720 words · Darren Black

9 Audiobooks For Japanjanuary

BookClubbish is a book club for people with or without a book club! Sign up to the newsletter to get fun bookish content, reading recommendations, and giveaways delivered right in your inbox. I’ve loved seeing the dozens of titles of translated literature, especially the wide selection of audiobooks available on my favorite audiobook apps. So here are few books for your TBRs! Find more great audiobooks by browsing our other audiobooks posts!...

December 25, 2022 · 1 min · 110 words · Dean Boothe

9 Books For You Must Remember This Podcast Fans

You Must Remember This is a deep-dive into, as Longworth puts it, the “secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century.” That “first century” timeline is an important one. While much of the material the podcast covers stems from Hollywood’s so-called Golden Age (loosely defined as the 1920s to the early 1960s), storylines cover topics that have implications all the way up to our present day. In separate seasons and mini-seasons, You Must Remember This has explored some of the movie industry’s best- and worst-kept secrets, from the real stories of the Hollywood blacklist to the troubling and troubled offscreen lives of some of film’s biggest stars, including Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, and Lena Horne....

December 25, 2022 · 6 min · 1113 words · Frank Oaks

9 Interesting Books That Will Teach You Something New This Year

También de este lado hay sueños. On this side too, there are dreams. Lydia Quixano Pérez runs a bookstore in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She has a son, Luca, and by and large, they live a fairly comfortable life. But when Lydia’s wonderful journalist husband publishes a tell-all profile of Javier, the jefe of the newest drug cartel, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca are forced to flee. None of their lives will ever be the same as they join the countless people trying to reach el norte....

December 25, 2022 · 6 min · 1100 words · Carl Irick

9 Medieval Poets You Will Actually Enjoy Reading

Listen, I know. Medieval poetry can be a slog. I would need two hands to count the number of times I’ve read Beowulf and while I enjoy it, I get that it’s not the most fun thing to read in the world. But not all of it is boring and inaccessible, trust me. Medieval poetry can be sexy, searing, poignant, and graceful. Here are some of my favorite examples of medieval poets that everyone can enjoy....

December 25, 2022 · 6 min · 1177 words · Barbara Sundahl

9 Of The Best Books About Sinister Institutions And Schools

Stephen King’s #1 bestseller The Institute is now in paperback! Young Luke Ellis has woken up in a faraway room that looks just like his own. But he soon finds that this mysterious place houses several other kids who all possess very special abilities…and the ruthless staff here is dedicated to extracting the force of their extranormal gifts. As each new victim disappears, Luke becomes desperate to somehow find a way out and get help—even though no one here has ever escaped....

December 25, 2022 · 2 min · 287 words · Dwayne Gray

9 Of The Best Books By Native Alaskans And Hawaiians

We seem to share that understanding with Hawai’ians, both natal and Native. When I moved to Colorado for college, the Alaskan and Hawai’ian students banded together to help each other learn about the differences in culture between our states and the rest of the country. Conversations were full of Hawai’ians assuring the Alaskans that they weren’t actually Mainlanders, in the same way that Alaskans don’t call the United States that lies outside of Alaskan borders the “Lower 49....

December 25, 2022 · 2 min · 280 words · Guadalupe Jones

A Brief History Of Vampires Werewolves In Ireland The United Kingdom And Some Of Europe

Rather than argue with their map (which, again, I am sure is accurate to the criteria they used), I thought I would make my own criteria and lay out a text-map of werewolves and vampires in European mythology and literature. I planned to explain my methodology and source materials and lay out my findings, regardless of what breakdown I found and how closely it aligned — or did not — with this map....

December 25, 2022 · 11 min · 2171 words · Fred Abbott

A Guide To Poems By Gwendolyn Brooks

Mrs. Levin read the poem “We Real Cool” in a soft monotone, in a dull thud of a voice that hit the listener hard: all the better to see the men portrayed in this masterpiece of a ten-line poem. The power and the beauty of poems by Gwendolyn Brooks has been a constant companion of mine the many decades since that day of introduction. If you’re a new reader, this is where to start....

December 25, 2022 · 4 min · 664 words · Opal Smith

A History Of Wonder Woman S Costumes

(A note before we get started: I’m not going to be exhaustively covering every variation in chest emblem, tiara, boot height, etc., because good lord that’s a lot. I’m also only going to touch on major multimedia appearances, and as usual I’m leaving out video games because I don’t even go here.) Wonder Woman debuted in All Star Comics #8 (October 1941) in a story by William Moulton Marston and H....

December 25, 2022 · 18 min · 3687 words · Dennis Hardman

A New Reading Goal Measuring Time Not Books

Don’t worry—this isn’t going to be one of those posts about why I’m quitting my reading challenge, dissecting the reasons why they aren’t good or something. If setting a number of books to read in a year gives you joy and gets you reading, more power to you. It just doesn’t work for me. This post is not to deride you for wanting to read X books next year, but rather to propose an idea to people like me who want a different metric by which they can measure their goals....

December 25, 2022 · 3 min · 631 words · Travis Steege

Ad Astra Is A Problematic Retelling Of Heart Of Darkness

Conrad’s story of Marlow’s excursion up the Congo in search of Kurtz, though adapted time and again (in Apocalypse Now; in Pixar’s Up), is forever impeded by its colonialist language and sensibilities. Once lauded as a criticism of imperialism, contemporary scholars are more wont to uphold it instead as an example of colonialism: its treatment of indigenous people, its positioning of white explorers as at all heroic, moor it in the realm of irredeemable narratives....

December 25, 2022 · 6 min · 1218 words · Samuel Sacco

All The Chills 8 Of The Scariest Manga To Keep You Up At Night

In Junji Ito’s latest horror manga, a galactic terror rains down from the sky. Only a mysterious woman with gold hair can save the Earth in Sensor! Every reader has different fears, of course, so I might find something super scary while you don’t. And that’s totally okay! It can be because of numerous things, like the story, the gore, the monsters, or the art. One or all of them can be the reason you find a story scary....

December 25, 2022 · 3 min · 573 words · Christopher Dennis

Announcing The Best Translated Book Award 2019 Longlists

But maybe you’ve never heard of the Best Translated Book Award before! It’s one of the most interesting and diverse book awards out there. This year’s lists alone feature authors writing in sixteen different languages, from twenty-four different countries. And the presses! So many great presses. The majority are either independent or university presses. Are you looking for a book published by a small press for your Read Harder challenge?...

December 25, 2022 · 5 min · 885 words · James Olsen

Asian And Pacific American Readers And Writers On First Seeing Themselves In Books

Many of these readers remember the initial awe of seeing a character that looked like them for the very first time. Reader Angie Liang, who was “obsessed” as a child with fairytales and folktales from around the world, especially loved Ai-Ling Louie’s Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China. “[It] is the only book I can recall from childhood that had an Asian girl as the main focus,” she told me....

December 25, 2022 · 11 min · 2229 words · Dudley Altobell

Authors Who Made The Time100 Next List This Year

Here are the authors who made the list: Jeannette McCurdy, author of I’m Glad My Mom Died Casey McQuiston, author of Red, White & Royal Blue George M. Johnson, author of All Boys Aren’t Blue Michael W. Twitty, author of The Cooking Gene Keke Palmer, author of My Dear Friend Janet Leah Thomas, author of The Intersectional Environmentalist Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books....

December 25, 2022 · 1 min · 73 words · Matthew Welke