Where the heck do you start?! H.P. Lovecraft wrote over 100 stories! His writing style has some good points, and some…weak points. At his best, he’s dynamite at building atmosphere. At his worst, his dialogue can be clunky, and he dumps exposition like he stole it and needs to stash it in your garage. And let’s not play coy about the eldritch elephant in the room: there’s no two ways about it, H....
While to a modern sensibility the marriage of Christmas and death may seem incongruous, it actually suits the season well. After all, the timing of Christmas lines up with the Winter Solstice celebration and the Yule festival, as well as the darkest day of the year. Similar to current legends about Halloween, the end of December is seen by some as a time when the veil between living and dead becomes especially thin....
Audiobooks have always been daunting to me. I’m always worried I’ll miss some big plot point and then have to start the book over. I’m afraid I won’t retain info because I’m certain I’m a visual learner. I’m also worried about what I’ll do with my hands when I’m listening to a book. But after listening to my first audiobook, I feel like I can listen to every single book this way....
Gifted and cursed with the ability to see the future, Mildred Groves takes a position at the Hanford Research Center in the early 1940s. Hanford tests and manufactures a mysterious product to aid the war effort. Only the top officials know that this product is processed plutonium, to make the first atomic bombs. Inspired by the classic Greek myth, this 20th-century reimagining is based on a real WWII compound. A timely novel about patriarchy and militancy, The Cassandra uses both legend and history to examine man’s capacity for destruction, and the compassion it takes to challenge the powerful....
Here is what’s supposed to happen: now that I’ve identified my mark, I spend a day following him, learning who he is so that I’ll know how to play the part. I’ll meet him in some spontaneous, unexpected way. Smile shyly, wrap my hair around my finger. I’ll make him love me, whether this takes days or weeks, until he’s helpless in my palm. And then I’ll kill him. The body is going to be found....
These changes attest to the resourcefulness with which some book lovers are responding to the pandemic. Caroline Jones, the museum director, notes that “compliant creativity” has been a challenge. A song to encourage handwashing epitomizes this. It’s a challenge that has inspired some useful innovations, which the museum might keep going even after (if) the world returns to normal. “One of our values is being seriously playful,” she says. Here are some of the new practices the museum has put into place due to coronavirus:...
Despite this, I don’t think I truly realized what it meant to be a bilingual reader until I went off to college. I went to an American university and, for the first time in my life, I became wholly removed from my first language, Portuguese. I had grown up hearing a bit of the Tupí dialect of northern Brazil, and a bit of Arabic and French from my grandmother, but Portuguese was my every day; it was the language I spoke to my family, and it was the language I first fell in love with reading....
“Hey, Dr. D!” My dad’s former students, sometimes from decades ago, will recognize my father everywhere, whether it’s in the local Wawa getting hoagies, on a beach in Maine, or over the phone in a telemarketing call. My English teacher father, now retired, taught the full range of students at our local high school for 40 years, everything from A.P. classes to college prep to electives on vocabulary building (his “Word Power” students have a special handshake)....
As a cozy mystery writer myself, I try to keep up-to-date on setting and profession trends. There are still a few settings that I’m surprised haven’t been done yet because they feel full of potential. Because there are so many wonderful cozies out there and each one its own hook, it can be surprisingly hard to find such settings. My first thought was a mortuary, but after some research, I found Lillian Bell’s Funeral Parlor Mystery series....
Lane Garrow has a secret—one that could get her killed. A life at sea hiding as a captain’s boy is all she knows, but things start to fall apart when an old pirate enemy comes after her father. And there are rumors that her father was once a pirate as well. Enter a mysterious prince! Can Lane protect herself and find a way to live her dream? Or will she risk everything for a world where her very existence is a death sentence....
In my opinion, people who dismiss libraries, and their importance to a community, are mostly people who either don’t read, who don’t understand the many roles a library plays besides simply lending books because they never really explored their services, or are people who never understood what poverty is like. I was 9 years old when I stumbled upon an adventure book; in my household, the only books available were an atlas of the world and a small collection of fairytales....
Growing up in a small city, there was a range of stores to choose from, but my ultimate favourite was Vibes and Scribes, a bookstore in my home city of Cork in Ireland. Rambling through its shelves and alcoves, you couldn’t help but fall in love. It’s where I found The Wheel of Time, where I discovered Marian Keyes books in a basket of joy, and where I spent my teenage days of minuscule cashflow feeling very rich indeed....
I first got a glimpse into the audiobook recording process earlier this year as an author. My book Queerly Beloved was released in May, and in March, I was involved in the audiobook narrator selection and preparation process. I exchanged emails with my narrator, Kimberly M. Wetherell, about name pronunciations, characters’ accents, and background. Those emails spun into an online friendship, and when I visited New York City a few months later, Kimberly and I met up for a drink and to chat books....
I collect art prints. Someday I might even make the beautiful wall of art prints that I dream of, but it wouldn’t be complete without a Shirley Jackson print or two, and what better subject matter than Eleanor’s cup of stars? (You may also recognize the concept, as well as some of the art below, from the 2018 Netflix series by the same name. I’ve included prints based on both!...
More recently, he created the pictures for When’s My Birthday (words by Julie Fogliano). But the best news I have is that Robinson has a new book out! Another is his debut as an author/illustrator and a book I am so excited for. Another was published in March 2019 and like his other work, is a delight to look at and take in. This book is about imagination, adventure, seeing yourself in the books that you read, and wondering what happens if you find another you....
Sam Chetan-Welsh, a Glasgow Greenpeace representative interviewed by ITV, called it “an unimaginable amount of unnecessary waste, and just shocking to see a multi-billion pound company getting rid of stock in this way. Stuff that’s not even single use but not being used at all, straight off the production line and into the bin.” (Returns are always scary for authors, too. They may have learned that they sold 500 or 1000 books in October, only to find that those books didn’t sell at the register in the all-important third quarter, and now the author’s royalty statement won’t be what they expected....
In hindsight, I should have used this topic for the Valentine’s Day Fright Stuff. I mean, what’s more romantic than an extremely attractive woman who may or may not be a vampire but is definitely bathing in the blood of young women and probably seducing them as well? I don’t know what is, but Báthory-inspired horror just makes me think of Valentine’s Day! As a life-long vampire fan, I have a soft spot in my heart for stories inspired by the dark history of the “Blood Countess....
Streamer HBO Max has ordered an eight-episode straight-to-series of Madeline Miller’s Circe, a modern retelling of the Greek myth of the same name. It will be available in their forthcoming streaming service. Deadline reports that Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Jurassic World) are producing and writing the drama adaptation, with Chernin Entertainment producing in partnership with Endeavor Content. The duo is also working on the live-action Mulan and the first two Avatar sequels....
In September, I devoured McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue. I had to be at that panel. During the standing room only panel, Guillory and McQuiston shared their love for fairytales and romance tropes and how they liked to subvert them; their fierce protectiveness of Duchess Meghan: “I want to fist fight the Daily Mail,” said McQuiston; and which British royals they’d want to have a drink with. For reference, Guillory wants to have a glass of wine with Duchess Camilla and get all the dirt, McQuiston wants to first do shots with the late Princess Diana and then “bro down” with Duke Harry, smash some beers, and get in a brawl....
Comic strips as we commonly know them first began appearing in North American newspapers in the 19th century, and were still most often used for political satire. The first feline to graze the funny pages in North America was Krazy Kat, created by George Herriman, which first appeared in the New York Evening Journal in 1913. The comic followed the misadventures of a simple-minded and carefree cat named Krazy and a short-tempered, neurotic mouse named Ignatz....
