McKay Used Books, Manassas, VA When I first moved to Northern Virginia a few years ago, I was excited at the prospect of living in a more urban environment because it meant more bookstores. I took a day off of work to go to the DMV and treated myself the rest of the day by traveling all over the area to a list of bookstores. McKay was by far the best....
C.D. Bell made her debut into the author world with Weregirl. She also enjoys biking and reading. The trilogy concludes with Weregirl:Typhon, where Nessa must reconcile her father’s good intentions with his need to pursue science beyond ethical limits. We are happy to have Bell here on Book Riot. Weregirl: Typhon is the last book of the Weregirl trilogy. How does it feel to come to the end? It feels both sad and amazing....
Find out if ecopoetry is the thing you’re missing in your life; get the best picture books to introduce your little ones to the environment and our impact on it; learn to cook sustainably; get some ecologically inclined manga recommendations. Today’s posts include all these and then some, and we wish you and your TBR joy while you explore! (And don’t forget to hug a tree—or your houseplant—when you’re done....
I have read (and written) at length about the Jewish coding behind characters like Superman (a refugee with the Hebrew-inspired name of Kal-El who escaped a dying world at the onset of the Holocaust) and the Thing (a golem from New York’s Lower East Side who would only be revealed to be canonically Jewish in 2002, a whopping 41 years after his debut). About the Jewish moral philosophy behind ideals like “With great power comes great responsibility....
Ebooks and Audiobooks These days, audiobooks are almost always digital and for audiophiles like me, always appreciated. You can buy single audiobooks or gift a subscription from platforms like Audible, which has millions of audiobooks to choose from. Libro.FM offers an indie option, with portion of sales supporting local independent bookstores. Book Box Subscriptions Book boxes are a perfect way to give a last-minute gift that allows you to send a physical gift without it technically arriving late....
She’s referring to the rise of online dating which, back in 2009 when this movie came out, was starting to render in-person communication and contact—at least in terms of romantic relationships—more and more obsolete. Barrymore’s character goes on to say that she misses the days when people had one phone number and one answering machine, and that answering machine housed one cassette tape that either had a message from that guy or it didn’t....
To Paradise is a tryptic of novels, each set 100 years apart in 1893, 1993, and 2093. The names of the characters persist across each of the stories. So does the setting, a townhome near Washington Square Park in New York. But their worlds are very different. The 1893 portion provides something of an alternate history; a different outcome of the Civil War created marriage equality much earlier than actual history....
When she stumbles across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss—a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten—by the luxurious “smart” home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family. What she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare—one that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder....
During a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, sometimes small things like Little Free Libraries can be forgotten amid the panic and mayhem. But the LFL community, owners, and patrons have identified an incredible way to give back to their neighbors and communities during uncertain times by turning their normal book-trading depots into small food pantries. Jessica McClard was ahead of the trend, starting her own pantry in her home state of Arkansas in 2016....
Listed at approximately $1.3 million US dollars, the apartment was home to Mary Shelley, as well as husband Percy Shelley. The building has a blue plaque commemorating their history within it. The apartment, which is located inside a brick facade Victorian building on the first floor, has two bedrooms, one bathroom, as well as a private terrace and open reception area. It has had a number of updates making it modern, but some of the original features remain, including the wood flooring....
Tonja Johnson, executive director for the Madison County Library System, told McGee that the library is not a religious institution: “I explained that we are a public library and we serve the entire community. I told him our collection reflects the diversity of our community.” McGee told Johnson that “the library can serve whoever we wanted, but that he only serves the great Lord above.” He also claimed to be “just responding to complaints by citizens about the material being displayed in the library....
I am half-Taiwanese, half-white, so while I could see part of myself in characters like Amelia Bedelia, there was a big chunk of my identity that wasn’t represented at all in the books I was reading. At the time (this was the late ‘80s), I didn’t even know it was my right to have books featuring relatable girls of color, but I sure wished the books about Asian culture covered more topics than Chinese New Year....
“As the weather starts to change, take on some of these books highlighting the best of theatre. From retrospectives by the original Broadway cast of Hamilton to a novel about resetting your career, these reads are great with a snuggly blanket or outside at the park as the days grow longer.” Did somebody page escapism? “How do you know if students are empowered as readers? How do you know if they believe in themselves and their reading abilities?...
Sometimes creators taking this approach land upon something timeless – like when Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created Peter Parker to appeal to that emerging concept called “teenager” and ended up with one of the most enduring superheroes of all time, or when G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona did something very similar with Kamala Khan a few years back. Both characters speak to the hopes and anxieties of the eras in which they were created, but possess enough intrinsic appeal outside of that immediate context to remain evergreen as the years go by....
At PAX South in San Antonio, Texas, I was picking up business cards from indie game developers and gazing forlornly at the forever-capped line to demo the Nintendo Switch when a friend and I stumbled upon a booth for a small comics publisher that I’d never heard of. A lone gentleman at a small table was selling his company’s first trade paperback, an artbook, and a handful of single issues, all of it created, published, and marketed by members of America’s indigenous tribes....
Passage by Connie Willis Johanna Lander is a clinical psychologist who is studying near-death experiences. Frustrated with the lack of subjects for her research (and the poaching of existing ones by a kooky pop-culture spiritualist), Johanna decides to take matters into her own hands and work with neurologist Richard Wright to clinically simulate her own NDEs. Johanna quickly becomes obsessed with the experience, returning again and again to the liminal space between life and death, which feels bizarrely familiar....
If you’re reading this, then you’re someone who also gets excited about the holiday season. And you’re probably the kind of person who devours holiday romcoms on Netflix and the Hallmark channel every single year without fail. I’m right there with you, friend. It’s incredible, because as much as it’s fun to go back and revisit old holiday romcom favorites, there are sooooo many new ones coming out every year as well....
The quote, from Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude, resonated with me immediately. I recognized my creative self within its lines, someone for whom who I’ve had to make space in my adult life or else my own unexplored experience will, quite literally, choke my mind. But no amount of past cluttered feelings or chokings of the mind would prepare me for the emotional turmoil brought about by the lockdown solitudes of the COVID-19 pandemic....
Next month, the board will specifically review the library’s inclusion of Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress, a picture book about a boy who likes wearing dresses. (I wonder how that would fare on the proposed content rating service.) According to Chi’s own numbers, the LGBTQ content in Orange City’s library accounts for less than .003% of their total collection. He was particularly disturbed by the book title Two Boys Kissing....
That thread echoes precisely how Kara Bell, a parent of a student in the Lake Travis Independent School District (LTISD), acted in interrupting the district’s COVID-related board meeting to decry the book. “I do not want my children to learn about anal sex in middle school,” Bell told the board, according to Complex. “I’ve never had anal sex. I don’t want to have anal sex. I don’t want my kids having anal sex....
