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Kaytalin Platt is a professional graphic designer and marketer. The Living God is her debut novel and the first of a series. Priya Sridhar: The Living God is about two magical humans who have great destinies; Saran is the heir to a despotic kingdom and Keleir is a fire mage hosting a supernatural being that seeks chaos. What was your inspiration for the story? Kaytalin Platt: In fantasy, there are so many stories about heirs to thrones not wanting the responsibility....

Quite a lot! Raw honestly about a modern world suffering from intolerance. Sharing wisdom from one generation to another. Baldwin’s unflinching message of racism in our world blew me away! After this wonderful discovery, I searched for more James Baldwin books to read and enjoy. Who Was James Baldwin? James Baldwin was born on August 2,1924, in New York City. The oldest of nine children, Baldwin had a passion for reading and learning....

A follow-up to the first novel in the series, Sirens, The Smiling Man plants Aidan Waits back on night shift duty. Personified by Waits and his partner, Sutty, night shift cops are a collection of the broken and battered, the forgotten or f’d up police who haven’t worked their way back into good graces. And most nights, their jobs are filled with small crimes and grunt work. But then the smiling man turns up in the abandoned Palace Hotel....

What if, instead of (or in addition to) these famous roles he did play, he had also been cast in a few additional bookish roles? Join me, if you will, on an adventure through time, space, and our imaginations. 1989 (Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure) via GIPHY Keanu Reeves as Kaz Brekker in Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo No, the book wasn’t published until 2015. Do not trouble me with details!...

First, a little bit of history. The Kindle Paperwhite came out in 2012, and its latest generation/update was in 2021. The Kindle Oasis came out in 2016, and its latest generation/update was in 2019. I will be comparing the most recent generations of both, though because the Oasis has not been updated in three years, it will likely either see a new generation in the next year or so or be officially discontinued....

Here, in chronological order, are the first American editions for Kurt Vonnegut’s novels. Mid-to-late 20th Century literary fiction/sci-fi at its very best.

Dutch is a tricky language, especially when it comes to grammar, and while I learned fast and acquired loads of vocabulary in the first two years, improvement came almost to a halt after that. I was still learning new words and concepts, and I could already communicate properly for the things I needed daily, but my level seemed to be advancing very slowly, especially when compared to how much I had learned in the first two years....

For example, I’m non-binary. Say a cisgender author wants to write about a non-binary character. No matter how much outside research they do (reading articles about non-binary people, reading books written by non-binary people, etc), there’s a chance that they’ll miss something about the experience simply because they haven’t lived it themselves. When writing about experiences outside their own, I find that most authors simply don’t know what they don’t know....

Annually, Libro.fm announces their bestselling audiobooks of the year, which are always a good place to find some guaranteed worthwhile listens. (Check out the 2020 list for even more recommendations.) This year’s list includes literary fiction, memoirs, and essays. The links go to Libro.fm, where you can sign up to support independent bookstores with every purchase. 4) The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah, narrated by Julia Whelan 5) People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry, narrated by Julia Whelan 6) Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, narrated by Sura Siu 7) The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green, narrated by the author 8) Broken Horses by Brandi Carlile, narrated by the author 9) How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith, narrated by the author 10) Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty, narrated by Caroline Lee Popular book club authors such as Kristin Hannah, Liane Moriarty, and Taylor Jenkins Reid make up the bulk of this list....

The parent education initiative, Every Child Ready To Read, which guides many public libraries in their approach to promoting early literacy, lists singing and reading as two of the five practices that will help children build a solid foundation for literacy. (The other three practices are talking, writing, and playing.) By putting picture books to music, caretakers can double the positive effects of their one-on-one reading time with their children....

Instead of springing for champagne and roses this year, you might opt out of romance. Books about romance, that is. Yup, I said it: ditch the romantic love books and pick up a non-romance. An anti-romance? You get my drift. Heck, you could even give your book a sniff if you want — everyone knows a good book smells better than flowers. Regardless of your tome’s fragrance, it’s the stories that will fill you up....

Being anxious by nature, I planned vigorously, researching the perks of New York Public Library membership—not that the endless access to up to 50 free books at a time wasn’t enough for me—and filling out an online form. When I finally made my way to my local branch to finish applying in person, I brought two pieces of mail as proof of address. Once there, the process took less than five minutes....

Nancy remains internationally popular with every new generation, with her book series having been translated into over 45 languages and having sold over 80 million copies worldwide. She’s made the leap from page to screen multiple times, and her popularity and influence have spawned countless spin-offs and inspired numerous other fictions featuring female detectives. But most interestingly, Nancy Drew serves as an intriguing look into how traditional gender roles surrounding masculinity, unlike the character’s timeless influence, have remained particularly stagnant....

“Netflix’s The Witcher is more than just a hit for the streaming service, it has ignited interest in the franchise in general in a way that it has never seen in its almost 30 year lifespan. Concurrent players of the CDPR video game, The Witcher 3, are higher than they have been since that game launched almost four years ago. And past that, the books on which the first season of The Witcher were directly based have landed on the NYT Best-Seller list, not just for the niche fantasy genre, for all print and e-book combined fiction....

These nonfiction releases explore different angles of the movement and rape culture at large—from moving stories written by survivors themselves to behind-the-scenes accounts from the journalists and activists who helped expose the perpetrators. As the world continues to grapple with the revelations of #MeToo, books like these will play an important role in examining the aftermath of the movement and its ongoing effects on our society. She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey (September 10) In an October 2017 New York Times article, Jodi Kantor and Meghan Twohey broke the news of the assault allegations against Weinstein....

As seen in the last few months, the books under fire across the U.S. this week will be familiar targets, including Gender Queer and Lawn Boy. The same talking points appear again and again, with censors claiming that these books are “grooming” children and “pornography.” By using this specific language, as opposed to explaining what’s actually happening in the books — neither grooming nor pornography — they’e able to warp research on actual pornography and childhood trauma to books like these, which are safe spaces for discussing these topics....

Side note: If you’re looking to commune with the stars for your own life advice and reading recommendations, you might enjoy Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac (October 29, Flatiron Books) by the masterminds behind the popular @poetastrologers Twitter account, Alex Dimitrov and Dorothea Lasky. It’s a fun, accessible, and modern guide to the signs. Even better, it’s astrology by poets! If you’ve ever wondered what your sign says about you (or how it can help you figure out the people around you), this is the place to start....

For the uninitiated, the above is my take on the first line of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, the first book in the Mary Russell series. The series, which began in 1994, is ongoing and now numbers 17 volumes, and several companion short stories. This, however, was 2002 and my library only had one copy of one book and I was surprised, months later, to find out that there were more. I had no particular interest in or knowledge of Sherlock Holmes outside of The Great Mouse Detective, which was a favorite childhood movie....

Jordan published The Eye of the World in 1990, five months before I was born. I read it for the first time 14 years later, while longterm fans were waiting for the 11th book to hit the shelves. And just a few years later in 2007, Robert Jordan passed away, the last of his books unpublished until Brandon Sanderson took over and completed the final three. I read them day and night, swallowing the many thousands of pages in big gulps of adventure....

The second thing was that I packed up a hatbox with ticket stubs, my old moleskine diaries, event booklets and important correspondence. I’m not quite sure why I did this, because I could have started fresh. This box took up half of a suitcase when I only had three suitcases to emigrate with— including it meant sacrificing other, more immediately important, things. But for some reason I did bring it....