Recently, as I turned the final page of Bethany C. Morrow’s latest novel, A Song Below Water, I realized what I truly want as the next big trend: fantasies with powerful, singing sirens. In the world of A Song Below Water, magical creatures like sirens exist. Some are allowed to operate openly, revered for their gifts. Sirens are not. And it’s no coincidence that sirens are always Black women and girls....
Even as someone who didn’t read a ton of comics growing up (but who watched a lot of cartoons), Stan Lee and his creations at Marvel left a huge impact on my life, regardless of how complicated his legacy might be. I’m especially thankful for Spider-Man, whom Lee created with Steve Ditko. One of the only comics I did actually own growing up was a Spider-Man comic. Lee and Ditko did the entire world a favor in creating Peter Parker, who was a struggling high school student from Queens, not a rich billionaire or an alien from another planet....
Criterion films are currently on deep discount at Barnes & Noble through November 30, making it the perfect time to stock up for your winter indoor entertainment. Bonus: Criterion makes for outstanding gifts this holiday season, too. Find below a wide range of rad book-to-film adaptations you can snag on sale before November ends. Note: because adaptations have historically been very white and very male in authorship, that’s reflected here....
This post originally ran on May 8, 2015. _______________ Jillian Tamaki’s SuperMutant Magic Adademy is a webcomic that’s been running since 2010. So that means that for the last five years I’ve been missing out on what are some of the coolest and hilarious comics I have ever read. The title gives you the premise. We follow a group of mutant adolescents as they deal with the normal stuff: friends, high school politics, D&D game nights, special abilities, awkward relationships, and the occasional existential disintegration of your soul....
Maybe it’s because I read a lot of books pre-publication, when there aren’t a ton of reviews available, but I keep having the wonderful but slightly puzzling experience of the surprise! it’s queer! book. These are books I’ve picked up despite thinking they weren’t queer at all. Often the queer themes and characters aren’t mentioned in the publisher’s summary. Or because they aren’t just about queer people, they don’t show up on queer book lists or get a ton of attention in the many queer bookish circles I run in....
The Cake King by Rosie Chase If Sam had to pick her one celebrity crush, Michael “The Cake King” Godwin would definitely be it. So when she lands the chance to compete in a private baking competition that could catch his eye and pull herself and her adoptive family out of poverty, she jumps at the chance. But as an amateur baker, will Sam be able to hold up against the competition and win the ultimate prize: the Cake King’s heart?...
As the only doctor in the Wyoming Territory, Gideon needs the help of a nurse. And maybe something more. So he sends away for a mail-order bride with nursing experience. But when Miriam arrives in Savage Wells ready to work, she finds herself as the bride at an unexpected wedding. She refuses to marry Gideon, and embarrassed by the misunderstanding, the good doctor offers her a job, and romance begins to blossom....
Earl Grey and The Code of The Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse Earl Grey is a classic, floral black tea taken with afternoon high tea. Best served piping hot and sweetened slightly with a dash of milk, Earl Grey pairs beautifully with a comedy of manners, such as any of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster novels. In The Code of the Woosters, an 18thcentury cow creamer has gone missing from the family estate, leaving everyone including Aunt Dahlia in a tizzy....
The announcement comes in response to an increase in “parents’ rights” bills. A school district in Georgia reached out to Follett to ask for features to “increase parental involvement in a student’s book selections and expedite the process by which books that potentially contain sexually explicit material are challenged and removed.” The process for challenging books in school and public libraries is necessarily lengthy, involving several people (hopefully librarians and educators) reading the book in its entirety, consulting professional reviews, and evaluating the title on several criteria before determining whether it should stay on the shelves....
If you ask Iron Man, however, he’d probably say that conventions were already plenty dangerous. Just look at what happened to him in Iron Man #72, published in 1974. Our story begins with Tony Stark hustling out to California to deal with a supply chain issue at his company’s San Diego branch. By the time he gets there, the issue has been resolved, leaving him at loose ends. Tony decides to spend a little quality time with his underlings while he’s out there, only for two of them to take a swing at him....
Verdict: Seems like a good tool, especially if you have books all across genres, but only being able to view a handful of things in the free version didn’t give me enough knowledge to know if the paid version would be worth it. Library Thing is probably the most well-known app on this list and has been around since 2005. Its tools appear to be the most robust, and I like that books I’ve read and books I haven’t can easily be separated on the shelves....
Plague Stories and Epidemiology I don’t know where my love of books featuring diseases came from, but it’s here and it’s real. Whether it’s nonfiction about doctors, researchers, and epidemiologists, or dystopias brought about by a devastating new virus, I am so ready. (Perhaps it’s how I’m assuaging my fears about the state of global health? Get your flu shots, folks.) As it turns out, there’s a game for that! Pandemic is the game that taught me that I love collaborative tabletop games....
To make sure they’re actually underrated, we have picked an arbitrary cut-off point of under 250 Goodreads ratings. I highly recommend checking out your own underrated reads: you can sort your read Goodreads shelf by number of ratings to see how obscure your book taste is! (Go to your Read bookshelf and select “Num. Ratings” and “Asc.” in the bottom bar.) That’s enough lead up. Let’s get into the best books you’ve (probably) never heard of!...
Want more 3 on a YA Theme? We’ve got you covered.
If you haven’t noticed, there have been really amazing YA and middle grade fantasy books published lately. These books are smart, immersive, diverse, and fun, with characters that you can’t help but want to spend time with. Let’s be honest: the past few years have not been…ideal. For me, reading provides stress relief, but it also provides an escape. And if that escape comes with some magic, adventure, and fun, even better — especially if it’s a series where I can look forward to the next book and more explorations....
This list rounds up 15 notable YA releases from this past year. For those you haven’t read before, look for them at your local library or bookstore. And for books you have read this year, now’s an excellent time to revisit them. Included in this list are books from a variety of genres including contemporary, mystery, fantasy, science fiction, and post-apocalyptic. You’ll find plenty here to read and recommend. While this list can’t capture every YA book released this year worth checking out — and there are so many worth reading — Book Riot has plenty more resources....
Both Emma and Amélie are young women in their early 20s who constantly meddle in others’ lives, even if this requires deception. They serve as matchmakers, sometimes to friends who are unaware of their plotting behind the scenes. Emma and Amélie act as intermediaries between potential couples, lying and telling one person the other is attracted to them. Drama ensues. Both stories end with the protagonists finding romances of their own and knowing themselves much better....
This is the Chelsea Hotel, a “cauldron of creativity,” a place that every artist around the world knew about and set out for. The Chelsea Hotel roster of residents and transients (transient being the Chelsea Hotel reference for repeat visitors) includes, but is not limited to, Mark Twain and actress Sarah Bernhardt, political radical Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Thomas Wolfe and Dylan Thomas, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and Leonard Cohen (Cohen immortalized his meeting with Janis Joplin in his song, Chelsea Hotel #2), composer Virgil Thomson and Lou Reed....
He wasn’t just a singer, either. Autry’s IMDb page has 98 credits to his name, which includes both his movies (made from 1934 to 1953) and his self-titled TV show, which aired from 1950 to 1955. And let’s not forget that, as the Singing Cowboy, he was also busily appearing on radio, not to mention writing and recording all those hit songs. The man was inescapable for decades. And so was his horse....
Thirty years ago, the publishing world learned an amazing fact: novels that focus on female relationships, may become instantaneous bestsellers and earn strong critical acclaim from influential reviewers. In this example, I am referring to Amy Tan’s breakout novel The Joy Luck Club. Fiction that focused on four immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters, a novel that is centered on women and their interlocking relationships, just did not appear to be what people wanted to read....
