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Erin Morgenstern (author of The Night Circus) wrote the following as a chapter for our book, Start Here: Read Your Way Into 25 Amazing Authors. The goal of Start Here is to give motivating and lively 3-4 book sequences for trying out some great authors. So, if you’ve been thinking about trying Neil Gaiman, this is a good place to start. I think I stopped having to explain to people who Neil Gaiman is around the time he was referred to as “British Fonzie” on The Simpsons, so if you’re reading this I shall assume you’ve heard of him....

Nothing could tear Detective Michael Bennett away from his new bride—except the murder of his best friend. NYPD master homicide investigator Michael Bennett and FBI abduction specialist Emily Parker have a history. When she fails to show at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, Bennett ventures outside his jurisdiction. The investigation he undertakes is the most brilliant detective work of his career…and the most intensely personal. A portrait begins to emerge of a woman as adept at keeping secrets as forging powerful connections....

Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin (Oneworld) Schweblin’s unnerving techno-thriller is set in a world where Kentukis – smart toys equipped with built-in cameras which can be remotely controlled – are all the rage globally. Featuring a diverse range of characters based all around the world, this wildly unique novel poses pertinent questions about surveillance, voyeurism and human’s primal need to find connections in whichever form they can. The Voice in My Ear by Frances Leviston (Jonathan Cape) This unique work of fiction combines the tales of ten women, all named Claire, who are living in contrasting circumstances but are governed by overbearing mothers....

Even defining what is a romance novel is difficult…even though I know romance novels must include a happy ending. So many lists about the most influential romance novels are full of Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, and (ugh) Nicholas Sparks. While many of these have romance, and even happy endings, I still don’t think of them as romance novels. I wanted to focus more specifically on the books published specifically by romance publishers for romance readers....

Here are the 16 long listed books: Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith Careless by Kirsty Capes Creatures of Passage by Morowa Yejidé Flamingo by Rachel Elliott Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey Salt Lick by Lulu Allison Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki The Bread the Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-Agostini The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller The Sentence by Louise Erdrich This One Sky Day by Leone Ross...

Now that subscription boxes are A Thing (I use so many of them and may or may not have a problem), the offerings out there for bookish boxes have ballooned. Here are my four favorite curated book subscriptions for all my fellow book nerds. Feminist Book Club I joined the FBC earlier this year. When I received my first box—covered in a personalized magazine collage—I was charmed. In addition to that month’s book (Lauren McKeon’s F-Bomb), there were a number of other goodies in the box, including a sampler pack of lube from Smitten Kitten, which was very much in my sex writing wheelhouse....

Disclaimers I’ve got a few, so hold on. First, these numbers are based on the most commonly-used Goodreads bookshelf about this topic: “to-read” with 1.1 billion shelved books. Of course, this takes into account only a small percentage of readers who actually use this tag to mark their TBR books. (But it’s a billion, so we’re at a good start.) All numbers given are from November 2018 and may not reflect stats you see later....

In other words, I have a very precise list of places I’ll be going once my friends and I feel comfortable visiting restaurants again. In the meantime, I’ve been visiting my favorite local haunts by exploring their cookbooks. The Bay Area is particularly lucky to have several top-notch restaurants whose chefs enjoy sharing their work not only in person, but also in print. My favorite example of this came in extremely handy during the “everyone must make their own bread” phase of lockdown....

There have been many, many editions of this, my favorite novel, and some of the covers have been…choices. So I have gone through them all and selected the very best (and the very worst) covers for We Have Always Lived in the Castle, categorized by who — or what — the cover depicts. Keep reading to see the best and worst cats, castles, sisters, and more! And there you have it, the best and worst covers for Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle....

I was looking for overall best of lists, not genre lists, and I was also looking for lists that were roughly ten books long — no cheating with a “100 notable books” list. After that, I tallied every book mentioned on all ten to see which showed up on multiple lists. As expected, the vast majority were mentioned only once. About one in five titles showed up two lists, and only eight made three or more best of lists....

How knowledgeable are the booksellers? What’s the selection like? Are there great events? Is the bookstore part of the community? These are the things that matter to indie bookstore shoppers, and algorithms just miss some of that nuance. And really, there is no “best” bookstore, a quantitative term for a subjective feeling. I asked Rioters from across the country to tell me their favorite bookstores in every state (plus Washington, DC!...

The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins by Carey Pietsch, Clint McElroy, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, and Travis McElroy (First Second) This year, I played D&D for the first—and probably last—time. As a socially anxious introvert, the game itself exhausted me. But I did enjoy the world-building and the choose your own adventure-ness of it all, and so I began reading comics built around D&D. This graphic novel based upon “The Adventure Zone,” a popular comedy podcast that follows a D&D campaign, blows them all away, mostly because of its fantastic sense of humor....

And please note, this article is best read with background music: Tank!, the Theme Song from Cowboy Bebop, the ultimate anime series and pin-up for all things space western. I love this cover performed by DA Jazz Alumni: Cowboy Bebop is one of the best examples of the space western genre, with its forced family dynamics, traveling through space, and chasing bounties for criminals. Bebop’s characters achieve so much together and regularly declare they can do it alone if they really want to....

Just because you remember a book, though, doesn’t mean that it was a stunning work of genius. Instead, it might be because there is a plot hole that still annoys you years later. Or it could be a horror scene that still makes appearances in your nightmares. It can also be a swoonworthy romantic gesture that has given you unrealistic expectations of relationships, though, or a line so stunning that it is permanently emblazoned on your brain....

Here are ninety-nine fictional characters typed according to the Enneagram. 1—The Reformer Ones are highly principled individuals who value ethics above all else. They have a very strong sense of right and wrong and are often advocates for positive change in their communities. They have high standards and, if they are less healthy, can be critical and perfectionistic. Ones’ deepest desire is to be good and to have integrity. Their greatest fear is of being corrupt, evil, or defective....

Lately, I’ve found myself returning to a comic published 34 years ago that has nothing to do with any of that. It’s Secret Origins Annual #2 (September 1988) — specifically, the lead story, “The Unforgiving Minute,” by William Messner-Loebs and Mike Collins. Messner-Loebs’s run on the Flash is probably the most underrated in the character’s history. It’s overshadowed by the spectacular Mark Waid run which followed it, but Waid was building on the tremendous work Messner-Loebs had done before him, which included introducing Linda Park, the love of Wally West’s life, and establishing the reformed former supervillain Pied Piper as gay — only the second recurring DC character to come out, and the first man....

As a reader and a writer, I’m fascinated by and always scour the acknowledgements. If the section isn’t at the beginning, I flip to the end matter early. (I like to be left with a story or collection’s last line.) I’m thinking of acknowledgements now, especially the ones that brimmed my eyes with happy tears, felt like poems in and of themselves. How, at the end of Inheritance, Taylor Johnson writes, “Light upon light to the trees that made this exchange possible....

Books as Precious Objects: Pre-1800s What is the precursor to the modern dust jacket? Well, that depends how you define it. After all, scrolls were often wrapped in animal skins to protect them. In “The Dust-Jacket Considered,” Margit J. Smith traces the origins back to the Middle Ages, where Irish book owners would protect them on journeys in jeweled book boxes called cumdachs. At this time, of course, book were incredibly valuable objects, requiring a lot of time to produce individually....

Your history teacher may lecture you about primary sources, and they’re right to do so. First-person accounts of major historical events help us live in the moment and understand more of the day-to-day. Ruth Franklin tweeted early on, before major lockdown measures, to encourage people to start writing diaries and reflect on what was happening around us. Jen Miller at the New York Times also took up this idea and expanded further about why it was helpful and necessary....