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These are books which are seeing a lot of interest but haven’t necessarily stayed atop bestseller lists for months and/or books with particular interest locally. The data looks at adult fiction, adult nonfiction, and young adult books (which includes fiction, nonfiction, and comics). Panorama Picks groups public libraries by coordinating American Bookseller Association (ABA) regions, which allows for a really neat way of exploring interest on a regional level. A book might be especially popular in California but less so in the Midwest, and looking at that data provides a real opportunity for local bookstores and libraries....

The trailer features much of the ensemble, but focuses mostly on Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), son of Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) and Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson). The events of the novel are set in motion by Duke Atreides being sent to the desert planet of Arrakis in order to harvest melange (AKA “the spice”), a rare substance that enhances humans in life expectancy and mental capacity. There will be many discussions of the spice in the coming months—Chalamet already referenced it when he introduced the trailer on Twitter....

The artist Michel Becker bought the golden casket and designed the illustrations himself. It is accompanied by a story, which also contains clues, by Pauline Deysson. The puzzles promise to be challenging, requiring both logical deductions and research. Becker also illustrated the 1993 treasure hunt book On the Trail of the Golden Owl, which has a prize that has yet to be claimed. Alongside the coded story and illustrated puzzle, there is also a story and history of the Entente Cordiale by Stephen Clarke, author of A Year in the Merde....

But recently in literature, the script has been flipped in a way that feels extremely relevant in a society that relies on dating apps that encourage users to “swipe right” on people they find physically attractive. Authors have created a new genre of romance by developing characters who accept one another (and themselves) for who they are within. Attachments by Rainbow Rowell In Rainbow Rowell’s Attachments, Lincoln, hired to monitor employee emails, falls in love with Beth Fremont after one of her email exchanges with coworker Jennifer Scribner-Snyder is flagged for review....

Back in 2008, when the first Twilight movie was released, I was still a casual reader. I was always reading something, but without internet access at home, I was enjoying books pretty much on my own, with no social media influencing my reading habits or purchases. Just a girl who liked to read for fun. When a friend invited me to go to the cinema to watch a new movie about vampires, I gladly went along....

Maple Mehta-Cohen has been keeping a secret: she can’t read all that well. She has an impressive vocabulary and loves dictating stories into her recorder—especially the adventures of a daring sleuth who’s half Indian and half Jewish like Maple herself—but words on the page just don’t seem to make sense to her. Despite all Maple’s tricks to hide her reading troubles, her teacher is on to her, and now Maple has to repeat fifth grade....

Behind the Grisly Practice Researchers have found such books going back to the 16th century, but the heyday was the 19th century. Some of the texts were medical works while others were books about terrible crimes. Many times books are inscribes with a note that it is made from human flesh. In an interview with Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris, a medical historian, at Vice in 2015, she identifies three principal reasons for the practice....

Barack Obama was by no means a perfect president, but he was still pretty damn good, and he was and is a great reader as well. We have been treated to stories about the Obama family’s bookstore visits, to reading lists and book recommendations, and to Obama’s own books, both of which show not only Obama’s writing talent, but also how books and reading shaped his life and his presidency....

Because of publishing shifting daily, some of the publication dates for the below books have changed. It is impossible to keep track of them all at this point, so if something interests you and it’s not publishing at the date listed, preorder the book and be surprised when it shows. The titles here include standalone titles, series books (marked in a *), books from well-known YA authors, debut authors, and books that’ll be blockbusters as well as quieter titles....

Jeffrey Eugenides is a brilliant, versatile author, and his novel Middlesex is one of my favorite books. Overall, I found his first novel, The Virgin Suicides, not as good as Middlesex, much better than The Marriage Plot, and completely different from either of these books. It’s haunting, atmospheric, and elegantly written. The first sentence is chilling: “On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese—the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope....

Sometimes a lack of reading diversity doesn’t look the way you’d think it would. I’m not a misandrist. I like men. Hell, I married one. Sometimes I even think men besides the one I entered a legal agreement to nod and smile at are interesting. Still, my most surprising shortcoming was the number of books written by men on my 2013 list—barely 25%. Of those, five titles were by Neil Gaiman, and three were by George R....

“As far as we can recall, at no point did Harry visit his local Chuck E. Cheese and throw a chess party. Did we miss the chapter where ya boy HP was wizard-napped by NYC subway rats and taken to one of those sewer-dwelling-geniuses we see in movies all the time (lookin’ at you, August Rush … and Ninja Turtles) but never in real life? And the only way he could win his freedom was to live among them, as one of the rats, working his way up their social ladder via their chosen method of battle, chess?...

It wasn’t always that way, though. The North American Manga Market of the Past Older fans are likely familiar with the manga boom of the 2000s. For those less familiar, here’s a quick overview. Prior to the 2000s, most manga was mirrored-imaged to read left-to-right and released in monthly floppy issues similar to American superhero comics. After the turn of the 21st century, however, manga publishers switched to preserving the original right-to-left reading order and began releasing titles in collected volumes from the get-go....

Here in New York City, book publishing’s largest trade show, Book Con and Book Expo, were felled by the coronavirus when organizing entity ReedPop announced they were exploring “new ways to meet the community’s needs.” I guess now I’ll never get that second photo with Captain Underpants. So while it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to line up and get a signature from our favorite author anytime soon, there is some good news as well....

For anyone not familiar with it (no judgement! I only read Northern Lights this past summer!) His Dark Materials is an award-winning trilogy. It comprises of Northern Lights (The Golden Compass in the US), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. The author, Philip Pullman, has described it as a coming-of-age story Lyra Belacqua and Will Perry (who only appears in the second and third books). The series begins in an alternative version of our world, and continues across a number of parallel universes....

So in honor of both those novels and my lifetime of reading murder mysteries, I’m going to lay out what I think are the five key elements to a good murder mystery. Murder Most Foul Fundamentally, a murder mystery must have a murder. It sounds pretty obvious, but it’s important to remember that crime novels, detective novels, and noir are often used interchangeably with murder mysteries. A mystery can mean anything from a murder to something involving stolen/lost items to a kidnapping or disappearance....

Hiro Arikawa’s The Traveling Cat Chronicles (translated by Philip Gabriel), features a cat who gets to move around with his owner in a silver van. This book talks about the connection that exists between humans and cats and in turn humanity’s correlation with nature and animals. Satoru adopts a stray cat, names him Nana, and off they go traversing Japan meeting people, some of whom are from Satoru’s past. Nana doesn’t know until the end about Satoru’s reasons for going on a long road trip and for taking him along....

Wait… you mean Hollywood doesn’t always get it right? “We believe that beauty for women is a source of power and privilege. A kind of currency. But is it truly attainable? What is the flip side of beauty—when does beauty cause suffering? What happens when someone who identifies as beautiful gets stripped of it, whether by age or accident? And in the end, who decides what—and more to the point—who is beautiful?...

What Is a Light Novel? Light novels are short, fast-paced novels that are manga-adjacent. Many use tropes familiar to avid manga readers. The slapstick comedy, the over-the-top violence, the over-exaggerated reactions — you can find all these things in light novels. The only difference is that it’s prose versus a comic. As a result, many manga fans read light novels and most light novel fans read manga. The audiences overlap, and you’ll notice that North American manga publishers release light novels alongside their manga licenses regularly....

Once I got to university, assigned reading became more of a burden. I was reading books I wouldn’t have picked up myself, and the time it took to read articles cut into any pleasure reading. I would squeeze in novels on the bus and would always be midway through an audiobook. It wasn’t the same as being a bookish tween, but my dedicated reading time during my commute meant I would always be reading something enjoyable....