The book fair hosted rows upon rows of book publishers, magazines, journals, and all readable things. Here are some of the highlights that caught my eye in a bevy of free buttons and candy. Perugia Press This press selects one title to publish per year. That means an intense focus on one woman’s poetry collection annually. The selection stems from their annual contest. This year’s publication was Hail and Farewell by Abby E....
After ten months of the quarantine, I personally had begun to feel overdone. While we all hoped 2021 would magically be different than 2020, for me it felt like the final stretch in a marathon when all your blood glucose has long since disappeared and you know you’re burning fat and probably even muscle. On the home front, our cooped-up family working and homeschooling for months on end with little chance of normality eventually made me a little loopy and cranky....
We’re not going far. Our new place is just a few blocks from where we currently live. We’re looking forward to it, but I’m mostly looking forward to when the hard part—the packing up and the moving and the setting up of the internet and the rearranging of all the kitchen appliances—is behind us. As exciting as the prospect is, there’s one thing I’m especially dreading: packing up all my books and moving them....
“Many of these books were treated as perverted. Not only in terms of what their content was actually about but how their expression was literally perverted or manipulated by publishers. Yet, this immediate indictment of morality and monstrosity imposed onto some of these books didn’t dishearten me. Instead, I found that there was something strangely heartwarming at the time about seeing how two characters love despite all narrative attempts to keep them apart....
So many readers have had to pivot their lives: to work from home, to maintain their mental health without seeing their friends or going outdoors, even to take charge of their children’s education or take on extra shifts as essential workers. Many of the readers who have more reading time are finding that the mental toll of current events is hurting their attention spans, or seeing their genre preferences shift and twist....
I’ve written before about the important role comics have in literacy, and I wanted to showcase comics for the students in a big way. I was very excited to see it become a huge success. While yes I was exhausted, as I ran it entirely on my own, but the students had a lot of fun and I was very pleased with how smoothly it all came together. When I was in high school we had nothing like this, so my goal was to create something that 13-year-old me would have wanted to attend....
Poems have many layers of meaning. A particularly beautiful and well-crafted poem only becomes more enjoyable the more you increase your understanding of the decisions the poet made to craft it. The following steps outline the kinds of questions to ask yourself while writing a poem analysis. Step 1: Read the Poem Aloud Poetry has a long oral history. Poets often utilize sound techniques which are easier to detect when reading the poem aloud....
Sometimes the fault lies more in the marketing: I was promised a romantic read, and this turned to be meditation on mortality. The cover suggested something fun and silly, and this was a heartbreaking read I was not in the headspace for. Of course, occasionally I just think a book is bad. As much as I want to believe there’s a reader for every book, there are some that I finish and can only think about the glaring faults....
*Favorite book is, in my opinion, a category; my favorite book is Geek Love, it’s Beautiful Wreck, it’s My Antonia, it’s Code Name Verity, and it’s always always always Castle. The movie does not yet have distribution, but I happened to see that it was playing at the Los Angeles Film Festival last month, and was able to purchase a ticket. This will not be a proper film review, but my musings on director Stacie Passon’s gorgeous achievement....
Cole Williams is the author of Dr. Brainchild & Radar: A Popcorn Discovery. A silver-medalist for the 2017 and 2016 Nautilus Awards, she has previously published Hear the River Dammed: Poems From the Edge of the Mississippi, Charlie: A Child’s Tale of Grief, Loss & Love, and Eukarya: A Child’s Guide to Knowing Names of Nature. We are happy to have Cole with us on Book Riot. Dr. Brainchild & Radar: A Popcorn Discovery is a fun tale that talks about the importance of experimenting and happy accidents....
The genre of social horror as it has come to be known combines elements of suspense and horror to contextualize the obvious — and not so obvious — biases in society. This genre is not limited to filmmaking but is widely spread in books as well. This includes cult classics like Rosemary’s Baby. One of the reasons social horror works so effectively is the fact that after empathy, it uses one of the most post potent emotions to make its point: fear....
Easy! Listen to me. Of course, it’s not actually that simple. I’m immersed in the book world. I’ve read reviews and dug into ratings and analyzed who I think are award contenders. I’m just one person, but I guarantee this list is sound: the 15 books that follow are the best that 2022 has to offer. They feature book eaters and trans archivists, dig into near-future dystopias and vast, dark fantasy worlds....
Jonah, a seven-year-old boy inexplicably recalls the memories of Henry, a missing 22-year-old musician. Jonah’s mother, Lucie does everything she can to be loving and attentive, but she can’t stop Jonah’s night terrors or his obsession with his “other mom.” When Jonah meets Henry’s mother, Helen while on vacation, all hell breaks loose. How does Jonah know so much about Henry? Is this child Helen’s son come back to her?...
Sure, there’s a subversive bent to Wodehouse’s most famous creations: the dopey bachelor Bertie and the unflappable valet Jeeves. For Jeeves – as Bertie is constantly reminded, to comic effect – has a brilliant mind, and is much more capable than the feckless Bertie. It can be argued, though, that Jeeves’ contentment with being employed by such a nitwit is itself reassuring. Their relationship suggests that even the most talented and renowned of the working classes won’t rise up against the wealthy classes that have done nothing to earn or maintain that wealth....
The Namesake begins with a scene of a woman making a South Asian snack called chanachur in Bengali—but sometimes known as Bombay mix—made of puffed rice, minced onions, and dried lentils, all mixed with mustard oil. The moment was a jarring one in my reading experience because it was the first time I read about the food that I ate at home being described in a book. My surprise grew as I read about Gogol’s parents and related to all the everyday things they did....
Bad news: Mercury is in retrograde through July 12, leading to miscommunications, interrupted plans, and general mayhem. As I always say, your best bet to avoid Mercury Retrograde disaster is to stay inside with a nice book. Aries (March 21–April 19) Passion is your driving force this month, Aries. You know what’s worth fighting for, and you’ll put everything you’ve got behind it. Your love life will also be passionate in July....
Easier said than done, for sure. Even with the enormous privilege of being employed by a school that’s closed, having a stocked pantry, and having an educational background, I’m still slightly queasy staring weeks down the calendar stuck home with two active kids. Luckily, I’m not alone. Around the country, people who care about children are coming together and using their considerable talents to provide entertainment and education for the masses who are out of school and in need of stimulation....
Here is how a few Latinx authors responded on Twitter: — David Bowles (Ocēlōtōn in Tlamatini) (@DavidOBowles) November 5, 2018 — Guadalupe G. McCall (@ggmccall) November 5, 2018 We decided to do something about it. Please read and share our open letter to the district. https://t.co/tJ8MC65upk pic.twitter.com/D0Bylgo3Ta — Jenny Torres Sanchez (@jetchez) November 5, 2018 Prominent and respected authors such as Guadalupe Garcia McCall, Carmen Tafolla, Erika L. Sanchez and David Bowles, to name a few, are offering the Middleton School District an opportunity to host them and others so the district can be given a presentation to a general assembly....
Women’s heroes are everyone’s heroes! In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote, we read books that are by, for, and about powerful women of all ages. A pre-teen who helped discover the world’s first dinosaur bone, a young women in the early 20th century who braved the illness and death of the radium factories and fought a groundbreaking battle for workers’ rights, or teens—one black, one white—who rely on each other to survive a night of violent race riots in their city—these are the stories of remarkable women of history and resourceful everyday girls....
Last week in my high school library, a student came in and started asking me detailed questions about each book he pulled off the shelf. “Does this one have magic in it?” “Is this the book with the twist at the end?” “What’s a book with big family problems?” At first, I could easily answer most of his questions. “No, The Hunger Games doesn’t have magic in it.” “Yes, Monday’s Not Coming has a twist at the end....
