Below I’ve gathered some tips to help if you’re looking to reclaim a reading habit in the midst of all this chaos. Try one, try them all, or take a break! You deserve it. Find Your Why This is a very important question. Why are you trying to start reading again? Really, why? If you say it’s because reading makes you feel better, or because you notice that you’re more able to cope when you’ve spent some time with a book, then great....
Loewen and Dr. Charles Sallis co-wrote Mississippi: Conflict and Change in 1974 as a corrective response to the content assigned to his fellow students at Tougaloo during their 9th grade history course. The book earned the Lillian Smith Book Award for Best Southern Nonfiction in 1976, but simultaneously the Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board refused to purchase it and school districts threatened to fire teachers who used it in their classrooms....
After the Winter by Guadalupe Nettel, translated by Rosalind Harvey I took my time with this sharp and stunning novel and I absolutely loved it. In parallel and entwining narratives that move from Havana to Paris to New York City, After the Winter is a novel ultimately about the human impulse to love, and yet it’s unlike any other love story. The writing, in Rosalind Harvey’s brilliant translation, is nothing short of transcendent—subtle and dark but also surprisingly funny....
ESTP (Extraversion + Sensing + Thinking + Perceiving): The Entrepreneur Personality Until We Collide by Charlotte Fallowfield Paige Taylor has been in love with Alec Wright since forever. However, despite their chemistry, their timing is just wrong. Approaching her 30th birthday, Paige starts to despair about finding her happy ending. Her life is just a series of unfortunate – and quite hilarious – events, a perfect combination for ESTPs. They’re all about drama, passion, and pleasure, and Paige’s life is full of it....
This increase has mainly been due to conservative groups organizing protests against “Critical Race Theory” and “pornography” in school libraries, which have challenged books that discuss racism, include LGBTQ characters, or are focused on sex education. One noteworthy incidence was Texas lawmaker Matt Krause’s list of 850 books he wanted removed from school libraries, most of which were LGBTQ YA novels. One school district removed more than 400 books from shelves for “review” after receiving this list, despite book challenge procedures requiring that book stay on shelves until after the review process has finished....
Fourteen-year-old Zaila Avant-garde from New Orleans, Louisiana, won the competition, correctly spelling “querimonious,” “solidungulate,” and the final winning word, “murraya” — a type of tree. “Does this word contain the English name Murray, which could be the name of a comedian?” she asked the judges when presented the word. She spelled it immediately after, to take home the championship title and $50,000 in cash. She is the first African American to win, and only the second Black winner, following Jody-Anne Maxwell from Jamaica in 1998....
Like I said, it’s a lot. BUT. I’m not a defeatist. Things get hard. We’ve seen this throughout history. Hard times happen. Seemingly hopeless times occur, darkness falls. But there are always good people. There is always hope. There is always resistance. This, I believe. No, I don’t just believe it, I know it. I know it from the stories I heard growing up from teachers and friends’ grandparents who survived the Holocaust....
Find below a collection of fun, clever, and even punny Shakespeare stickers. You’ll want to pop ’em on your water bottles, your laptops, your notebooks, and anywhere else that needs a little more literary love. If stickers aren’t enough, don’t miss out on these sweet Shakespeare cross-stitch patterns. Shaking It Up With Shakespeare Stickers Shine on with this “To thine own self be true” sticker. $4. It sure is, Billy....
Shantaram is a story of duality — of crime and altruism, murder and healing, and maybe even a little redemption. Before he makes his way to India, Lin commits an armed robbery to nurse a heroin addiction. Equipped with a fake passport and desperate to disappear, he eventually flees to Bombay, India (now Mumbai), where he hopes to disappear into a sort of anonymity. Instead, he struggles to find himself while running a clinic in one of the city’s most disadvantaged areas, managing to get pulled deeper and deeper into Bombay’s dark underworld....
But don’t let the short length fool you. Many times, shorter books say a lot with less. Each word matters, and I am always impressed with how authors are able to construct such simple yet eloquent sentences that sometimes take me days to unpack. One of my personal reading goals this year was to read more books by South Asian writers, and while I have kept up with this goal, I can always do better....
“They’re asking ‘who’s going to complain?’,” explains Anna*, “not ‘who needs this?’” Anna, who works as a school librarian in suburban Wisconsin, is in an ideal situation when it comes to potential book challenges. Her school, already targeted this year by right-wing censors, has a robust collection development policy and an administration that supports the decisions made by its educators and library staff. Still, what’s happening inside the school reflects an even-bigger censorship issue: quiet censorship....
But I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even want to look at another 19th century novel. I started and lost interest in Jude the Obscure so many times it became a running joke with friends. I felt like I’d lost a big part of my “reading identity,” but that did leave me with time to read new books. No matter what you studied in college or grad school, you probably had to do a lot of reading....
Goodreads hasn’t been especially receptive to feedback in the past. Despite every Goodreads user I’ve ever known complaining about it, half stars are still not an option. You’d think that if they can design a whole new page layout, they could deign to give us half stars. But it seems that the lack of half stars is just Goodreads’s grumpy signature now, and the company plans to die on this hill....
Axios put together a fascinating interactive map this week to show what it is people within a congressional district are googling. It should come as little to no surprise that in districts where book challenges are hot that “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) is the top search. The more the phrase is used, the more it’s discussed, and the more information — both valid and misinformation — about what CRT is and is not emerges....
These days, Sappho is most well-known for her love of women. In fact, her name is synonymous with it. Wearing a shirt with Sappho on it is more likely to be seen as announcing your sexuality than appreciating an ancient Greek poet. It’s worth remembering why she rose to such levels of fame, though: her poetry resonates even now. If you aren’t already familiar, read some of Sappho’s poetry to see for yourself!...
The titles below center on periods of American history as well as more global histories, though each and every one has a teen girl of color in the leading role. In nearly every book, too, we have #OwnVoices represented — storytellers are able to share their experiences as writers of color and female-identifying writers of color through a range of historical contexts. Not included are historical fantasy. There are obvious holes in representation here, particularly when it comes to Native American and Indigenous history....
There’s also gift wrapping, which gets increasingly out of control if you’re like me and tend to realize just how many people you love at the holidays and so must buy each and every one of them something they’ll love. And, honestly, I’m terrible at it. I can’t ever get my corners right, the tape folds in on itself, and tying those fancy ribbons isn’t a skill I possess. But the pile of things to wrap or dishes to do or the long hours at the stove is so much more manageable when I’ve got something engaging to listen to....
So with all the myriad ways readers show their support for their most beloved authors online, how did I come to make this final list? Just to keep the research a little more focused, I stuck with Goodreads stats of various kinds. First of all, I looked at the list of authors who are the most followed on Goodreads. From there, I cross-referenced this list with the list of books that are most read and the most shelved on any given year, starting in 2021 and going back to 2016, just to keep the list current to what people have been reading the most over the past five years or so....
In celebration of National Library Lover’s Day, the Horror Writers Association (HWA), in partnership with United for Libraries, Book Riot, and Booklist, is delighted to announce the third annual Summer Scares Reading List, which includes titles selected by a panel of authors and librarians and is designed to promote horror as a great reading option for all ages, during any time of the year. Each year, three titles will be chosen in the Adult, Young Adult, and Middle Grade categories, and for 2021 they are:...
GiftLit Big Ideas If exploring big ideas are your thing, then the GiftLit Big Ideas subscription is the perfect nonfiction book subscription for you! The Big Ideas line of GiftLit is packed full of nonfiction science titles in a variety of fields, and you can choose which books you’d like to receive from a wide variety of hardcover titles, everything from new releases to upcoming titles and bestsellers. The subscription is available in 3-, 6-, and 12-month increments, starting at $89....
