Mind, I had a bad experience when introduced to the books from A Song of Ice and Fire, so I can only watch clips at a time of the show. I use spoilers to keep up because seeing entire episodes at a time would be too depressing, and the cliffhangers keep drawing me back despite my distrust. Other people can find joy in the show, but mainly I keep up to satiate my desire for spoilers....
Journalist Billy Jensen spent fifteen years investigating unsolved murders, fighting for the families of victims. Every story he wrote had one thing in common—they didn’t have an ending. The killer was still out there. But after the sudden death of a friend, crime writer and author of I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara, Billy got fed up. Following a dark night, he came up with a plan. A plan to investigate past the point when the cops had given up....
There are so many Shades of Magic gifts on Etsy that it was hard to choose just a few. I found jewelry, shirts, hoodies, pins, prints, and stickers galore. So you don’t have as much trouble as I did, wading through the deep waters of bookish Etsy, I put together this handy guide to some of the best gifts inspired by Shades of Magic I could find! There are 12 items total — including some very unique collectibles that I don’t want to spoil....
While censorship battles and romance books have had a long dance – Fanny Hill was published secretly for 200 years until the ban against the novel was lifted in the 1960s – recent changes in legislation, at least in the U.S., have added fuel to the fire. FOSTA-SESTA Laws Back in March 2018, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act – often cited together as the FOSTA-SESTA bills – were passed....
On this Sunday, Jordan Peele interrupted the Super Bowl game, introducing us to a desolate football field and a door that leads to nowhere. Rather than do a Rod Serling impression, Peele invites us to enjoy the atmosphere of being “there and nowhere” and when “truth is not the truth.” Those words certainly relate to our times. — CBS All Access (@CBSAllAccess) February 4, 2019 The original Twilight Zone featured stories by speculative authors Richard Matheson and Ray Bradbury; Matheson in fact wrote for the show, and Bradbury claimed that the show ripped off his short stories before adapting “I Sing the Body Electric,” about a widower and his children building a robotic grandmother to help them cope with grief....
Enjoy a full day of fantasy, and find exciting reads for your To-Be-Read through these epic posts:
In this spellbinding sequel to the New York Times bestselling The Last Magician, Esta and Harte set off on a cross-country chase through time to steal back the elemental stones they need to save the future of magic. As past and future collide, time is running out to rewrite history—even for a time-traveling thief. We have 10 copies of The Devil’s Thief by Lisa Maxwell to give away to 10 Riot readers!...
I’ve always guiltily hoped that the books wouldn’t be discarded, but have had no proof of this. A hotel receptionist once told me, clutching the book to her chest, that she would read the China-set sci-fi novel (Maggie Shen King’s An Excess Male) I’d just finished and left in my hotel room. Another time, after having been unexpectedly given some terribly erudite books on international relations that I knew I’d never get around to reading, a colleague told me that the hotel cleaners should be able to sell the tomes I’d left in the room....
With that dream in mind, I started my own book club and started seeking other like-minded girls who wanted to join in and chat about the latest book they’ve read, or maybe even pick a book a month and discuss. At the time, around 2012, I was a full-time editor at Where Magazine Miami and most of my time was spent schmoozing with public relations professionals and writing about the latest restaurant or travel hotspot....
In short, human interaction with the plant world predates humanity itself by what could conservatively be called a long shot. Without plants, there would not be animals, and since human are animals, well, it stands to reason that human interaction with plants would be of the utmost importance. We need to know whether we can use them or whether they should be left strictly alone; we also need to pass that information along to our friends and neighbors....
Please note that I will be mentioning a few books below when going more into detail the idea behind unreliable narrator. Some of these discussions will include spoilers. What Is an Unreliable Narrator? By definition, an unreliable narrator is a character who tells a story with a lack of credibility. That seems like a very basic blueprint. But it also gives the writer a little more leeway, since it opens up the opportunity for there to be multiple facets to this spectrum....
Romances are often ambiguous and unfairly maligned. According to The Romance Writers of America, a happy ending defines the romance genre. More broadly, though, readers may consider any story a romance as long as it contains a romantic relationship — regardless of genre or ending. Many beloved romances are technically tragedies. Some even make an adult grooming a child for a future sexual relationship central to the “love story.” Although interpretations of books vary, I’ve always viewed The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough and The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger as depicting grooming....
It’s fun to marvel at the ways we used to get things done. I took entire trips to other countries without being able to search on my phone for train schedules, restaurants, concert dates, anything??? I don’t think the old days were better. They were arduous, less spontaneous, and full of all sorts of mix-ups. Case in point: I once agreed to meet someone at a coffee shop in New York before the ballet (the tickets were paper and she had both)....
A quick search of this very website shows the guilt around DNFing. There are dozens (if not hundreds) of articles on the internet detailing why it’s okay to ditch a book. Most of them say, in essence, “life is too short to read books you hate.” While I fervently believe this to be true, I also believe that not every book should provide you with a smooth, pleasant experience. On the one hand, an amazing book can provide a surreal and magical experience as it whisks you along thrilling narrative trails....
I am often able to answer that question, because I love a good celebrity memoir. In an industry that prizes youth above most things, there is a certain stereotype of the former child star who can’t let go of the days when they were famous, but the people in these books show that there is life after early fame. Read them to get a behind-the-scenes look at your favorite movies or shows or to really consider what the cult of celebrity does to its youngest members....
The answer, for me, is at my parents’ house. I recognize that I am very lucky to be able to store books with these two reliable, if increasingly unwilling, guardians. In fact, from where I sit at this exact moment, I can see the shelf that houses the first books I unloaded onto my progenitors. (Did I mention I am visiting them at the moment? And by “them,” I am referring both to my parents and to my books....
Of course, there are plenty of other ways to go about this: you may want to do the KonMari method, you may just go for a good ol’ spring cleaning. You may need to recite some of Alice’s helpful mantras to yourself. However you do it, you will hopefully be left with large stacks of books to dispose of. You could give them away or donate them, which is quite noble, but it is always nice to be able to get a little money back from everything you’ve paid out to your bookshelves....
Maybe because I was too busy with my head in a book, but August certainly went by real quick. Which just put us that much closer to publishing’s fall book explosions—but for now, here are some of my August reads that you should definitely read. I’ve got one of my favorite crime novels of the year, historical mysteries, a dark British serial killer novel, an Australian crime novel, a whodunnit on the Tour de France, and a fantastic nonviolent true crime!...
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I’ll embellish a bit more on the why. But first, story time! When I was younger, I worked in a daycare. For most of my tenure there, I was the lead toddler teacher. My first December in that role, I was told that we had to teach about other winter holidays. This was to help ensure that all the kids and their families felt represented....
Let me be clear: Just because it’s short, doesn’t mean it’s easy. Flash fiction, to be done well, has to contain a whole story, with exquisite depth, in as few words as possible. In 2019, I’ve read flash that bends genre and reflects the times. All in less than 1,000 words. Sometimes in less than 500 words. Writing flash is a spacewalk with no tether. It’s swimming among sharks with blood on your hands....
