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For more great books on mindfulness, check out our list of 15 of the Best Mindfulness Books. Feel like giving it a try? Here is a quick mindful eating exercise. Take your favorite fruit and set aside a few minutes to enjoy it with your other senses before it reaches your tongue. Pretend it’s the first time you’ve ever seen the fruit. (You may want to do this when you’re alone, so you won’t feel self-conscious about looking perplexed by, say, a strawberry....

If this sounds somewhat similar to something that had become wildly popular and influential across the pond around the same timeline, that’s because it is. While Bushnell was chronicling the sometimes scandalous but always fabulous love lives of her friends in New York, British writer, Helen Fielding, was doing much of the same thing in the form of a column called “Bridget Jones’s Diary” that first appeared in The Independent in 1995....

For Someone Who Loves Intrigue, Suburban Drama, and Contemporary Novels: Little Fires Everywhere by Celest Ng is the perfect novel for fans of Big Little Lies and other suburban dramas dealing with familial issues, motherhood, and scandals that break in small, cookie-cutter towns. This is the perfect novel to read on a rainy weekend. It is sure to capture a reader’s attention and leave them wondering what will happen next....

Merriam Webster Children’s Dictionary You really can’t go wrong with the Merriam-Webster Children’s Dictionary, which features 35,000 words and phrases along with some illustrations. The entries for each word are packed with information, including the definition, usage, and specific notes on spelling and punctuation. The latest edition offers color-coded page borders for each letter of the alphabet, making it easy for kids to find exactly what they’re looking for. Scholastic Children’s Dictionary Scholastic’s dictionary is targeted to kids from the ages of eight to 12 (approximately third to seventh grades)....

—Steph Auteri —Megan Mabee —Mara Franzen —Rachel Brittain —S.W. Sondheimer —Rachel Rosenberg —Aurora Lydia Dominguez —Erika Hardison —Emily Martin —Ashley Holstrom —Jess Plummer —Christine Ro —Adiba Jaigirdar

Feel-Good Movie Adaptations To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018) | Netflix Based on the 2014 young adult romance novel with the same name, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han, this movie definitely gives you all the cute vibes. It also has a sequel already out on Netflix! You can do Skype calls with your friends and do a movie night, watching these two fabulous films....

Find the retelling perfect for you, from YA science fiction or modern adult romance to adorably illustrated graphic novels. Go ahead. Try the best of the best Cinderella retellings on for size! Young Adult Middle Grade Graphic Novels Adult All About Stepsisters Bonus Pick! Now that you’ve seen some of the best Cinderella retellings out there, maybe you want to check out even more fairytale retellings. To get more of your fairytale fill, check out out list of 100 must-read fairytale retellings, 7 intersectional retellings, a list of multicultural Cinderella picture books, and a great exploration of why exactly fairytale are retold time and again....

A heart-stopping story of hope from the bestselling author of The Marrow Thieves. Years ago, plagues and natural disasters killed millions and left survivors unable to dream, except for the Indigenous people of North America. Now, residential schools are set up—or re-opened—to harvest their dreams. Seventeen-year-old French is traveling with a group of other dreamers, trying to build and thrive as a community. But when French awakes alone in a pitch-black room, he knows exactly where he is—and what it will take to escape....

Then, at the beginning of this year, after faithfully withholding for two years, I saw the first episode of the first season. I felt a similar spell cast over me, watched in 20-second spurts, during slow hours at work, on my iPad after my husband and baby were asleep. I couldn’t think it could be done, but they had elevated the story to another level. The creators of the show, along with the cast, had captured the awkward silences of everyday life, of when you say something so spiteful that there is no going back....

A few of my books have been sitting on my coffee table waiting for chunks of time to present themselves, and I plan to make that happen – even if I have to play beach noises from my iPhone to make me feel like I’m lying on the sand! Among those books are Trust Exercise by Susan Choi, The Editor by Steven Rowley, On The Come Up by Angie Thomas, The Gifted School by Bruce Hollinger, The Last Book Party by Karen Dukess, and an ARC of Jami Attenberg’s forthcoming All This Could Be Yours....

I needed some light, some levity, some sweetness, and Miranda’s Gmorning, Gnight!: Pep Talks for Me & You was an expensive espresso shot of all three. This little book is tiny vignettes that he conceived on Twitter, one for each morning and one for each night. Each has a line illustration by Jonny Sun that is as beautiful and accessible as the text itself. Here is an example of a Gmorning: Now, I will be the first to admit that I am the kind of snob that often turns my nose up at such books of little thoughts....

When you think of comics of the 1950s and 1960s, you probably think of wholesome Superman comics and early Captain America. However, this time period saw the rise of “Underground Comix”. This movement was very much a product of its time. It was a counter-cultural movement involving the publication of small press comics. Most of these comics were either rude or satirical. This was a time in America when the hippies were at their height, and so was the controversy surrounding the Vietnam War....

But, what about trying to capture the entire development of the English language—now peaking at some two billion speakers worldwide and a lexicon of more than a million words (including dialects and technical terms)? And what about doing so with a list of, say, fewer words than it’s taken to compose this post so far… Crystal, who has written or edited nearly half a hundred books on the English language, took to the pages of The Telegraph this week to explain his process: It’s worthwhile reading the whole article, if not the book itself (despite exchange rates, it’s still worth the extra sterling)....

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....

We’ve pretty much all been there. As lovers of books, we are at a disadvantage. Those who consume music or movies as their favorite medium have it a lot easier than we do. It takes just over 11 hours to watch the Lord of The Rings Extended Edition, and 40–50 hours to read them. This means you could consume the films 4.5 times in the same amount of time it takes to read the books; now factor in how many times you’ve watched those movies, and the time disparity only increases....

The Aztecs were vibrant people, native to Mesoamerica and the last of the Nahuatl-speaking tribes to travel south from Aztlan (their spiritual home). Much of the violent imagery associated with the Aztecs is fueled by racism and fear from the Spanish, who were not satisfied with a simple victory and sought to annihilate the defeated Aztecs; as historian Camilla Townsend explains it, “defining the Aztecs based purely on their European conquerors’ judgments and the look of a few silent objects leads to an incomplete picture at best....

Sailor Moon—or Usagi Tsukino as she’s known when she’s not wearing her sailor guardian uniform—faces many people over the course of the manga. All of them have different backstories. Some are evil. Some are possessed. Some are brainwashed. (So many brainwashed Sailor Moon characters!) The exact details vary depending on whether you’re reading the manga or watching the anime, but the heart remains the same. So with that in mind, let’s take a look at the best Sailor Moon villains from the series....

I honor that, and I don’t want you to take offense when I say this, but… traditionally? I hate Thanksgiving. Growing up as a vegetarian in a meat-eating family, I had a hard time at family gatherings around the holidays. Meat was always the main attraction and sides were often an afterthought. And then, of course, there was the constant commentary from my Pa Pa George. “Why aren’t you eating the turkey?...

“I wouldn’t want to be friends with Nora, would you?” asks Wilson. “Her outlook is almost unbearably grim.” Messud seemed to have a sharp response at the ready. “For heaven’s sake,” she said. “What kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in The Corrections?...

I’m not arguing against critical reviews. I’m all for critical reviews, both the ones that point out misogyny or racism or homophobia in books, and the ones that simply express an opinion about something that didn’t work — plot, character, prose, etc. Reviews are subjective. If someone doesn’t like a book, and they can explain why without using the words “I wanted,” that information can help other readers decide whether or not they want to read it....