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Today’s tropetonite: The Famous Fake Fling. I’ve talked before about a very similar tropetonite: the fake relationship. But this is a very specific type of fake relationship — the famous fling. Famous flings can exist in any situation. Girl meets boy, boy turns out to be a famous athlete. Boy meets girl, girl is a celebrity influencer. The pair often have to deal with the more famous one’s position in the spotlight, though sometimes there’s a bit of a twist....

Of course, these don’t all have to be Bachelor-style competitions. Yes, those are fun when the author plays around with the trope, but there’s also something exciting about other competitions on display. Whether it’s a baking show (there are so many of those recently!) or some other form of reality TV (usually competition based), there are a ton of great reality show romances featuring competitors, judges, and even folks who work behind the scenes....

Reading about different cultures and different life experiences is one of the greatest joys of reading. It’s so interesting to see the world through another person’s eyes that you wouldn’t normally be able to undergo on your own. Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop coined the metaphor that reading should be mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. It should be a way for us to see ourselves, to look in on other experiences we can’t understand first hand, and step into another person’s point of view....

Over the years, I’ve watched my philosophy change. In my high school and early college years, I tended to buy books that I thought everyone should read. I distinctly remember buying many copies of Rick Moody’s Demonology for everyone’s birthdays because I thought it was the bees knees. But soon I realized the book was not universally loved (and was a bit out there for most people’s taste) so I tried a different tactic....

“The Petersfield Bookshop in Hampshire sent a melancholy tweet revealing that it had not welcomed one paying customer, probably for the first time in its 100-year history. Within a few hours, the fantasy and science fiction author Neil Gaiman retweeted the post to his millions of followers and, as if by magic, orders came flooding in from across the globe.” Book Twitter came through. “All reading sharpens our understanding of ourselves and the societies we inhabit, but nonfiction books, in particular, deepen that understanding in a way few other mediums can....

The story opens just after Kumiko busts out of the assisted living facility her adult daughters moved her into. She’s not happy there, so she finds an apartment in the city, and sets up a sweet little life for herself. It’s full of simple pleasures: swimming laps at the pool, brewing the perfect cup of tea, eating what she pleases. She lets her daughters know she’s safe, but refuses to tell them where she is, steadfastly ignoring their increasingly shrill calls and emails....

via GIPHY On female desire: “But when a woman decides to sleep with a man, there is no wall she will not scale, no fortress she will not destroy, no moral consideration she will not ignore at its very root: there is no God worth worrying about.” ―Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera On being prepared: “Sex, whatever else it is, is an athletic skill. The more you practice, the more you can, the more you want to, the more you enjoy it, the less it tires you....

Why read food history books? Our favorite foods have fascinating backstories. For instance, I recently read that German immigrants and their beer houses in Texas helped popularize chili powder. Who knew! But other food histories uncover dark dealings, such as the role that cheese played in the slave trade or the level of collaboration between cheese producers and Nazis. What draws me to these food history books is the fact that a single food item (or items) helps to uncover all the histories of an era such as the political, economic, social, and cultural instead of segmenting one out....

If you want the paperbacks in your collection to stand the test of time, consider following these guidelines for keeping them safe and beautiful. Set The Book Aside For Meal Time Many of us love to read at meal times, but it is just all too easy to get food on books, possibly food that cannot be removed. The easiest solution is to not read at meal times. If that is too much to bear, you can also choose to read with a book stand and a hand towel or paper towel handy before page turning....

The 1960s were a ridiculously productive decade for Marvel, thanks in large part to the fertile imaginations of Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, and Stan Lee. At least one of those three was involved in the creation of every hero spotlighted in this article. As a result, ’60s Marvel superheroes—while all entertaining in their own ways—share many similarities. So if you’re looking to find heroic success the Marvel way, here’s what you’ll need....

“It’s funny how it happened because I think it was three or four of us who quit on the same day. We definitely didn’t plan it, even though it was a big moment on Twitter,” said a former Big 5 editor who spoke to me with condition of anonymity. One former Tor editor, Molly McGhee, posted their resignation letter on Twitter. McGhee wrote that her promotion was denied even though her acquisition, The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake, hit the New York Times Best Seller list....

Few writers are as prolific as Stephen King. America’s own Master of Horror has been delighting his Constant Readers ever since he burst onto the scene with Carrie in 1974. King’s body of work can be divided into a few distinct eras depending on which fan you ask. One thing Constant Readers can all agree on, though, is that Stephen King book endings can be a little…hit or miss. Okay, a lot hit or miss....

—Danika Ellis —Rachel Brittain —Megan Mabee —CJ Connor —Chris M. Arnone —Vernieda Vergara —Christina M. Rau —Steph Auteri —Margaret Kingsbury —Adiba Jaigirdar —Aurora Lydia Dominguez —Jess Plummer —Mara Franzen —Leah Rachel von Essen —Julia Rittenberg —Jamie Canavés —Elisa Shoenberger —Christine Ro

My favorite YA books often feature intergenerational plot lines because there is a lot we can learn from our parents and elders…and there’s also a lot that we might need to actively break free of. These intergenerational YA novels run the range from speculative to realistic, and all are about teen characters reckoning with the impact of decisions and actions made before they were born. Some include perspectives of parents and grandparents when they were young, and some are about teens facing the consequences of previous generations’ actions....

While some of them are done throughout the year, these sports are considered winter sports. They are all done during the Winter Olympics and most of the time you need cold weather to do them. So you can say, “Why is figure skating in this?” when you can watch figure skaters compete throughout the year. I consider it a winter sport, though. But you’ll definitely find more sports in these next romance books aside from hockey and figure skating....

Few authors do a better job of passionately articulating the need for diverse characters in YA literature than Jason Reynolds, who once told The Washington Post, “I learned just how…necessary it is sometimes to humanize those who have been vilified.” It’s not that I don’t appreciate the need myself—my debut novel The Exene Chronicles centers on Lia, one of a very small handful of minority students at a high school in a suburb of San Diego, just as I was....

The Original Model Originally, the company was called Book of the Month Club (BOMC). It convened a panel of judges to make book selections to send out to all its members. It started with a subscription model that required members to purchase a certain number of books a year. However, it eventually allowed members to decline a current selection and choose from a list of alternatives. Its first offerings even featured an openly queer author, Sylvia Townsend Warner....

Reading is not skimming the CliffsNotes of Fahrenheit 451 before a quiz or cramming a Wikipedia article on The Great Gatsby for a paper due in an hour. Reading is putting yourself at the mercy of someone else’s soul (which has been burned by a white hot light for good measure). The Journey of a Reader Throughout my 26 years, books have made me gleeful, infuriated, curious, and heartbroken. My parents forbade me from watching television during school nights, so I turned to books for entertainment....

“With an Instagram bio that reads “undocumented socialite,” the Los Angeles-based poet and writer is fiercely upending the trauma-forward narratives that often essentialize undocumented people. Reyes’ work, while sobering, is humorous, joyful and rebellious — a stark contrast from the way these stories are often told by reporters and authors who write from an outsider’s perspective. (Recall the controversy surrounding ‘American Dirt’ that had the endorsement of Oprah’s Book Club)....

Even though her poems are now embraced and taught in poetry classes of all ages, there was little interest in publishing her poetry in her lifetime. It was often recommended that she “fix” the poems in order to make them rhyme, and also give them titles. Emily had little say in what happened to her poems after her death, and for years Emily Dickinson scholars have told us all about the alterations that erased major parts of Emily’s life....