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“My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgård. What really frustrates me about it is that, for centuries, extremely average straight white men get volumes to tell every detail of their lives, while stories by anyone else (especially women and people of colour) have to fight to be published at all.” Boop. “Updated with a new introduction from Robin Wall Kimmerer, the hardcover special edition of Braiding Sweetgrass, reissued in honor of the fortieth anniversary of Milkweed Editions, celebrates the book as an object of meaning that will last the ages....

The truth is, when you are a child or a teenager, everyone seems to tell you that being shy and kind of a loner is a bad omen. Except it is not, but you do not get that until you are an adult. Sadly, this still happens today because our society is so prone to prioritizing teams, working together, playing together, and so on. When you do not have anyone to help you through the process of being different, books are your guides....

The carbon footprint of a process is only partially representative of the damage it causes to the environment — it does not cover aspects such as its impact on biodiversity, or non GHG emissions. Reducing GHG emissions, is, however, an important component of the battle against climate change, and carbon footprint is an established measure for tracking an individual’s, product’s, or industry’s impact on the environment. As readers, we should care about the environmental impact of books, and the carbon footprint of publishing is a concept many of us would be interested in....

Are you the sort of person who likes to carry your books everywhere, but also loves to keep them pristine? Then a book sleeve is essential! Are you the sort of person who loves to read books with weird, steamy, or rude covers, and you are a bit embarrassed to show them off? Then a book sleeve is a perfect way to hide it! And finally, are you the sort of person who believes they can find no justification to purchase a book sleeve?...

Outside of Fiction The novel, as we think of it now, was just coming to be in the early 19th century when Mary Shelley and Jane Austen published their dash-filled works. In the late 1700s, criticism of society was cloaked behind these blanks in newspapers and nonfiction. The reporting of Parliamentary discussion was banned until 1771, so information was published under false names. Often, writers left the first letters behind as clues for readers to decode....

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met nearly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone....

As a youth services librarian, I am constantly talking with parents about the best books for this particular phase of a kid’s life. The child in question often doesn’t want to browse the “kids” section anymore, but the child’s grown up doesn’t want them going (in my library’s case), upstairs to the young adult area, where the sex and the violence are aplenty. While I am personally all for kids reading whatever they want, I also understand a parent’s desire to lead kids to books that mirror their particular experience....

As much as we love audiobooks for a plethora of reasons, sometimes our comprehension suffers when we pair them with multitasking. Admit it. I’m even guilty of it. When I listen to an audiobook while doing something else, my mind sometimes wanders and I lose my focus. This usually happens when I start a new audiobook, when the scenes are frustratingly slow, and when the audiobook underwhelms. I even have to keep going back 30 seconds or so to understand the parts I missed....

Got a Quarter? For anyone with a sticky-fingered toddler who loves to scribble across a page, it can be hard to believe that children’s books used to have a hefty price tag. Yet, in the early 1940s, the average children’s book cost between $2 and $3, which would be the equivalent of about $38 to $50 today. At that price point, children’s books were a luxury for many families. Sensing an untapped market, Georges Duplaix, head of the Artists and Writers Guild Inc....

Panorama Picks took their data approach slightly different with the first quarter of 2020. Last year, they stuck to books published in a six-month window prior to the quarter. This year, publication date is now nine months out (January–September 2019) in order to get a fuller picture of the life and interest in books for library users. “This unique program uses aggregated, anonymized hold list data from public libraries across the United States to identify recently published titles that have notably longer wait times for local library patrons—unmet demand that can help activate inventory, and identify opportunities for author events, read-alikes, and special promotions,” explains the website....

I decided to take a semi-scientific approach to see what kind of books got the most attention on TikTok. I looked through the #books and #BookTok tags, which seemed to be the bookish tags that were the most popular. I recorded the titles mentioned or shown in the top 25 videos of each that included specific books, skipping the generally bookish videos that don’t reference any individual title. I didn’t count books that are quickly panned over on a shelf, but I did count books as props when their cover was visible....

This week, Goodreads has shared a list of 60 of the most popular horror books, according to its users. They used a combination of how many times the title has been shelved (either as Read or Want To Read) as well as the average rating. They note that horror as a genre saw a bump in popularity in the summer of 2020, and that haunted house stories have been especially popular during the pandemic....

Undoubtedly, you’re shaking your head right now and calling me weird. While you’re correct about that, you’re wrong if you don’t think Austen is funny. Readers and literary scholars alike laud her work for its biting irony and her constant roasting of the British gentry. Of course, humor was different in the 18th century. Consequently, it might be challenging for a modern reader to catch her nuanced jokes. Allow me, therefore, to elucidate....

With this in mind, I’ve included both some of the largest online bookstores, and some others that are more niche: shops that specialize on comics or romance, for example. Even if you’re surrounded by nonreaders, and are therefore in the tragic position of not being able to share your love of books with your loved ones, this list is still worth looking over: I guarantee that you’ll find either something you want, or something you need (cough college textbooks cough)....

Finding the TTRPG that’s right for you can be challenging. It’s not as cut and dry as seating fantasy fans at the D&D table and giving the sci-fi readers over to Cyberpunk. Everyone has their own tastes, values, and — sorry — traumas. This quiz only uses your reading habits to determine the TTRPG you should play next. That’s all to say that, unfortunately, your results may vary. If your result doesn’t work for you, I’m sorry....

Why Is It So Hard To Find The Highest Rated Books On Goodreads? First, there is no easy way to sort books by rating in Goodread’s “advanced” search options. And while lists like Popular Top Rated Books exist, they’re populated and voted on by users, not generated through an algorithm. That’s how an obscure book like NICU II and Victoria’s Incestuous Romance gets to the top of Most Popular Young Adult Books or Best Popular Romance Books, even though it’s neither YA or romance, and each list is supposed to have a minimum of 100K ratings: someone decided to be clever and vote for it multiple times....

Even superheroes need friends! And, just like friendships in real life, some of those relationships last a lifetime and others fade away as you pursue your own destinies. In this series, I’ll be spotlighting some of the side characters who have been left by the wayside. Today we’re talking about Marvel’s Glenda Sandoval. As an adult, she became a doctor and married an absolute dillweed by the name of Parnell Jacobs, an (ex-)friend of Rhodey’s who sold guns to extremely bad people....

I recently went on a three week trip with my 22-month-old. We went to Australia to visit my family, and to get there and back was about a 30-hour door-to-door journey (including 14 hours on a plane each way). The trip was a little bit of a disaster for various reasons, and my daughter was unhappy for a lot of the trip. It was books that saved us (well, it was good friends that saved us, but the books really helped)....

There was something about these pulpy, compact books that other books didn’t have. It was the feeling that I was in the story. It was the sense that I could read it over and over again and try to work out every possible ending. It was the vague Scooby Doo-like feel of trying to catch sea monsters or outwit a villain in a haunted house. I loved every bit of it, and so did millions of readers, propelling it into the booming and unmatched brand it is today....

Practically speaking, this meant that genres I included were: romance, chick lit, cozy mysteries, and thrillers. But not every exciting, buzzy 2021 release in these genres made the list. For example, I decided to leave off Jennifer Weiner’s latest book That Summer, even though its title is very beachy and Weiner is a chick lit staple. That’s because the central storyline is about sexual assault. My definition of a beach read might be totally different than yours, and that is perfectly okay!...