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Let me clarify: I do read. In fact, I read a minimum of four hours every day. During the first half of my PhD, I was devouring books on an average of 50 bibliographic texts monthly. But this wasn’t the kind of reading I looked forward to. In the notorious “Review of Related Literature” stage, reading is shorthand for highlighting, annotating, some more highlighting, summarizing and synthesizing. It meant dissecting every word, analyzing stylistics or creating a dialogue between theory and corpus....

Allow me, please, to get this out of the way before I say anything further: My bad. What’s that? You feel that I ought to elaborate on this not-really-an-apology? Very well. But you may not like it. Here’s the truth: I didn’t forget your favorite book. I didn’t overlook it. I chose to leave it off the list, for reasons varied and wholly uncomplicated. Here are a few of them; please choose whichever is most accurate to the situation at hand, and don’t worry!...

That is why I was so excited when I stopped into Unity Books in Wellington, New Zealand, and stumbled upon the adorable book by Sacha Cotter entitled The Bomb (Te Pohū). What a heart-stealer this one is. It’s summer, and a little brown boy is both excited and a little worried about the beach and pool season. You see, he hasn’t quite perfected the art of the bomb (i.e. cannon bomb for those of us who did some pool splashing in our days) and he’s worried that his won’t be quite right....

Five Midnights is a tale about coming of age, assimilation, death, and mortality. What was your inspiration? Ann Dávila Cardinal: Well, I started with an interest in the myth of El Cuco, the Latinx answer to the boogeyman. I was fascinated that he was used as a tool to get children to behave. That means coming of age with therapy! And I think all young adult writers are interested in coming of age stories, they are at the heart of most of our work....

So simple. So utterly groundbreaking. If reading this is causing your epiphany right now, give yourself a minute before you continue. Before I had this epiphany myself, at 23 (I was a medium bloomer), reading for fun was something I did mostly during the afternoon. Which meant I didn’t do that much of it—who, after all, regularly has uninterrupted afternoons? I was a weekend reader. I found time to read, yes, but without routine....

OverDrive is the leading digital reading platform for libraries, schools, corporations and organizations worldwide. We deliver the industry’s largest catalog of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, streaming media and more to a growing network of 76,000+ partners in 94 countries. If you are a Book Riot frequenter, you probably know that the last two years have been volatile for library staff. First of all, books about LGBTQ+ issues and those written by Black authors are being consistently and systematically challenged across the U....

Below I’ve rounded up six books by independent presses that I’ve read and loved and four more that I’m hoping to read soon. They include a memoir, a work of literary criticism, an anthology, and many types of novels, from the satirical to the fabulous to the philosophical to the realistic. Independent presses have so much to offer for every kind of reader. So check out the list and see what strikes your interest!...

For me, there’s nothing better than glimpsing the first flowers of spring making their way through the still cold dirt to announce the arrival of the season. While flowers are great year-round, there’s something about florals that just feels like springtime and these bookish goods will help you inject flowers into your reading life. Whether you opt for a floral keychain, a decorative bookplate to personalize your home library, or bookends that can double as planters, these items will help you put some spring into both your step and your reading life, no matter the weather....

What’s a lookbook? It’s a series of fashion choices pulled together in a catalog-style collection. Add in YouTube, and these literary lookbooks take on a whole new level of awesome. Perhaps another way to think about lookbooks on YouTube is inspiration for cosplay. Let’s take a look at several fun, clever, creative, and inspiring literary lookbooks from around the world of YouTube. Though there are certainly diverse BookTubers here, the bulk of these videos feature white-appearing creators, as well as white-centric books....

Authors I’ll start with the great Chicago born or Chicago based authors. Fair warning, these are just the public locations associated with authors. They do not have houses set aside for these people…yet. These places include houses, bars, parks and much more that these authors have lived in. Washington Square Park – Studs Terkel I love love love Studs Terkel. He was the quintessential Chicagoan who was an oral historian, radio host, writer, and so much more....

Classic Books for 7th Graders Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix This book, which was ruthlessly ripped off in the movie The Village, opens with a young girl finding out that her colonial-era life is an elaborate charade for a tourist destination and she is actually living in the ’90s. It gets even better from there. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle A classic for a reason—amazing quotes, spunky female main character, sci-fi magic....

I wish to highlight three more amazing Latina authors that you should know because they are fucking fantastic! If you have not read their works yet, now is the time to do just that. In no particular order, they are as follows: Diana J. Noble, author of YA Novel Evangelina Takes Flight Diana Noble grew up in Laredo, Texas on the north bank of the mighty Rio Grande, across from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico....

One account I’ve been following all that time is the #holigays22 group comprised of several of the authors on this list, including Alison Cochrun, Timothy Janovsky, Helena Greer, Jake Maia Arlow, and Courtney Kae. It’s always fun to see authors banding together to support each other and their work. I’d say it warms my grinchy heart, but if this isn’t already obvious, there isn’t a grinchy bone in my body....

Using the above definition of “odd,” the nine books below all have odd plots. They all take place in a world that looks, mostly, like the one I live in, but the plot takes us somewhere that we never would have predicted — somewhere wholly unexpected — and these books just continue to turn into increasingly unexpected corners. You think you’re heading for breakfast and you end up in a baby seal beauty pageant, judging the swimsuit competition....

Is he crazy or brilliant? I’m voting for a combination: crazy-brilliance. Not only am I a bookworm, but history is my porn. Being able to see, touch, and experience things from the past is more than exciting to me – so the idea that he is creating a space for the humans that will live hundreds of years from now to experience these books makes me giddy. We have no idea what will happen in the future, but even if print books are still available, you can bet that many will have been deemed too irrelevant to house in libraries (assuming they still exist)....

“Last week, a letter supposedly written by F. Scott Fitzgerald—quarantined due to the Spanish Flu in 1920—made the social media rounds. In it, Fitzgerald states that he and Zelda had fully stocked their bar, and called Hemingway a flu ‘denier’ who refused to wash his hands. This letter went viral. The only problem? It was not written by Fitzgerald; its true author is Nick Farriella, who had written it as a parody for McSweeney’s earlier this month....

I chose these 10 books because of what they have in common with Kim’s Convenience. Each of these novels and memoirs combines laugh-out-loud humor with relatable stories of family, jobs, and love. via GIPHY Fiction For Kim’s Convenience Fans Kim’s Convenience by Ins Choi The characters and world of the Kim family—parents Appa and Umma and children Jung and Janet—first appeared in this award-winning play by Ins Choi, who is now showrunner of the popular sitcom....

This year, I accomplished three of my long-term writing goals. Name and None published my personal essay on how Vincent van Gogh’s example has inspired me as someone who struggled with severe depression in college; I also became a Book Riot contributor; and I was chosen as a Pitch Wars mentee by Mary Ann Marlowe. —Andy Winder This year was chaos for many of us, I think—myself included. But there have been bright spots....

This post originally ran Feb. 20, 2015. _________________________ Last year, I made a new year’s resolution to get rid of a bag of stuff every week because my life is full enough without so much clutter around me. I thought it might make me just the tiniest bit happier if I cleared out some clothes I haven’t worn for years, high heels that hurt my feet too much to be worth it anymore, and notebooks upon notebooks full of lecture notes from undergraduate and beyond....

Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert After a near-death experience, chronically ill computer geek Chloe Brown has decided it’s time to get a life. And she’s got just the plan to make that happen. In comes Redford “Red” Morgan, a bad boy with tattoos and a motorcycle—just the type of person Chloe needs to help her on her quest to live a little on the wild side. But there’s more to Red than meets the eye....