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So, here are some lady-led volumes about other ladies (and girls) to counter the disrespect: There’s plenty more where this came from. So let’s give ’em hell, ladies. I’ve always loved Kusama’s work and in a society where so many people insist on suffering for their art, found her decision to seek help for her mental illness and her insistence on continuing to create thereafter as proof one needn’t always bleed (literally or figuratively) to build something from nothing an inspiration....

Twenty-seven years ago, Sheriff Bree Taggert’s father killed her mother, then himself. Now, when Bree finds human bones on the grounds of her abandoned family farm a deadly window opens into her tragic past. The investigation determines the murders occurred thirty years ago and Bree’s dead father becomes a suspect. The only other suspect is an unlikely squatter on the Taggert farm who claims to know secrets about Bree’s past....

Unlike Captain America himself, who has gone through a number of civilian identities, Cap’s sidekick Bucky has really only ever been one person: James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes. Maybe this is because Bucky was his actual name, so giving away that identity would feel weird. Or maybe it’s because his “death” was so iconic and so instrumental in shaping Cap’s post-thaw character that replacing him was unthinkable. And yet, in 1969, Marvel thought the unthinkable for the very first time: they allowed another teenage boy to don Bucky’s blue-and-red togs and follow Steve Rogers into battle....

The best covers show a range of diverse, disabled people or characters and how their disabilities affect them. Some disabilities are less visible than others. So, depicting disability accurately means it might not be obvious when characters are disabled. Duyvis and Whaley distinguished this fact from the artistic choice to minimize or hide a character’s disability: to blend it into the background or symbolize it. In 2017, Carrie at Autostraddle hilariously satirized stock photos of disability, especially images meant to be “inspirational....

I have ten bookshelves of varying sizes in my house, and I went through the same process for each one. I emptied each shelf and went through the books, one at at time. I held each book in my hands, determining whether I wanted to keep it or not. In some cases, it was easy — books I’ve read and love, books I am excited to read, books that hold personal meaning for me....

checks to see if information-binging is a word spends 2 hours on Wikipedia, ending on an article about politics in Oklahoma Where was I? Oh yeah, the internet and its ability to steal time and attention. So, there was a question on Reddit’s book subreddit by user fishmael (great user name) that caught my attention: My answer is yes. A big ol’ definitive yes. The best reading for me these days is the half-hour bus ride to work, and a few minutes before falling asleep at night....

The pandemic is one of the few times that reading failed me in a big way. (Although it doesn’t seem fair to put the blame on reading, instead of, say, the larger systemic failure of our government to acknowledge how serious things were). I tried to read, but found myself DNFing books left and right; books I would normally devour. I didn’t even want to read old favorites. What I could read were books like 14,000 Things to Be Happy About....

If the story is unfamiliar, it follows a young boy in Norway, living with his Grandmamma after the death of his parents, who runs afoul of a coven. Naturally, the eponymous witches despise all children. Chaos (and the scariest hotel ballroom scene in literary history) ensue. Plus, The Witches is also a book about grief and loss. Powerful stuff! The Witches Changed My Reading I vividly remember my third grade teacher reading aloud from The Witches during mid-afternoon slumps....

Last year, I found out that I was pregnant just before the first coronavirus closures. Alongside all of the regular pregnancy worries (and the extra ones that came from being pregnant during a global pandemic), I also worried about what would become of my reading life. I felt as ready as one could feel to become a mom, but what about my books? Who do you think you are? Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way: I am still new at this....

I admit it, I watched all of it. The entire series of Lifetime and Netflix’s (it’s confusing) You, starring Elizabeth Lail and Penn Badgley. It drew me in because, I mean, who doesn’t want to watch a show that features a bookstore owner and a writer as the two main characters? That doesn’t happen often and we bookish people love shows that feature us. But I have a really big problem with You: the whole plot hinges on a man violating a woman’s entire life and ultimately psychologically torturing and killing her....

You could also choose to wonder why an avid reader would break down their reading life by the numbers and recognize that they may only ever read 2500 books in their lifetime and use that realization to justify quitting books without guilt. And certainly, it’s easy to judge a reader who chooses to listen to audiobooks at speed, rather than at double or triple speed. A “real reader” would aim to pack in as much as possible and who can handle listening to a performance that is so slow?...

Of course, not all novels are arduous. There are many (prize-winning and “listed”) that I’ve found pleasure in reading. However, while there are novels that I genuinely enjoyed, the form that I always come back to, the form that I most enjoy reading, is the short story. I just hate that it’s so underappreciated. The short story plays a supporting role in our literary world. It’s the sidekick, the little sister, the novel’s shadow....

Teenagers are quick to accuse anyone who claims TikTok to be toxic as not understanding it, but as someone who came of age at a time when there was still respite from being constantly online with smart devices in our pockets, I understand it all too well. I understand its marketing potential and how quickly it can go from funny video to, “Is this really something that needed to be documented on film?...

“‘I do not feel there’s competition,’ Oprah says in the clip. Hager agreed, saying she told Reese Witherspoon, who also has a successful book club, the same thing. ‘We are not competing!’ Then, the women each turned to the camera and said ‘We love to read!’ to emphasize their point. Their shared enthusiasm for reading demonstrates something that all book lovers know to be true: Being a book-lover means you’re already part of a community....

Many libraries actually have books in their catalog systems way before the books themselves are on the shelves. They have to get that book’s call number and information ready to go before the book’s release day. There may not be debut novels or indie press books there early, but I do know from personal experience that if you ask a librarian, they’re more than happy (usually) to put it in the system....

Which is why the statement released on Monday, 22nd October, from Joshua Harris that I Kissed Dating Goodbye (alongside two of his other similar books Sex is not the Problem: Lust Is, and Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship) will no longer be published or reprinted is significant. Over the past couple of years, Harris has been gradually distancing from his work so the statement, that can be read in full here, does not come as a complete surprise....

In the state’s most populous county, Maricopa, two major library systems have yet to reopen. The Phoenix Public Library System, which has 17 branches located throughout the Phoenix area, states on their website that it “continues to remain closed to in-building visits in order to ensure we are doing all we can to keep our community and staff safe during our ongoing response to the Coronavirus pandemic.” The Maricopa County Library District, which has 20 branches located throughout the county, has also remained closed “in order to ensure we are doing all we can to keep our staff and community safe during this crisis....

Love Medicine’s power and beauty in its telling of two North Dakota Chippewa families spanning several generations has made me a devoted reader of Louise Erdrich‘s for these past 35 years. Erdrich’s storytelling strength comes from her sense of place as being of primary significance—how a landscape and its cultural and political history shapes its people—a literary technique perfected by Toni Morrison and William Faulkner that critics and writers recognized in Love Medicine....

Sure, this would make a great gift for someone you love, but it’s also a wonderful resource for anyone who can’t always find the words they want to say the things they need to say. I’m pretty sure that’s the guarantee on the tin of any poet you bring home from the shops: “Poets: Being Better at Love Since Language Started.” What I like best about the collection is that it is arranged chronologically by the age of the poet at the time of writing....

In these very first lines of Bringing in the New Year—one of her many Lunar New Year books for children—author Grace Lin immediately draws us into the happy buzz around preparations for the holiday. Just like the book’s illustration of a family gazing expectantly out the window, millions of children around the world will welcome January 25 with beautiful food, anticipated rituals, bright colors, and time with friends and family....