On the other hand, it is sublimely ridiculous in the best Golden Age way. Let’s take a look! The story, “Robin Hood’s Revenge,” first ran in More Fun Comics #82 (August 1942), and was drawn by GA creator George Papp. There’s no credited writer, but Comics.org suggests that it might be Don C. Cameron; another possibility is Green Arrow’s other creator, Mort Weisinger, who edited the book. Or Papp could have scripted it himself!...
Winner of the nonfiction award for her memoir The Yellow House, Sarah M. Broom spoke movingly of her mother and her presence in Broom’s life and memoir. And Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, winner of the translated literature award now in its second year in this iteration, thanked the foundation for the creation of the award and his translator Ottilie Mulzet, saying that through translators international writers can also “be at home in America....
Shiri’s got a Robin rundown for you over here, so I’m going to skip the biographical notes and get to what we’re really here for today: making fun of the poor sartorial choices of orphans. I’ll be looking at not just what each canonical Robin wore as Robin, but any costumes they may have donned before and after their stint in the pixie boots. Strap in for the best and worst of every Robin’s costumes!...
Criteria for the best book covers of the year were open to interpretation by contributors to Book Riot. Each contributor could choose up to two covers, ranging from hardcovers to individual comic issues. What emerged was a collage of beautiful, creative, and engaging covers. Don’t see your favorite cover from this year on the list? Tell us about it in the comments! As best as possible, cover designers and artists have been credited....
They make great gifts because reading together helps parents bond with their baby, as both of them learn (or re-learn) their childlike wonder. They can also help babies and young children learn about the world around them, get introduced to words and colours, and find comfort and joy in books. It opens their eyes, mind, and heart to stories and connection. So here’s a list of some of the best unexpected board books to gift this 2022....
When the mantle was handed to X-23/Laura Kinney, there was concern this would be the end of The Wolverine. That has proven not to be the case. You can’t kill Wolverine. If anything, the spirit of the Wolverine lives on, and the comics are getting better and better each day. So, too, is the diversity of creators behind the character. In the early days, the majority of creative staff at Marvel was white-male dominated....
The first book I remember instilling a new habit was one I read as a child. I was an anxious kid, prone to lying awake at night imagining what I would do if someone broke into the house. Despite being a perennial loudmouth in class, I was consumed by social anxiety and would spend the majority of every social interaction second-guessing anything I’d said or done, analyzing all the possible ways it could be misinterpreted....
On the surface, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by debut author Charles Mackesy seems to be an especially unlikely fit for this kind of success. It’s a 128-page book of unsophisticated drawings and seemingly disconnected messages. It has no real plot, just a collection of misfits coming together, quietly expressing their vulnerabilities, and quietly accepting each other as well as the struggles of their journey to an unknown destination....
Shirley Jackson, born 100 years ago December 14th, had six novels published; the incomplete novel that she was working on at the time of her death was published posthumously. She also published two fictionalized memoirs about her family life, compiled from stories published in various ladies’ magazines. I wondered what the opening paragraphs of her other books looked like, and how they compare to the great ones. They are transcribed below, with a few comments....
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....
That’s very much how I began building my personal comic library. I loved the X-Men movie as a kid, but I didn’t quite know where to start when it came to reading their stories. Instead, as I apparently have a tendency to find comics through other visual media, I sought out other movies based on popular graphic novels, and then went searching for their printed counterparts. The movie and comic combination that really hooked me was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen....
But over the course of my adult life, my own encounters with doctors have made me increasingly uncomfortable with this genre. Did I enjoy A Thousand Naked Strangers? Oh my gosh yes! So interesting! Is it now the very first thing on my mind when a friend gets taken away in an ambulance? Yup. No matter how I parse it, I can’t see how the author of that book could have gotten consent from the patients he saw....
During 2020 I vowed that the following year I would only read backlist books, books already in the market for a while. I vowed to this – and I even wrote a post about it – mostly because I wished to make a dent in my TBR, but also because I didn’t want to always be reading the same things everyone else was reading. When people asked for book recommendations, and all I had to share were the same books they kept seeing across all of social media, so I felt I didn’t have much to offer in terms of book recs and I was trying to change that....
While we know what school boards do, how do we know the rest of what is necessary to elect qualified, competent individuals for school boards? What if you happen to be a person interested in running for school board? Enter The School Board Project. Thanks to the help of volunteers and partners, we’re building a massive database of every school board, school board election, and related information for anyone to access....
In the fourth Magic Men mystery, magician Max Mephisto and his daughter Ruby have landed a headlining gig at the Brighton Hippodrome, the biggest theater in the city, but when a girl from another act goes missing and turns up dead not long after, Max and Ruby realize there’s something sinister afoot in the theater. DI Edgar Stephens is on the case. But just as he’s narrowing in on key evidence, Ruby goes missing, and he and Max must team up once again to find her....
Of course, the universe never stays safe for long, and Thor will find himself, along with a new team of heroes, fighting against Gorr the God Butcher to keep himself and all the gods from being destroyed. Thor: Love and Thunder is scheduled for release July 8, 2022. Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.
Trauma is a public health issue. It’s been fascinating to watch teachers this year talk about how unmotivated and disinterested in learning their students are. This is a real concern, but there is a lot to be said as to why: today’s students have had one of the biggest trauma-inducing events happen to them with the pandemic. Imagine during your early developmental periods (be it preschool or elementary school, middle school or high school) that everything is pulled out from beneath you....
The dictionary has been putting out a word of the year since 2003, spotlighting words that have been looked up at an increased rate in the year, as well as using polls to narrow it down. 2020’s word was “pandemic”, and 2021’s was “vaccine.” Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books. The nine runner-up words of 2022 were: oligarch, Omicron, codify, LGBTQIA, sentient, loamy, raid, and Queen Consort....
Let’s find out how they became the most widely used fonts ever. Serif vs. Sans Serif Fonts In order to really understand why these three are so popular, we need to get to know two common categories for typefaces: serif and sans serif. Serif fonts use embellishments and flourishes in their characters, which serves the dual purpose of being both decorative and distinct. See those stroke flourishes circled in red?...
This change has infiltrated the book world and on a more micro level, the advancing decade has brought significant change to the world of young adult literature. But in no way, as Laura Miller ignorantly asserts on Slate, is the category eating itself. Sure, traffic-generating hit pieces when read by an outsider to the world of YA would see that social media, and namely Twitter, have played a huge role in how YA is discussed....
