Literature

Martin Amis died Friday in his Lake Worth Florida home from esophageal cancer. Amis was born to a novelist father, Kingsley Amis, in 1949 Oxford, England, and won the 1974 Somerset Maugham Award for his first novel, The Rachel Papers. He became a big part of the literary scene in London in the ’80s and

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic circa 2020, there came the rise of virtual book clubs. With the strict adherence to social distancing rules, many started virtual book clubs in schools, libraries, or even just among friends. These virtual book clubs work in a similar way as those from Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon.

Why do I pay attention to AAPI Heritage Month? As a school librarian, I spend a lot of time thinking about the diversity of my collection. I’m a white woman working in a school where white kids are a slight minority. I know that my ingrained racism keeps me from selecting books that are appropriate

Investigative journalist and award-winning author Rachel Louise Snyder has reported on natural disasters, genocides, wars and social justice issues around the globe. Acclaimed for her seminal 2019 study of domestic violence in America, No Visible Bruises, she turns her focus to her own troubled family history in Women We Buried, Women We Burned, a memoir

This Is the First Book I Will Read to You Start off on the proverbial right foot with This Is the First Book I Will Read to You, in which a father celebrates the joys of reading with his newborn child. “I’ll be nervous,” he admits, “to share this moment that only you and I

A couple of weeks back, I shared a roundup of pending legislation across several states and at the national level which would ensure the right to read. There is another bill worth highlighting during this legislative session that is making positive progress in Connecticut. Senate Bill 2, called the Act Concerning the Mental, Physical, and

The Killers of the Flower Moon trailer was released today. Martin Scorsese’s highly anticipated new movie is based on the book by the same name that shows how the Osage Nation — who were the richest people per capita in the world in the ’20s — were slowly killed off. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart,

PEN America and publisher Penguin Random House, as well as a few authors and parents, filed a federal law suit today against Florida’s Escambia County School District. The authors who joined the suit — all of whom have had their books either removed or restricted by the school board — are Sarah Brannen, David Levithan, George

In Archives of Joy: Reflections on Animals and the Nature of Being, French Canadian author Jean-François Beauchemin looks back, around and into the mystic, to great effect. His brief and often breathtaking reflections on creatures he has encountered throughout his life meld into a salve for the troubled, weary or distracted mind and will appeal

A recent poll asked 10,000 US and Canadian TikTok users between the ages of 18 and 45 if they are reading more because of BookTok, the bookish community on the social media platform. BookTok is widely believed to have driven a big bump in book sales and increased the popularity of reading in general. The

The women of the Marlow Murder Club are back in business in Death Comes to Marlow, the delightful second installment of Robert Thorogood’s cozy mystery series. Life is returning to normal for Judith Potts. She became something of a local celebrity after she and her friends Becks and Suzie helped solve a series of murders

The Nebula Awards were first awarded in 1966, and they recognize the best writing in science fiction and fantasy published in the U.S. the previous year. The winners of the 58th annual Nebula Awards, which consider works published in 2022, have just been announced! You can watch the whole ceremony on YouTube, or scroll down

T.C. Boyle has never been afraid to torment his characters or draw from real life, and he does both in Blue Skies, putting his cast through just about every climate-related calamity to make the contours of the crisis so prominent that no one could miss them. He begins this bicoastal adventure—the action toggles between Florida

The Cure has been my favorite band since I was about 14. This was not too long after Wish came out, and while I enjoyed “Friday I’m in Love,” it was pretty far on the light side of pop for my 8th grade punk-grunge taste; I liked it, but I listened to Nirvana and the

Author Abdi Nazemian won a Lambda Literary Award for his debut novel for adults, The Walk-In Closet. His debut novel for teens, Like a Love Story, received a Stonewall Honor and was recognized by Time magazine as one of the 100 greatest YA novels of all time. His fifth book, Only This Beautiful Moment, seems

Researching and reading books for this piece has been an unexpectedly needed experience for me. I may be speaking for myself, but when I think of “Asian horror” my first thoughts are of works in translation and their movie adaptations that make me want to pour bleach on my eyeballs. And I say that as

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not immediately bring World War II to an end. Bestselling author Evan Thomas (Ike’s Bluff) explains why in his superbly crafted military and diplomatic history Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II. “This book is a narrative of how the

With Pride just a few weeks away, it’s time for library workers to start thinking about the where, how, when, and what of their book displays. We know that queer books remain among the most targeted in the current book ban ~curation~ wave and we also know that Pride displays have historically been among the

In When You Can Swim, readers explore the joys of swimming in various bodies of water—oceans, ponds, lakes, rivers and more—in a text set primarily in conditional statements (the “when you can swim” of the title), as spoken by a parent to a child. This phrase is a refrain that conveys the abundant possibilities and

Netflix has began filming an adaptation of Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo, marking the directorial debit of cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto. The highly influential Páramo is a modern Mexican classic that follows Juan Preciado after he promises his dying mother that he’ll meet his father for the first time. IN searching for his father, he finds a