Literature

January is a great time to read YA books about fresh starts, though I find it hard to believe it is 2023. To be fair, I’m pretty sure that it took me two full years to recover from 2020. Nonetheless, I am ready to acknowledge that we made it through another trip around the sun

For their entire lives, Penny and Tate have orbited each other reluctantly. Since before Penny and Tate were born, their moms, Lottie and Anna, have been attached at the hip, and this permanent package deal means constant, unwanted proximity for the two daughters. See, Penny and Tate are not friends. They’re also not not friends.

Right-wing politicians got the new legislative year off to an impressive start with several new bills across the country directly targeting books, reading, and intellectual freedom. Of course, we know that these bills aren’t about the books at all, but instead are another avenue to chip away at the rights of marginalized populations: people of

Sheila Liming’s Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time is a thoughtful manifesto on the inherently subversive and joyous act of socializing. In seven chapters about different types of hanging out (“Dinner Parties as Hanging Out,” “Hanging Out on the Job,” etc.), Liming explores the fading art of leisure and its cultural roots. Liming

Ken Follett’s next novel will be published on September 26, 2023. It will be titled “The Armor of Light“ and will conclude the eight-volume Kingsbridge series that follows 1,000 years of Western civilization, from “Ethelred the Unready to the election of President Obama.” Readers will follow a group of linked families, starting in the fictional

After writing two witty novels about gay life in Washington, D.C., Louis Bayard hit on a winning formula with his 2003 novel, Mr. Timothy, which starred Dickens’ Tiny Tim and gave the character a complexity that was sorely lacking in the original. He followed that up with The Pale Blue Eye, a story of Edgar Allen

The books community on Reddit has released their list of the best books of 2022. The books were chosen by individual threads made for each category: Best Debut, Best Literary Fiction, Best Mystery or Thriller, Best Short Story Collection/Graphic Novel/Poetry, Best Science Fiction, Best Fantasy, Best LitRPG, Best YA, Best Romance, Best Horror, and Best

Sixty-seven years after the savage murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi, his cousin still seeks some kind of justice. Haunted by the 1955 hate crime that ignited the civil rights movement, Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr. brings everything and everyone back to life in A Few Days Full of Trouble: Revelations on the Journey to Justice

The Scrabble dictionary has been updated for the first time since 2018, and it includes 500 new words — though Scrabble won’t reveal what every one is, telling players to hunt through the new dictionary to find them all. They’ve also removed several hundred slurs and other offensive words, so that they can’t be played

Louise Joyner left home as soon as she could, fleeing the humidity of Charleston, South Carolina, for a career in industrial design in Silicon Valley. Her brother, Mark, stayed put, his meandering and dysfunctional lifestyle patronized to his face and savaged in his absence by his family, as is so often the case with mildly

Writing Tips has compiled data from the most popular Google searches based in the USA beginning with “how to pronounce”. Here are the ten words words Americans found the most difficulty pronouncing in 2022. how to pronounce acai (18,000 searches) how to pronounce nguyen (15,000 searches) how to pronounce gyro (15,000 searches) how to pronounce

Maggie Molinaro survived a hardscrabble childhood in the downtrodden streets of Manhattan to become a successful businesswoman. After a decade of sacrifice, she now owns a celebrated ice cream company. But when she offends a corrupt banker, she unwittingly sets off a series of calamities that threaten to destroy her life’s work. Liam Blackstone is

Who’s ready to take a Judy Blume character quiz? Judy Blume books have been there for me at every age of my life. In elementary school, I laughed as my mom read Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing out loud to me and my sister. I related to Margaret’s quest to discover who she is

Stephen Ellcock has made a name for himself as a digital curator, or “image alchemist.” He ventures deep into visual art archives and surfaces with paintings, drawings, photographs and other images that inspire and intrigue. His fourth book, The Cosmic Dance, is “but a tiny sample of the fruits of ceaseless foraging,” and like his

It’s a new year, meaning that the groups and individuals creating hell for public educators will be developing their new plans for continued “work.” What began as an attack on “Critical Race Theory” in 2021 — spearheaded by the right-wing darling Christopher Rufo — has morphed into disdain for other categories of teaching and books,

Australia has perhaps the most unusual (and dangerous) wildlife of any continent, a product of its unique status as a vast island that broke off from other landmasses millions of years ago. Due to this isolation, plants and animals specifically adapted to its climate, independent of what was evolving in the rest of the world.

In a fantastic collaboration between two top-notch institutions working against censorship and book bans, high school students across the country are invited to apply to and take part in the Freedom to Read Advocacy Institute. Brooklyn Public Library–named Librarians of the Year from Library Journal for their Books Unbanned program–and PEN America–a leader in tracking

Throughout our lives, we encounter fraught decisions around love and money: whether to take a better job across the country when our partner wants to stay put; when and whether to marry, buy a house, have a child; if we should work full time with children in the picture. Money and love “are profoundly intertwined,

The official trailer for Lionsgate’s Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret adaptation has been released. The new movie is based on Judy Blume’s iconic coming-of-age novel with the same name that follows preteen Margaret Simon as she contends with a new school and longings to fit in. The trailer shows Margaret (played by Abby

Accepting dares is a way of life for Theo Wright. His close-knit friendships with Jay and Darren revolve around tasking one another with all manner of physical challenges and public humiliations. When Jay dares Theo to ask his crush to prom, Theo knows that his only chance to do so will be at the biggest