Books

One recent morning, before I left home to plant white oak trees in a nearby park, I turned to Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year. As often happens, a passage from the New York Times columnist grounded me and pulled my vision forward: “Planting a tree is a gesture of faith in

Oprah has announced her 103rd book club pick as the newly released Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward. If any author were ever That Girl, it’s Ward. She’s the recipient of two National Book Awards for two of her three other books (apart from this latest one), and is widely regarded as one of our

In Caroline O’Donoghue’s acclaimed novel, The Rachel Incident (9.5 hours), university student Rachel is extremely busy juggling a precarious love pentagon involving her Victorian Literature professor, her gay best friend James, her boss (who happens to be the professor’s wife) and her boyfriend. Naturally, mistakes are made. But despite being very funny, The Rachel Incident

Anyone immediately transported to a riverside pier by the lyric “So open up your morning light” will love Thea Glassman’s Freaks, Gleeks, and Dawson’s Creek: How Seven Teen Shows Transformed Television. “Today’s teen shows are leading the charge when it comes to progressive, diverse, and creative storytelling,” Glassman writes, but they wouldn’t exist without the

The Hidden Language of Cats Sarah Brown knows and loves felines: She has a doctorate in the social behavior of neutered domestic cats, and the dedication page of her new book simply reads, “For the cats.” Those who said “Aww!” at that information will delight in Brown’s The Hidden Language of Cats: How They Have

When Renée Watson read her first Ramona Quimby book as a child, she was startled by where Beverly Cleary’s beloved heroine lived: Klickitat Street was just around the corner from Watson’s aunt’s home in Portland, Oregon. “I was so in awe that a character in a book could live in my city and in a

Tennis icon Serena Williams has just announced the two-book deal she has with Random House Publishing Group. The books will be an “open-hearted” and “intimate” memoir — that will go more in-depth than the first one she released in 2009 titled On the Line — and an inspirational one, full of advice on living. Since

Sam Becker loves—or, okay, likes—his job. Sure, managing a bed and bath retailer isn’t exactly glamorous, but it’s good work and he gets on well with the band of misfits who keep the store running. He could see himself being content here for the long haul. Too bad, then, that the owner is an infuriating

Tiffany D. Jackson is a YA author best known for her books Monday’s Not Coming, Allegedly, and Grown, among others. Her newest book has just been announced, and it’s an original YA novel about the Marvel superhero Storm, titled Storm: Dawn of a Goddess. It will be her first fantasy novel, and it follows Storm

Tan Twan Eng’s third novel, which was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, is set in the early 1920s, when the British writer William Somerset Maugham and his secretary (and lover) Gerald Haxton visit the coastal province of Penang, Malaysia, as the guests of Lesley and Robert Hamlyn. Part of Penang’s European elite, Lesley and

The world honestly needs more of iconic actor and literacy advocate LeVar Burton, and will get just that during the National Book Awards’ 74th award ceremony. Though today’s announcement of Burton hosting is cutting it a bit close to the November 15th date for the black-tie ceremony. The scrambling is because of a last minute

Poet and young adult author Raquel Vasquez Gilliland’s adult debut, Witch of Wild Things, is a story of family legacies and complicated sisterhood, told with romantic and lush magical realism.  For the entirety of Sage Flores’ life, she’s known three things. First, the old gods have no love for Flores women and have thus cursed

What would Hansel and Gretel be like as adults? Kell Woods’ inventive retelling explores the answer to this question, following Hans and Margareta “Greta” Rosenthal as down-on-their-luck German peasants struggling to make a living in a world still recovering from the Thirty Years’ War. Greta has never felt like she fit into Lindenfeld, a little

Veteran narrators Michael Kramer and Kate Reading return to this fantastical world, along with a new POV portrayed by Marisa Calin.V. E. Schwab, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, opens another door to a new fantasy series set in the dazzling world of Shades of Magic. Prepare for tangled schemes and perilous

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen. View

The latest in the AI debate is a ruling delivered Friday by federal Judge Beryl Howell, which upholds a U.S. Copyright Office finding. The finding — and the federal ruling — both state that artwork created by AI can’t be copyrighted. This comes as people like CEO of Imagination Engines Stephen Thaler fight for works

I can no longer open my various inboxes without seeing something about AI: newsletters remarking on the success or failure of various AI tech and startups, urgent calls to explore AI tools designed for social media and content managers, headlines about how AI is being used in exciting and terrible ways across industries…So, while I

The Percy Jackson and the Olympians middle grade fantasy series by Rick Riordan is getting a long-awaited TV adaptation with Disney+, and the first teaser trailer has just dropped! It stars Walker Scobell as Percy Jackson, Leah Sava Jeffries as Annabeth Chase, and Aryan Simhadri as Grover Underwood. The series will premiere on December 20th,

The trailer for The Other Black Girl has been released by Hulu, and y’all, it looks so good. The new series is an adaptation of the bestselling novel The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris, which has been described as a cross between the movie Get Out and The Stepford Wives. It follows 26-year-old

Goodreads has just released several lists rounding up their users’ most anticipated new book releases coming out in Autumn. The main list includes 44 books and is broken into Fall’s Best New Contemporary & Historical Fiction, Mysteries & Thrillers, Fantasy Novels, Sci-Fi Novels, Horror, Nonfiction, Romances, and Young Adult Novels. There are also separate, longer

Book lovers, take heed! Hundreds of hardcovers are on sale for 50% off at Barnes and Noble now. If you’ve had your eye on a bestseller or new release, here’s your chance to stock up. You’ll find both fiction and nonfiction for adults, YA titles, and kid lit, too. From memoirs and epic fantasy to

Viola Fletcher is 109, and her memoir Don’t Let Them Bury My Story is about to come out August 15th, making her the oldest woman in the world to publish a memoir. In it, she recalls the night that became known as the Tulsa Massacre. On May 30, 1921, when Fletcher was only 7 years

Public libraries are synonymous with children today, with story times and an inviting children’s section considered essential features. Arguments for increasing or maintaining library funding often reference the library’s role in literacy education for kids as well as the many happy memories even adults who no longer frequent the library still hold for childhoods spent

An imprint of Disney Publishing Worldwide, Hyperion Avenue, is debuting new fiction under Marvel Crime. The new endeavor will feature three original novels by bestselling authors S.A. Cosby, Lisa Jewell, and Alex Segura. The stories will be gritty crime novels geared towards adults and will use familiar Marvel characters. The first will be out in

The Booker Prize, first awarded in 1969, recognizes the best novel written in English and published in the UK or Ireland. The 2023 prize considers books published between October 1st 2022 and September 30th 2023. They have just announced their 13-book longlist. The 6-book shortlist will come out September 21st, with the winner announced November

Elisa Shoenberger has been building a library since she was 13. She loves writing about all aspects of books from author interviews, antiquarian books, archives, and everything in between. She also writes regularly for Murder & Mayhem and Library Journal. She’s also written articles for Huffington Post, Boston Globe, WIRED, Slate, and many other publications.

Less than a third of assigned reading in U.S. colleges is written by a woman. But who are the women authors that are being assigned? WordTips analyzed 300,000 English Literature syllabi in U.S. colleges using OpenSyllabus.org to see, and these are the results. While Frankenstein took the top spot on the list, WordTips also analyzed

Barack Obama’s 2023 summer reading list is out! Just today, the former president tweeted what he’ll be reading this summer and asked followers for even more recommendations. Each year, the books he lists as part of his summer reading are always a good mix of fiction and nonfiction, with differing genres — though he might

Erica Ezeifedi, Associate Editor, is a transplant from Nashville, TN that has settled in the North East. In addition to being a writer, she has worked as a victim advocate and in public libraries, where she has focused on creating safe spaces for queer teens, mentorship, and providing test prep instruction free to students. Outside

Erica Ezeifedi, Associate Editor, is a transplant from Nashville, TN that has settled in the North East. In addition to being a writer, she has worked as a victim advocate and in public libraries, where she has focused on creating safe spaces for queer teens, mentorship, and providing test prep instruction free to students. Outside