In Our Queerest Shelves, Book Riot’s LGBTQ books newsletter, I decided to see if we could do this challenge on hard mode: all LGBTQ books! I’m happy to say that I succeeded — and only had to cheat a tiny bit here and there. This post is adapted from those newsletters. For every challenge, I’ve provided five options of books you could pick up to complete the challenge, highlighting one or two titles....
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My mom likes to read, too, but she’s a busy lady who doesn’t always have the time or energy to dive into book after book like I do. So whenever she asks me for a book recommendation, I think pretty carefully about what to give her. I’m your pretty standard literary fiction reader myself, but I don’t want to recommend my mom something too heady and obtuse, or worse, completely depressing (as we all know literary fiction is want to be these days) that will feel like a slog to read....
Follett did well on the bestseller list from that point on and has published some 44 books. His early work was in the spy thriller genre, but in 1989 he published Pillars of the Earth, a novel about a cathedral built in the English village of Kingsbridge during the Anarchy in the 12th century. To date it’s sold 26 million copies and been adapted to a well-regarded video game. He followed it up with World Without End, set 157 years after Pillars, and finished the trilogy with A Column of Fire....
What’s Breaking in Books:
Camilla explained that pop-surrealism is a sub-genre of low brow, a movement that started in the ’70s as artists “were exploring a more cartoonish style of art. I didn’t know what the term was until someone bought a piece of mine when I was showing in Vancouver and said, ‘Oh, you’re a pop-surrealist, you take pop-art, pop-culture, and you twist it with surrealist style.’ It’s basically pop culture and you throw the rules of logic and science out the door....
So, when I saw that Canva had an experimental new AI-generated art feature (called “Text to Image”), I decided to see what it did with book covers. The first couple were very promising, as you’ll see, and then in several others…it took a turn. The advent of easily available AI-generated art has come with a huge amount of discourse and criticism. AI doesn’t create images in a vacuum: it is trained using real people’s art, often copyrighted, without their permission....
Throughout his long career, Bryan received multiple honorary degrees, lifetime achievement recognitions, and awards for his illustrations accompanying the work of such writers and poets as Langston Hughes, Nikki Giovanni, and Walter Dean Myers as well as for his own written and illustrated works. He became well known for his retellings of African folk tales and African American stories, and received multiple ALA Awards, including Newbery Honors and multiple Coretta Scott King Awards....
Strayed announced on her Instagram that she’ll be on the first Live Wire House Parties episode on Friday, March 27, answering questions sent to hello@livewireradio.org. No information about where and when the episode will be available has yet been announced. A post shared by Cheryl Strayed (@cherylstrayed) on Mar 24, 2020 at 1:41pm PDT Is there anything we need more in this time of anxiety and social distancing than our friend Dear Sugar talking us through it?...
“This is a great beginner’s guide to pre-colonial Africa.” —Ibram X. Kendi, author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist. Black history began long ago with the many cultures and people of the African continent. Through portraits of ten heroic figures, author Tracey Baptiste takes readers on a journey across Africa to meet some of the great leaders and thinkers whose vision built a continent and shaped the world....
Whether you’re looking for a heartfelt slice of life story or an uplifting adventure, these 10 cozy graphic novels will fill you with all sorts of warm feelings. These stories include hedge witches, hockey players, mischievous felines, and helpful ghosts. And each and every one of them is just as cozy as the next. Sit back, relax, and let yourself be swept away into a world of sweet stories and artistic delights....
There are so many historical mystery books it is a never ending list filled with lots of time periods, places around the world, historical events, historical figures, and interesting “detectives” determined to put the puzzle pieces together — or stop a crime. Some merely use the time period as a background and others bring to light historical moments that have never been spotlighted in history classes. There is truly so much to explore and enjoy, it’s a genre of riches....
Want to read more about publishing trends? See It’s Time to Let These Publishing Trends Die and The Best Book Covers of 2021. The publishing industry is also an excellent setting for slightly grittier reads, too. It’s likely that, over the last couple of years, many writers’ worlds shrank to include little beyond their work and their books, so it’s no surprise that that’s where they’re drawing their inspiration from....
Well, fear not! Because we are here to help with a handy-dandy, completely arbitrary taxonomy to help you break down different types of magic users! This is not a definitive list, an expansive list, nor can it ever be a fully accurate list as writers will take these terms and mix them to fit their narratives. But, we will try our best to give you some pretty popular examples. This also is not a bestiary or catalog of magical beasts—that would be a closet full of monsters that we do not want to open....
Demonic possession is one of my favorite horror tropes of all time. Maybe it’s the lingering Catholic in me, or maybe it’s just the allure of the timeless battle of good and evil. Who knows! All I know is that I never ever get tired of possession plots — or the good old fashioned exorcism fun that goes with them. Thankfully, if there’s one thing the horror genre doesn’t lack for, in film or on page, it’s demons and people dumb enough to pick up a planchette and talk to them....
