Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan — (Free Press, Nov. 13, 2012): At 24 years old, Susannah Cahalan was poised to begin her adult life, setting out on her first post-college job and just into her first serious relationship. A month later, Cahalan woke up strapped to a hospital bed, unable to move or speak, after a terrifying autoimmune disorder almost took her mind and her life....
Some of these challenges have gone well. Some have been less successful (why does this lace pattern scarf suddenly have 107 stitches? I don’t…damn it). As I was contemplating the sum total the other day, however, I realized I hadn’t yet done any sort of comics challenge. And thus Comics A–Z was born. I’m going to pick a topic and then I’m going to find y’all a book for (hopefully) every letter of the alphabet under that general umbrella....
An all new paranormal fantasy series from #1 bestselling authors P.C. Cast & Kristin Cast ignites a world of earth-shattering action and romance where a group of teens question their supernatural abilities. Nothing is what it seems as nature’s power takes control. The wind can change everything and everyone. We have 10 copies of The Dysasters by P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast to give away to 10 Riot readers!...
Life is good for Tasia: close friends, supportive family, and a spot on her school football team. But when she catches her mamma hiding a box filled with mementos from Tasia’s life, including a birth certificate with a blank paternity line and a photo of her mom in the arms of some white dude, her identity is suddenly called into question. Turns out, the man she always thought was her father isn’t and she’s bi-racial....
There were generous friends and family members who sent money to help stock my shelves and I had bags and boxes full to take back with me this fall. As I was sorting and reorganizing in my den at the foot of my bookshelves, I couldn’t help looking up to see the young adult titles that I’d been keeping. I am an avid audiobook listener and use Libby and my library’s resources a ton....
There are so many great independent press books out there it’s hard to choose which ones to pick up. I hope this list helps you find something you’ll enjoy! Independent Press Books I’ve Read and Loved In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado (Graywolf Press, November 5) Carmen Maria Machado’s follow-up to her wonderful story collection Her Body and Other Parties is a memoir about an abusive relationship. While in her MFA, Machado met and fell in love with a charismatic woman who later turned out to be full of rage....
This exposure was at once exciting for her as well as a reminder of how disconnected she was from her own history and from seeing her own experiences reflected in the books she read. While covering the Girls Day Summit at Milwaukee’s Alverno College, Stone had the opportunity to meet Marley Dias. Now 14, Marley was the founder of #1000BlackGirlBooks, which put over 9,000 books featuring black girl main characters into the hands of young readers....
The contenders are: Five Little Indians by Michelle Good, defended by Ojibway author and Vogue fashion writer Christian Allaire Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez, defended by activist and actor Malia Baker (she’s Mary Anne in The Baby-Sitters Club!) What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad, defended by entrepreneur and former Syrian refugee Tareq Hadhad Life In the City of Dirty Water by Clayton Thomas-Müller, defended by author and ecologist Suzanne Simard Washington Black by Esi Edugyan, defended by LGBTQ activist and Olympic athlete Mark Tewksbury...
You are cordially invited to the wedding of the decade, when Christian Grey will make Anastasia Steele his wife. But is he really husband material? His dad is unsure, his brother wants to organize one helluva bachelor party, and his fiancée won’t vow to obey… Their passion for each other burns hotter than ever, but Ana’s defiant spirit continues to stir Christian’s darkest fears and tests his need for control....
At the beginning of pandemic lockdowns last spring, I caught up on classics I’d never read, including Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and its 2012 movie adaptation. The story — of Anna, whose husband Alexei Karenin is a politician 20 years her senior, and her passionate affair with Count Vronksy — is familiar to most readers. While wondering when I could go out in public again, I thought of the ways Anna and Vronsky’s story blurs the line between public and private life....
Have you ever felt that everything you’ve been working towards has been a lie? Well, our twenties are the time of constant learning and unlearning and then relearning. This is when the illusions fall off and we are left to contend with cold hard reality. Ingrid, from Elaine Hsieh Chou’s debut novel — Disorientation, is going through something similar. She is a final year PhD student, struggling with her dissertation on a Chinese American poet named Xiao-Wen Chou....
via GIPHY There’s no good way to compile such a dream database, but we’re here to help at least a little. Here are a handful of ways to find a book club, whether you want something big or small, in-person or online, or general or specific. Libraries I’d be bad at my job if I didn’t at least mention libraries here. Many public libraries—and even some libraries of other kinds—offer regular book clubs....
Do You Need to Fix Book Binding? Don’t Do This! Hopefully, you have found this article before you’ve gone rogue and started with some seemingly apparent options. For example, tape is a great option, right? Glue sticks have saved billions of craft mishaps over the years, and rubber cement is there forever, as evidenced by the rubber cement that was spilled on a fire hydrant near my elementary school and remained there for at least four years....
However, it can be pretty difficult to keep up with this wealth of available and fantastic stories. At Book Riot, we do our best to keep you up to date, but there are several other ways to keep up with the mystery Joneses. Book Riot Insiders New Releases Index Setting up your Book Riot Insiders profile is as easy as pulling books off a shelf. Imagine, if you will, another book that perfectly matches your reading taste pops up behind that book, and then another, and another....
Romance Reading romance leaves you with those warm, fuzzy feelings. So it’s important to replicate that when you’re setting the mood for reading it. You can read in a bubble bath with your favourite scents. Or you can change into your most comfortable pyjamas, light some scented candles and bundle up in bed, comfortable, cozy, and ready to read. Along with your romance book, make sure you have some chocolates to snack on and a drink....
The drawback of reading introductions—besides frequently being bored by them—was that the plots were often spoiled. Naturally, much of the literary analysis or criticism that happens in an introduction relies on the central events of the novel. So it was revealed to me that so-and-so was actually so-and-so all along, that what’s-her-face dies in a later chapter, and the love interest for the heroine was actually this other guy all along....
No, my problem is with something that plagues queer BookTok, and that is lists with absolutely no context at all. A TikTok will begin with, “Oh, you think there are no good sapphic books?” and then it will be be a rapid fire blinks of book covers, ranging from The Color Purple by Alice Walker to Princess Princess Ever After by Katie O’Neill. There will be no distinction between genres or tones....
It felt like what I “should” be reading. It was challenging stuff and definitely “worth” my time. This reading made me grow as a professional. It was a way for me to help students. It helped me stay aware of the goings on in my school and county. My mind was challenged. All of this reading “produced” something. It was for work, for school, for my students. Subsequently, the last thing I wanted to do when I went home was read more, for pleasure or not....
But as much as I’ve loved the idea, I’ve only ever tried one for myself. An indie I love periodically offers up their advanced reader copies for a very nominal fee ($2) wrapped up as dates. The funds all go to a good cause — not the bookstore, but a community entity — so there’s no weird ethical issues surrounding the sale of advanced reader copies. The title I picked up is long forgotten, stashed somewhere in a pile or recycled during one of my cleaning sprees....
Beverly Atlee Bunn was born in McMinnville, Oregon, on April 12, 1916. She earned a Bachelor’s of Art in English from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1938, and a Master’s in Library Science from the University of Washington in 1939. She worked as a youth librarian in Yakima, Washington, and as the post librarian at the U.S. Army Hospital in Oakland, California. She married her husband, Clarence Cleary, in 1940, and became a full-time writer in 1942....
