Events

Welcome to Toni Morrison Day!

Rebecca Joines Schinsky

Chief of Staff

Rebecca Joines Schinsky is the executive director of product and ecommerce at Riot New Media Group. She co-hosts All the Books! and the Book Riot Podcast. Follow her on Twitter: @rebeccaschinsky.

Who among us hasn’t wished we could call out of work “curled up with a good book” or celebrate the day of our favorite author’s latest release as a holiday? When we find out a writer we love has a new book coming out, we put a big red circle around the date on our calendars, and we count the days until we can devour a story we’re already sure we will love. And when the day comes? We rush to the bookstore, or the mailbox, or our ereaders, and we dive right in. We read and read and read, and when we finish, we read everything we can find about the book. We can’t get enough.

And of course, we want to talk about it with other readers who are just as passionate as we are. Here at Book Riot, we think that celebrating books and what they do in our lives is a worthy endeavor and one of the best parts of life in the literary community. So we’ve set aside today as the first Riot Reading Day in honor of Toni Morrison, an author we love, and her tenth novel, Home. We hope you’ll join us.

Toni Morrison Day Table of Contents

If you’ve always wanted to try Morrison but weren’t sure where to start, you might try this suggested sequence for reading her.

If you do decide to give Morrison a try, be sure to consult this Morrison Survival Guide.

If you’ve read Morrison, but only in school, rediscover her work outside academia.

Did you know that Toni Morrison is not her real name? This and more in a round-up of notable Morrison links from around the web.

The 20 Best Lines in Toni Morrison 

See a retrospective of Morrison’s first editions and some other notable cover art. You know you want to look.

Add to your own Morrison collection with our awesome giveaways! Find out how you can win a Song of Solomon t-shirt or a complete set of the Morrison catalog.

Think you know know Morrison well enough to identify her writing? Then take this quiz that asks you distinguish between Morrison and one of her major influences, William Faulkner.

Check out what the critics are saying about Home in Review GPA.

Ten moments in Morrison that make you think “OMG.” 

Morrison demands your attention, so get some practice with this close-reading of the first line of Home.

And if you are reading Home today, please participate in our discussion thread. We’ll be dipping in ourselves as the day, and our reading, goes along.