In Read This, Then That, we pair new books with classics that have similar themes, structures, and stories. Vampires in the Lemon Grove, Karen Russell’s second short story collection and the follow-up to her novel Swamplandia!, is difficult to pigeonhole. My first instinct was to think of Russell’s work as magical realism, or perhaps surrealism. [...]
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The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer I have been on pins and needles for this book to come out for MONTHS. Prior to reading this, I was already a huge Wolitzer fan (I think The Ten Year Nap is great, I think The Wife is genius-times) and this novel made me a super-sized fan. The Interestings [...]
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Litograph T-Shirt: Wear your favorite book right on your sleeve. Or your back. Or both. DIY Book Headboard: This lovely and whimsical headboard is a great path to sweet dreams. Poetry Scarf: In honor of Poetry Month, We Are Owls gives us a verse to wear around our necks. Winter is Coming T-Shirt: So [...]
Read the full postReading has always been important to me for all the reasons: learning, escapism, comfort, grad school, hipness, what have you. I love it. I love characters who love it. I have always liked trying to figure out what books are on shelves in the background of TV and movie scenes, and I’ve been known to [...]
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April 17 is National Bookmobile Day! I can’t imagine a better way to celebrate than to read some awesome books about bookmobiles. Except maybe reading them while moving. So hop on a bus or go for a stroll with one of these books in hand to get the full celebratory experience: WITH A HIGH HEART [...]
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In addition to being an avid reader, I am also an aspiring crafter. I’ve dabbled in both crocheting and cross stitch, which, I know, basically makes me your grandma, but had to set aside most of my crafty hobbies during a series of recent moves. A few weeks ago I was cruising around on Etsy where I stumbled [...]
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“Home library size has a very substantial effect on educational attainment, even adjusting for parents’ education, father’s occupational status and other family background characteristics,” reports the study, recently published in the journalResearch in Social Stratification and Mobility. “Growing up in a home with 500 books would propel a child 3.2 years further in education, [...]
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Tuesday is New Book Day. We celebrate each week by highlighting titles we’re excited to see arrive in paperback. Wake by Amanda Hocking (St. Martin’s Griffin) Gorgeous. Fearless. Dangerous. They’re the kind of girls you envy; the kind of girls you want to hate. Strangers in town for the summer, Penn, Lexi and Thea have [...]
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There are a few books that I think rise above the star-rating system we humans have devised to grade plays, movies, books, restaurants, hotels, and hovercrafts. These are classic works of enduring literature (or at least they would be if I had any say in things). I remember a while ago I was on the [...]
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This installment of the Riot Recommendation is sponsored by Taken by Erin Bowman. There are no men in Claysoot. At midnight on every boy’s eighteenth birthday, the ground shakes, the wind howls, a blinding light descends…and the boy is gone. The villagers call it the Heist. Gray Weathersby is prepared to meet his fate–until he [...]
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Welcome to another installment of Boy vs. Girl, in which we (Marisa Atkinson and Casey Peterson) read and debate new books at least one of us is really excited about. Now up: The Smart One by Jennifer Close. — Marisa: Right off the bat, I think we can agree that you are not exactly the [...]
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A few days ago, I came across an interview that Meg Wolitzer, author of The Interestings (check out Greg’s SUPERCUT here), did with The Nervous Breakdown. At one point, the conversation turns to the question of gender and reading habits. Here’s what Wolitzer said: What matters in a big way is subject matter and men with [...]
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RJS: Well hi there, my little cabbage! I’ve been reading a bunch of ranty-pants articles about how authors write acknowledgments sections lately (and how they are basically just circle jerks-slash-name-dropping opportunities), and I figured, since neither of us has any plans to write a book right now, that we should just dump our acknowledgments out [...]
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Heading into the Elliott Bay Book Company felt like a first date, or an interview. I wanted to make a good first impression, and I wanted to be impressed. I had a couple of starter questions at the ready. I hoped we wouldn’t be drowned out by loud Lumineers songs. I’ve just gotten to Seattle [...]
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It’s only natural to be drawn to novels set in the city in which you live. Thankfully for me, Chicago has a rich tradition as a literary setting — from Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March to Richard Wright’s Native Son to Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife to Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came To [...]
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Maxine Tarnow is running a nice little fraud investigation business on the Upper West Side, chasing down different kinds of small-scale con artists. She used to be legally certified but her license got pulled a while back, which has actually turned out to be a blessing because now she can follow her own [...]
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In this giveaway, sponsored by 70th anniversary edition of The Little Prince, we wanted to hear your stories inspired by some favorite quotes from the book. We read through a whole bevy of entries to find the three stories that we felt best spoke to the sentiments expressed in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic novel. We posted their stories, and [...]
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This installment of the Riot Recommendation is sponsored by Dark Triumph by Robin LaFevers. Sybella’s duty as Death’s assassin in 15th-century France forces her return home to the personal hell that she had finally escaped. Love and romance, history and magic, vengeance and salvation converge in this thrilling sequel to Grave Mercy. Sybella arrives at the convent’s doorstep half [...]
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Publication Date: April 9, 2013 Genre: Literary Fiction Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover Publisher’s Synopsis: The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, [...]
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