This post is part of our Toni Morrison Reading Day: a celebration of one of our favorite authors on the occasion of her new novel, Home. Check out the rest right here. ____________________________ William Faulkner is widely recognized as one of Morrison’s most important literary influences, both thematically and stylistically. But just how close are they? See [...]
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This post is part of our Toni Morrison Reading Day: a celebration of one of our favorite authors on the occasion of her new novel, Home. Check out the rest right here. ____________________________ Home by Toni Morrison Publication Date: May 8, 2012 Genre: Literary Fiction Publisher: AA Knopf Publisher’s Synopsis: America’s most celebrated novelist, Nobel Prize-winner Toni [...]
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This post is part of our Toni Morrison Reading Day: a celebration of one of our favorite authors on the occasion of her new novel, Home. Check out the rest right here. ____________________________ It’s a rare reader who can make it through any Toni Morrison novel without uttering an “OMG” or twenty. Here are a few of [...]
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This post is part of our Toni Morrison Reading Day: a celebration of one of our favorite authors on the occasion of her new novel, Home. Check out the rest right here. ____________________________ I’m going to take a crack at close-reading the first line of Home. I haven’t read past the first twelve words, so [...]
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Okay, you’ve got a couple hours of Monday under your belt. What’s on your mind today?
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We’re just about 12 weeks away from the start of the London 2012 Olympics and I’ve managed, so far, to keep my squealing excitement under wraps. But just barely. Personally, I’ve always been more of a Summer Games girl than Winter, and I’ve usually got a schedule of my favorite events mapped out and DVR’d [...]
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I’ve been on a quest to discover my inner geek lately. I thought my love of books fully qualified me as geek, but I have discovered that there is so much more to it than that. I have Ernie Cline, Lev Grossman, Wil Wheaton, and Felicia Day to blame…or to thank. What am I talking [...]
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This installment of Riot Recommendation is sponsored by All Woman and Springtime by Brandon W. Jones. Before she met Il-sun in an orphanage, Gi was a hollow husk of a girl, broken from growing up in one of North Korea’s forced-labor camps. A mathematical genius, she has learned to cope with pain by retreating into [...]
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It’s almost here! Toni Morrison’s tenth novel, Home, is coming out tomorrow, and we’re making a holiday of it. To celebrate, we’re giving away one signed first edition of the book to a lucky Riot reader (thank you, Random House!). Pop over to our Facebook page to post a photo of your Toni Morrison collection [...]
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It’s the time of year for academic send-offs, graduation gifts, and general future-gazing. Understandably, college and universities like to send their graduates out on a high note, so the tenor of commencement speeches is hopeful and inspiring. Thing is, post-graduation life is considerably more complicated than “be the change you want to see in the [...]
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I can’t quite decide what I think about paid book subscriptions. What I mean by paid book subscriptions are the groups that you join for which you pay (or donate) a fixed amount and they send you a book of their choice each month (or every other month). I’ve done two of them, both of [...]
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As publishers hunger for popular content while cutting promotional budgets, such ready-formed, literate and ebook-reading groups are likely to become the engine rooms of fiction. I have no doubt that quality fan fiction would sell. But aren’t there insane copyright issues? I mean, I can’t just write a Harry Potter prequel and sell it, no? [...]
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One of the most important reasons to care about language and to always be delving deeper into its origins and usage, aside from the occasional opportunity to stand in self-righteous judgment over others, is that language can be fun!* *And judging others is way fun! Duh! The fun language phenomenon I’ve discovered today—and many of [...]
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Alright, so I’m on a literary schadenfreude kick. I was kinda stacking the deck with the last two: Henry James’ writing was itself a reaction to the Dickensian tradition and Emerson’s self-reliance a response to the very kind of social cages that Austen explored. In short, those particular literary barbs aren’t surprising. Time to get [...]
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Book publishers should make reading books as addictive and habit-forming as playing Angry Birds, said Charles Duhigg, author of “The Power of Habit” How about just writing good books? If people don’t want to read good books, then it doesn’t really matter how addictive they are. They will be bad, addictive books. And that’s not a win. [...]
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Here are the book trailers that were most popular this week on BookRiot.tv. Click the cover to watch.
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The most popular posts from the week that was… I look at the people who write in their books with the same kind of awed reverence that Sal Mineo applied to James Dean. Which likely says something about my conception of rebellion. No lie, I even used a separate sheet of loose leaf for my [...]
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Book publishers should make reading books as addictive and habit-forming as playing Angry Birds, said Charles Duhigg, author of “The Power of Habit” How about just writing good books? If people don’t want to read good books, then it doesn’t really matter how addictive they are. They will be bad, addictive books. And that’s not a [...]
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Sometimes it’s difficult to read about subjects that you’ve lived. I’m reminded of my dad, an aerospace engineer, critiquing the types of planes used in action movies. It was a point of pride, but also kind of annoying, to have him constantly picking out flaws in every scene. I don’t know how many times I’ve [...]
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