This installment of Riot Recommendation is sponsored by Care of Wooden Floors by Will Wiles. A British copywriter house-sits at his composer friend Oskar’s ultra-modern apartment in a glum Eastern European city. The instructions are simple: Feed the cats, don’t touch the piano, and make sure nothing damages the priceless wooden floors. Content for the first [...]
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We all have weird quirks and foibles when it comes to our reading lives (see my millions of posts that start with “confession”). There’s a new Tumblr for all of us to pour out our “deepest, darkest bookish secrets,” and it’s appropriately called Reader Shaming. It’s like Post Secret for book nerds, but without the [...]
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Book Riot colleague Rebecca Schinsky forwarded me the link to this HORRIFYING new website HeTexted in which girls send in ambiguous text messages from potential flames and the internet is allowed to vote whether “He’s into you,” “He’s not into you,” or “Verdict’s still out.” Just when you thought the future of mankind couldn’t get any [...]
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A while ago I wrote about receiving the ill-suited book as a present, in my case it was Knit Your Own Cat from my mother. Alternatively, sometimes a loved one can nail it, and give you just the right book at the right time (as my mother, to her credit, frequently has.) Doesn’t that restore [...]
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Kit Steinkellner is the inventor of the Trailer Rundown, and she makes them look like so much fun that I had to try my hand at it when I discovered this trailer for a new WUTHERING HEIGHTS (it came out last year in the UK and is supposed to hit U.S. theaters sometime in October).
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Legions of readers have been waiting for this day for nigh on two years. Justin Cronin’s follow-up to The Passage is here! And it’s not the only exciting release this week. Check ‘em. The Fifty Year Sword by Mark Z. Danielewski (Pantheon) I should confess from the outset that I’m in that shame-faced group of [...]
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Amanda crushed it last week with this post about book-related Facebook pages you should “like.” Let’s keep the party going! Here are 10 more: 10. Téa Obreht — Last year’s Orange Prize Winner and National Book Award Finalist for The Tiger’s Wife has a kind of funny, playful tone on her feed. For example: “Dear [...]
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She writes the books in collage – distinct, hermetic scenes that she then arranges and rearranges and stitches together to make a whole, though the overall architecture is always in her mind and she has the chronology to lean on. Mantel’s process is fascinating. ____________________________ This is why novels are magic, and why they’re not [...]
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A few weeks ago, we showed you the awesome “Second breakfast is the best breakfast” mugs from the even-awesomer folks at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and asked you to submit alternate taglines to THE HOBBIT to enter to win one. There were a TON of fantastic submissions. Here are our ten favorites–the writers of the top five won [...]
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This installment of Riot Recommendation is sponsored by The Bloodletter’s Daughter by Linda Lafferty. In 1606, the city of Prague shines as a golden mecca of art and culture carefully cultivated by Emperor Rudolf II. But the emperor hides an ugly secret: His bastard son, Don Julius, is afflicted with a madness that pushes the young prince to [...]
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Canadians — rejoice! Our nation’s handsomest book club is back in earnest, and it’s (once again) mixing up the format. And this time, it’s regional war! For those non-Canadians who read Book Riot (I had no idea!), Canada Reads is our national fight-to-the-death held annually on the CBC to determine which book the whole country [...]
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I tend to hardcore eye-roll when a novel is about a novelist and a screenplay features a screenwriter as a protagonist. I just think, “Oh, you’re a novelist and you have no other life experience, so that’s all you know how to write about.” I know this is judge-y and probably not fair, but I [...]
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I’d like to ask you a personal question. I mean, we’ve known each other for awhile now, and I think our relationship can handle it. It won’t be easy to answer, and you’ll probably kinda hate me for asking it. But my curiosity can no longer be contained. Everyone who reads a lot dreads this [...]
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Ebooks are not going away, ever. Amazon now sells more ebooks than print books. In Canada, 16% of books purchased are digital. Ebook sales in the UK increased over 188% in the first six months of 2012. More and more people are consuming their books from a screen, and I’m having trouble mustering righteous anger [...]
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So these two writers walk into a bar, right? And neither of them is a horse or anything but both of them are complaining about fan-fiction, where “fans” write “fiction” based on another writer’s works, then typically post them online for people to read for free. These two writers are really irate about it. [...]
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There are few Internet-based joys like the joy of finding a well-executed fictional Twitter account. But there are some obvious gaps in the Twittersphere–gaps that could be filled by a few fictional characters from some of our favorite books. We’ve already talked about the ladies who are missing from our Twitter feed. Now it’s time [...]
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An app called Whims is trying something completely different, but extremely familiar. The social network iOS app lets you express yourself with words, colors and fonts only. There are no pictures. There are no videos — just you and your thoughts. I bet this would be a fun tool to turn your favorite book quotations into images. [...]
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It’s easy to imagine writers of classic literature as fictional characters themselves, without grounding in the real world. But just like the writers of today, the giants of the canon had their own homes. Of course, those homes are often ridiculously beautiful and look like sets of The Secret Garden. Let’s take a virtual look [...]
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From Donna Rifkind’s review of Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie Want to see more baby animals read The New York Times Book Review? Alright then, here you go.
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Here are the most-read stories from the last week in Critical Linking…. ____________________________ The coins featuring characters such as Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf the wizard will be legal tender in the country, New Zealand Post said, although their face value will be only a fraction of the cost collectors will be expected to pay. Render [...]
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