A Reading Guide for Book Riot Live, Part 1
This post is sponsored this week by Book Riot Live: the convention book lovers have always wanted. Two days of talks, discussion, panels, booths, interviews, and more. Find out more here, or click the image below.
____________________
You’ve got your tickets for Book Riot Live, and you’ve started perusing the programming, but you want to read up a bit before November. Where to start? I have some thoughts about that!
Editor Alvina Ling: North of Beautiful by Justina Chen
Terra Cooper looks like an All-American poster girl — except for the port-wine stain birthmark on her cheek. Jacob is a Goth boy with his own imperfections. Their meeting sends Terra on a journey that upends everything she thinks she knows about herself. A coming-of-age story that encompasses family, beauty, and love.
Beverly Jenkins: Topaz
Kate Love is an aspiring newspaperwoman who finds herself in hot water; Dixon Wildhorse is the lawman who comes to her rescue. Politics, wagon trains, peril, love, and shoot-outs!
D
aniel Jose Older: Shadowshaper (out June 30, 2015)
In a rapidly-falling-apart New York, teenager Sierra Santiago discovers unexpected powers and a mission to save the world. An awesome meld of art, Caribbean legend, and urban fantasy.
Danielle Henderson: Feminist Ryan Gosling
You may have seen them on your computer screen, but do you have them for your coffee table? This compliation of “Hey Girl” and feminist theory mash-ups are a must-have for every critical theory/pop-culture fan.
Ellia Bisker: “Written” by Manuel Gonzales
A short story inspired by a photo of Ellia Bisker, taken from a music video. It’s a beautiful loop of creativity! Bonus: Manuel Gonzales also has a book of short stories called The Miniature Wife, if you want even more of his stellar writing.
Myke Cole: Control Point (Shadow Ops #1)
Lieutenant Oscar Britton plays everything by the book. It’s his job to find and contain people who manifest magic powers, and he’s good at his job — until he becomes one of those people. Everything he thinks he knows about his government and himself? Pretty much untrue. This is just the start of a kick-ass, action-packed, magic-and-guns-and-alternate-dimensions series.
NK Jemisin: The Killing Moon
The Gatherers, magic harvesters and priests of the goddess of Gujaarah, keep the peace and punish the corrupt as necessary. But the priest Ehiru discovers that someone is using magic for their own nefarious purposes, and as he searches for the perpetrator he discovers a far deeper plot than he thought possible. The first of the two-book Dreamblood series, this is an incredibly rich and beautifully imagined high fantasy.
Peter Mendelsund: What We See When We Read
What *do* we see when we read? Esteemed cover designer Mendelsund plunges into this question in an exploration that utilizes both words and images to tease out how visualization works.
____________________
Book Riot Live is coming! Join us for a two-day event full of books, authors, and an all around good time. It’s the convention for book lovers that we’ve always wanted to attend. So we are doing it ourselves.
