It’s finally happening! Introducing The Kids are All Right: Book Riot’s kid lit and middle grade books newsletter! KA-BOOM!!
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20% Off Purchase, Free Mug with $40
Stock up on gifts for grads, dads, and yourself! Get 20% off any purchase in the Book Riot Store this week, and get a free heat-reactive mug when you spend $40 or more.
And introducing new koozies! Keep your books hot and your drink cold.
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Win NOT A SOUND by Heather Gudenkauf
We have 10 copies of Not A Sound by Heather Gudenkauf to give away to 10 Riot readers!
Here’s what it’s all about:
When a tragic accident leaves nurse Amelia Winn deaf, she spirals into a depression that ultimately causes her to lose everything that matters—her job, her husband, David, and her stepdaughter, Nora. Now, two years later and with the help of her hearing dog, Stitch, she is finally getting back on her feet. But when she discovers the body of a fellow nurse in the dense bush by the river, deep in the woods near her cabin, she is plunged into a disturbing mystery that could shatter the carefully reconstructed pieces of her life all over again.
Go here to enter the giveaway or just click on the image below. Good luck!
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In The Club May 31
Welcome back to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met and well-read. Let’s dive in.
This newsletter is sponsored by Driving Miss Norma by Tim Bauerschmidt and Ramie Liddle.
At the age of 90, in the same hospital where her husband of 67 years passed away just days earlier, Miss Norma received the news that she had cancer. Declining traditional cancer treatment, Miss Norma opted instead to live the remainder of her life to the fullest, traveling the country in an RV with her son Tim, his wife Ramie, and their poodle, Ringo. As Miss Norma put it to her oncologist: “I’m 90 years old. I’m hitting the road”. Come along for the ride of this unforgettable journey, and let Miss Norma inspire you to say YES to living.
Calling all wizards and witches! Pottermore is getting a book club. Kind of? Twitter book clubs are always a bit of a mess — there’s no threading so conversations can go off the rails or be hard to follow and hashtags have a tendency to get overtaken by ne’er-do-wells. The extras for each book on Pottermore will be nice, but since you can’t have a conversation right there, I am skeptical! If anyone can make it work, though, it’s the HP fandom; I look forward to seeing how it unfolds.
Need more book club with your shopping? Talbots is starting a Summer Book Club. Kind of! Is it actually a book club if there isn’t a scheduled conversation attached to the books that are given out? I don’t think this qualifies as a book club at all, honestly, but that’s department store marketing for you. I love the idea! I just wish they had called it the Summer Book Exchange instead.
When you don’t actually want to talk about the book: Silent Book Club now easier to find near you! If you’re not familiar with them, they organize reading parties in various cities where folks get together to, you guessed it, silently read in the same place for a couple hours. It’s probably not actually a book club either, but I’ll allow it.
What if your mother/daughter book club doesn’t work out? It seemed like the best idea! You had a plan! But sometimes, it just doesn’t go how you thought it would. That’s ok. If you want to try anyway and need some themed options, here are 100 books about mothers.
Book Club resolution: Read more small presses. We can help with that; here are 12 books out in May. The list includes essays, novels, short stories, and mystery, so lots of options depending on your taste!
And now for our very last installment of Read Harder Challenge recommendations! Since tasks 9, 10, 11, and 16 are either personal or location-specific, I leave you to those. So, here are round-ups of themed lists for the two last tasks, plus a shout-out each to a personal favorite!
For: read a collection of poetry in translation on a theme other than love. (from author Ausma Zehanat Khan)
– Here by Wisława Szymborska is a bilingual collection of one of my all-time favorite poets. Szymborska’s poetry was a revelation to me as a teenager and 20+ years later continues to stun me.
– A Read Harder-inspired list
– Book Riot’s “In Translation” archives
– PEN Award for Poetry In Translation winner list
– Recommended reading from PEN
For: Read a book wherein all point-of-view characters are people of color. (from author Jacqueline Koyanagi)
– Guidebook to Relative Strangers by Camille T. Dungy comes out on June 13 and I cannot wait for other folks to start reading it. She looks at motherhood, home, travel, nature, and so many other aspects of life in this gorgeously written memoir.
– A Read Harder-inspired list
– 10 SF/F books with protagonists of color from Bustle (minus the two that don’t count and are acknowledged as such!)
– Goodreads discussion for this task
More Resources:
– Our Book Group In A Box guide
– List your group on the Book Group Resources pagei
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053017-VoiletGrenade-Riot-Rundown
Today’s Riot Rundown is sponsored by Entangled Teen.
Domino: a runaway with blood on her hands. Cain: a silent boy about to explode. Madam Karina: a woman who demands obedience. Wilson: the one who will destroy them all. Discover the book that #1 NYT bestselling author Lindsay Cummings called “an utterly unique, utterly wicked read!”
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Today’s The Stack is sponsored by Chicago Review Press.
Investigating Wonder Woman’s complicated history as well as her modern incarnations, Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine by Tim Hanley illuminates a character who was (and is) far more than “a female Superman.” Appealing to comic fans, pop culture aficionados and history buffs alike, Wonder Woman Unbound explores the peculiar journey that led to her iconic status, adding a new dimension to the world’s most beloved female superhero.
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Kelly Recommends: 5 Backlist Books
Hello, Insiders! We’re delighted to introduce our second monthly Behind the Scenes email, a new regular feature in which our staffer of the month shares some of their favorite picks for your reading enjoyment. Ready for your TBR stack to get even higher?
It’s great to read the new and the shiny but I find reading backlist — those books more than a year old — to be as, if not even more, satisfying sometimes. Here are five young adult backlist titles totally worth tracking down and reading. — Kelly Jensen, associate editor and community manager
Since You Asked by Maurene Goo
Want a light-hearted, sometimes over-the-top story about a girl who accidentally finds herself writing columns for her high school paper? This is your book. Holly is a Korean-American girl in a Los Angeles area suburb navigating what it’s like to be expected to follow traditional cultural beliefs while also finding her own way as an American teenager. It’s funny and Holly finds herself in a lot of ridiculous situations, thanks in part to that column she never meant to write.
Peas and Carrots by Tanita S. Davis
What happens when a middle class black family fosters a white girl the same age as their teenage daughter? Well, the two of them go together like peas and carrots (SEE WHAT I DID THERE? Or really what Tanita S. Davis did there?). This book alternates chapters between the two perspectives, giving a look at how Dessa navigates being in a new foster family while her mother is incarcerated and how Hope forges a relationship with her new sister. A story about what family means, rather than what it looks like — with some excellent exploration of racial and body politics.
Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow by Faïza Guène
Had this book been published a few years later than it did, it would have easily been a YA title. Therefore, I am including it here because this is a book that exemplifies an excellent YA voice. Doria is a 15-year-old growing up in the projects outside of Paris, France. She’s dealing with her father ditching her and her mother, who is illiterate, as he heads back to Morocco in order to attempt marrying a woman who can sire him a son (that’s all that matters in his culture). It deals with urban issues in a way that’s cross-cultural, about the challenges of growing up between cultures, and what it means to figure out who you are and what you do when your world’s been blown apart. It also looks at what happens when the people you’ve come to know and rely on for certain things — their always being there, their always NOT being there — change and mold into their own lives and new paths, too.
Frost by Marianna Baer
I can’t say a lot about this one except it’s realistic horror about a girl who finally gets to live in the school-owned private house her senior year and A Lot Of Shit Goes Down. There’s a scene here with bugs covering a bed and a scene with a small wooden owl that I will never, ever forget (his name is Cubby). Enough said.
Lovestruck Summer by Melissa Walker
This now super-cheap, in-ebook-only story is a sweet summer romance set in Austin, Texas. Quinn just graduated high school and has been itching to make her way to Austin, where she knows she’ll be able to indulge in her love of all things music and bands. When she scores an internship with her favorite record company, the itch is scratched and she moves in with her cousin Penny. There’s immediate friction between the cousins and things only get a little more contentious when boys enter the picture. This one is for readers who want a love story with heart and well-drawn characters operating within a well-drawn city. Prepare to plow through it in your hammock in an afternoon.
New Sylvia Plath Poems Discovered
In this week’s edition of Old Work By Dead Authors Found in Someone’s Attic (or variations thereof), academics have discovered two poems by Sylvia Plath on old carbon paper “hidden in the back of an old notebook…” The poems are early works, written in 1956 at the start of Plath’s relationship with poet Ted Hughes. The new poems join a handful of newly discovered letters Plath wrote to her psychiatrist, which detail abuse Plath suffered at the hands of Hughes.
Neil Gaiman Will Read You the Cheesecake Factory Menu
Writer and comedian Sara Benincasa asked Neil Gaiman on Twitter if he’d read the entire Cheesecake Factory menu on stage for charity, and he’s agreed to do it if she can raise $500,000. Gaiman has chosen the UNHCR, the United Nation’s refugee agency, to be the recipient of the funds raised. Gaiman’s voice is very nice and the Cheesecake Factory menu is very long, so if this happens I’m very tempted to keep the recording as a soothing thing to fall asleep to at night.
The 2016 Nebula Award Winners!
The winners of the 2016 Nebula Awards from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have been announced! The finalists in the major categories were all excellent, so I was bound to be happy with whoever was chosen by the organization to win. Charlie Jane Anders’s All the Birds in the Sky takes home Best Novel, and Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire wins Best Novella. See the full list of winners here.
Thanks to Barking Up the Wrong Tree by Eric Barker for sponsoring this week’s newsletter.
Much advice about achievement is logical, earnest… and downright wrong. In Barking Up the Wrong Tree, Eric Barker reveals the extraordinary science behind what actually determines success. You’ll learn:
- Why valedictorians rarely become millionaires
- How your biggest weakness might be your greatest strength
- Lessons about cooperation from gangs, pirates, and serial killers
- The Navy SEAL secret to “grit”
- How to find work-life balance from Genghis Khan, Albert Einstein, and Spider-Man
By looking at what separates the extremely successful from the rest of us, we learn how to be more like them—and discover why it’s sometimes good that we aren’t.
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Today’s Riot Rundown is sponsored by Sister Sister by Sue Fortin.
From the USA Today bestselling author comes a brand new psychological thriller…
Alice: Beautiful, kind, manipulative, liar.
Clare: Intelligent, loyal, paranoid, jealous.
Clare thinks Alice is a manipulative liar who is trying to steal her life.
Alice thinks Clare is jealous of her long-lost return and place in their family.
One of them is telling the truth. The other is a maniac.
Two sisters. One truth.
Happy Tuesday! Hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend which involved lots of book reading. I have a few great titles to tell you about today, and as always, you can also hear about several more great books on this week’s episode of the All the Books! Rebecca and I talked about amazing books we loved, such as When Dimple Met Rishi, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, and The White Road.
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Not a Sound by Heather Gudenkauf.
When a tragic accident leaves nurse Amelia Winn deaf, she spirals into a depression that ultimately causes her to lose everything that matters—her job, her husband, David, and her stepdaughter, Nora. Now, two years later and with the help of her hearing dog, Stitch, she is finally getting back on her feet. But when she discovers the body of a fellow nurse in the dense bush by the river, deep in the woods near her cabin, she is plunged into a disturbing mystery that could shatter the carefully reconstructed pieces of her life all over again.
Dragon’s Green by Scarlett Thomas
This is the first children’s book from the amazing Thomas, and holy cats, is it fun. And it’s about – wait for it – BOOKS. When Effie’s grandfather becomes seriously ill, she must look after his library of rare and powerful books. But when one of the books falls into dangerous hands, Effie must travel to Otherworld to get it back. Did I mention this is all about books???? Purrrrrrrr.
Backlist bump: Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge
The Reminders by Val Emmich
When Gavin’s partner Sydney dies, he literally sets fire to their life together and flees Los Angeles for New Jersey, hoping to be reunited with old friends. There he meets Joan, a ten-year-old girl who has the rare ability to remember everything. Gavin agrees to help Joan win a songwriting contest in exchange for telling him her memories about Sydney. Told from alternating narrators, this is a sad, sweet story of the pain and joy of the past, the curse of remembering everything, and the importance of new friendships.
Backlist bump: Piece of Mind by Michelle Adelman
Boundless by Jillian Tamaki
In this marvelous graphic novel, Tamaki delivers several stories: Jenny discovers a Facebook-type better version of herself; a mysterious file brings happiness – or is the end of mankind; Helen literally begins to shrink; humans can suddenly see into the minds of animals. Tamaki tackles self-image, perception, and social media in this wonderful send-up of our virtual lives.
Backlist bump: SuperMutant Magic Academy by Jillian Tamaki
White Fur by Jardine Libaire
Eliza and Jamey are from very different backgrounds, but their attraction to one another is undeniable, and the couple decide to take a risk and move from New Haven to NYC together. But Jamie’s family disapprove of the relationship and try to intervene, turning their bliss into a struggle to stay together. White Fur is a ferocious 1980s Romeo and Juliet, crackling with sexual obsession and danger.
Backlist bump: Here Kitty Kitty by Jardine Libaire
Class by Francesco Pacifico
Ludovica and Lorenzo live in Rome – he’s a pretentious burgeoning filmmaker and she works in a bookstore. When Lorenzo gets a scholarship to Columbia, the couple move to Williamsburg, where they immerse themselves in the hipster culture and join up with other Italian expats – but will they be able to support themselves with their art long enough to achieve the American dream? Class is a funny, ambitious novel about art, love, and, well, class.
Backlist bump: Ciao, America!: An Italian Discovers the U.S. by Beppe Severgnini (Author), Giles Watson (Translator)
That’s it for me today – time to get back to reading! If you want to learn more about books new and old (and see lots of pictures of my cats, Millay and Steinbeck), or tell me about books you’re reading, or books you think I should read (I HEART RECOMMENDATIONS!), you can find me on Twitter at MissLiberty, on Instagram at FranzenComesAlive, or Litsy under ‘Liberty’!
Stay rad,
Liberty