You don’t have to be a kid to love kids’ books, so we’ve added new tees featuring Clifford, Brown Bear, and more of your childhood faves in sizes for the whole family.
Shop now, and a get a water bottle free when you buy any tee! (Just add it to your cart to see the discount applied.)
Have you checked the speaker list lately? We’ve got:
4 nonfiction authors
3 science fiction & fantasy authors
3 YA authors
2 comics artists
2 debut novelists
1 mystery author
1 librarian
And we’re just getting started. Check out the speakers for Book Riot Live 2016 and then get your VIP ticket for $40 off.
This week’s Audiobooks! newsletter is sponsored by TryAudiobooks.com.
Have you ever taken a road trip with your family that seemed to go on forever? We all have! Audiobooks can solve that problem by providing entertainment for the whole family. Visit TryAudiobooks.com/family-travel for a free full download and start listening with the whole family on your next car ride.
Hey there readers,
It’s June, school’s out, and we’ve entered PRIME audiobook season: ‘tis the season of summer road trips! We did a lot of these when I was growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s. My family of 7 would squeeze into a Dodge Caravan with a canoe on top and a pop up camper in the back and drive across the country to live in the woods and watch bears eat out of dumpsters. (I have kind of a weird family.) It was also the only time we got to eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
We’d drive straight through for 24 hours or more, and my mom always took the night shift, listening to CDs of old timey radio mysteries from Barnes and Noble. I had yet to discover audiobooks, but I listened to the audio of Disney movies that I had checked out from the public library and dubbed onto cassette tapes while I tried to sleep on top of duffel bags in the trunk. (To this day I can recall entire chunks of dialogue from Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast.)
Flash forward to 2016, and we have so many more listening options. Whatever your vacations family look like, here’s hoping you find some great listens this summer. <3
In the Country We Love: My Family Divided
When she was just 14, Diane Guerrero’s parents (Orange Is the New Black, Jane the Virgin) were arrested and exported to Colombia and she was left on her own in the U.S. Yikes! The biggest surprise for me in Guerrero’s new memoir was how much of her story I could relate to — the ordeals of her family breaking up when she was 14 years old, hopping around between schools, being drawn to the arts, and wrestling with ADHD and depression all resonated deeply with me. It was a powerful reminder that commonalities exist in unexpected places, even between a brown working-class girl who grew up Catholic in Boston and a white middle-class girl who grew up Mormon in Iowa.
Guerrero tells her story with directness, honesty, and personality, and In the Country We Love reminded me of books like Leah Remini’s Scientology memoir, Troublemaker, that aren’t wrapped up in layers of mysterious metaphors, but are so remarkable and told with such candor that they don’t really need to exist any other way. This was exceptionally moving on audio — Guerrero has an authentic and playful voice that bubbles through in her performance, which made for a very lovely listen.
Roald Dahl Audiobooks for Everyone in the Family
One of my pals at Book Riot has been totally stumped about what to listen to on a family road trip with her two preschoolers and husband. They’ve already listened to (and loved, obviously) Kate DiCamillo’s The Tale of Despereaux, which is not an easy act to follow. We all bounced around some ideas — Ramona? Stuart Little? — and then the idea of Roald Dahl came up! With The BFG coming out in movie theaters on July 1, now is the perfect time to brush up on the books, and we’re happy to report that we think they hold up pretty well.
I’m personally a huge fan of the Roald Dahl audiobook collection that came out a few summers ago with fancy actors like Kate Winslet, Stephen Fry, and Chris O’Dowd performing Matilda, The BFG, and all the rest. You can preview some of my favorite clips here!
Stephen King on His Love for Audiobooks
June is Audiobook Month, and we’ve been celebrating by watching Stephen King gush adorably about why he hearts audiobooks: “The more you listen to audiobooks,” he says, “You start again to experience the words as sounds, which is something that you don’t always do when you’re reading to yourself.”
Watch to find out Stephen King’s favorite audiobook of all time, how many audiobooks he listens to per year, why he thinks audiobooks are more suspenseful than print, and how a great narrator is like listening to your favorite music in surround sound. Happy Audiobook Month!
Happy Tuesday! We are well on our way to summer now, and there are tons of amazing new books to bring with us! I’ve highlighted a few of the week’s best below, and on this week’s episode of the All the Books! Rebecca and I talked about some great new releases, such as Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty and Grace.
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by The Girls by Emma Cline.
The Girls is the story of Evie, a woman who is haunted by the summer of 1969, when she was a lonely fourteen-year-old growing up in Northern California. One day she sees a girl at a park, a girl with a gang of other girls who seem free and alive. She is mesmerized by them, Suzanne in particular. She is quickly drawn into their soon-to-be infamous cult and meets the man who is its charismatic leader. As her obsession with Suzanne intensifies, Evie does not realize she is coming closer to unthinkable violence, and to that moment in a girl’s life when everything can go wrong.
Barkskins by Annie Proulx
Barkskins is a glorious, epic, 700+ page story spanning three hundred years, that follows two immigrants in “New France” and their descendants as they travel the world and make use (and steal and ruin) each country’s resources. This is a brutal, often darkly comic, environmental saga by a master writer, and I loved it. (I will admit that being an established Proulx fan may have increased my enjoyment of this novel. Because 700+ PAGES WHUT. But it is her first in over a decade, and so I was wildly excited to read it!)
Backlist bump: The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
The first in an exciting new trilogy! Captain Kel Cheris, a disgraced captain, has a chance to redeem herself by recapturing a star fortress taken by heretics. Her best hope of winning is the undead tactician Shuos Jedao, who has never lost a battle. But sometimes he loses his mind, like in his last life, when he killed his own army. Cheris must figure out how much she can trust Jedao before the whole siege – and her life – is lost. YAY SPACE OPERA!
Backlist bump: Central Station by Lavie Tidhar
Death and Mr. Pickwick by Stephen Jarvis
I think any book that you read on the beach qualifies as a beach read, so why not an 800-page Dickensian novel about Dickens? (Wait is that meta?) Based on the story of The Pickwick Papers and the beginning of the career of Charles Dickens, this is a delightful novel, full of history and fun – and it’s now in paperback! It will charm your pants off.
Backlist bump: Drood by Dan Simmons
YAY, BOOKS! That’s it for me. If you want to learn more about books (and see lots of pictures of my cats), or tell me about books you’re reading, you can find me on Twitter at MissLiberty, on Instagram at FranzenComesAlive, or Litsy under ‘Liberty’! (OMG I am OBSESSED with Litsy.)
Stay rad!
Liberty
Here are the three big stories in books and reading that broke last week:
Book Marks: A Rotten Tomatoes for Books
LitHub launched Book Marks, which takes the idea of Rotten Tomatoes and applies it to books. Book Marks aggregates and assigns a grade to reviews of books and then averages those grades into a final grade. As you can see in our own deep dive, there are many questions about this strategy, from implementation to reader demand. Is this a service that a meaningful number of readers want? We’ll find out.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Opens
On Wednesday night, the first preview of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was performed in London. Anticipation for the play is intense and perhaps even more so for the script being published on July 31. Reactions seem to be excited with an underlying strain of wariness, though the sample size is too small to have a sense of what the emerging consensus might be. For those of us who have no shot at tickets for the London production (and that is literally almost everyone), take heart. Rowling said that touring productions will be coming sooner than you might expect.
A New Face of Censorship
As distressing as book banning in schools and public libraries is, it tends at least to be public, discussed, and oftentimes overturned. Last week, a new form of book censorship, or at least new to me, bubbled up into the literary world. Kate Messner had been invited to talk about her book, The Seventh Wish, to fourth and fifth graders at a Vermont school. The day before she was scheduled to appear, she was disinvited, because the school’s principal thought her visit would bring up questions and conversations that the school wasn’t prepared to discuss. The Seventh Wish, as Messner says, “uses magic to explore something many families are afraid to talk about with kids – addiction.”
And not only was Messner disinvited, but the school said that it would return the books it had already ordered. But, thanks to the heroic efforts of local librarians and advocates, The Seventh Wish will be available for students to read, consider, and inconvenience their teachers and administrators with. This specific case is distressing in its own right, but the larger lesson here is that books and ideas are censored, erased, and generally trod upon in a variety of ways that don’t quite rise to the level of “banning,” but are nevertheless hugely damaging. There are tens of thousands of kids out there whose lives are affected by addiction. I don’t think it is too much to ask our schools and libraries to let them see their stories and ask their questions.
My thanks this week to Book of the Month for sponsoring This Week in Books. Use offer code “JUNERIOT” to get 30% off a three-month subscription.
It’s almost here! The first Book Mail box will be available next Monday morning around 12pm Eastern. Set your reminders!
You’re on the waiting list, so we’ll email you as soon as they’re available. Then don’t delay! Quantities are limited, and once they’re gone, they’re gone. See you next Monday.
You: In need of a literary gift for a rad bookish dad.
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Let us introduce you to your new favorite author! With 12 confirmed speakers and counting, Book Riot Live 2016 will have something for everyone. Whether you love YA or sci-fi, memoirs or literary fiction, history or comics (or all of the above!), we’ve got a speaker for you. Find out more in our Who’s Who at Book Riot Live 2016 series, then get your weekend pass for $40 off until June 30!
Happy Tuesday! As usual, the first Tuesday of the month has a ridiculously amazing list of new books out today, so I’ve made a special newsletter. And on this week’s episode of the All the Books! Rebecca and I talked about some great new releases, such as Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge, Homegoing, and Marrow Island.
As always, you can find a big list in the All the Books! show notes. And below I have made you a big list of notable releases – there are sooooo many! SO MUCH TO CHECK OUT.
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by The Fireman by Joe Hill.
Dragonscale, a terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one. Highly contagious, the deadly spore marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote.
Harper Grayson, a compassionate nurse, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin, but Harper wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Harper’s husband abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror.
Super Extra Grande by Yoss (Author), David Frye (Translator)
Magruder’s Curiosity Cabinet by H.P. Wood
I Like You Just Fine When You’re Not Around by Ann Garvin
What We Become by Arturo Perez-Reverte
But What If We’re Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past by Chuck Klosterman
Monsters: A Love Story by Liz Kay
Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner?: A Story of Women and Economics by Katrine Marcal
A Green and Ancient Light by Frederic S. Durbin
Ink and Bone by Lisa Unger
The Many Selves of Katherine North by Emma Geen
Faerie by Eisha Marjara
The Edge of the Fall by Kate Williams
The Suicide Motor Club by Christopher Buehlman
Autumn Princess, Dragon Child: Book 2 in the Tale of Shikanoko by Lian Hearn
You Know Me Well by David Levithan and Nina LaCour
My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand and Brodi Ashton
One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer by Arthur Lubow
Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway’s Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises by Lesley Blume
Melville in Love: The Secret Life of Herman Melville and the Muse of Moby-Dick by Michael Shelden
Everything Explained That Is Explainable : On the Creation of the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Celebrated Eleventh Edition, 1910-1911 by Denis Boyles
The Good Lieutenant by Whitney Terrell
American Girls by Alison Umminger
Never a Dull Moment: 1971–The Year That Rock Exploded by David Hepworth
The Lynching: The Epic Courtroom Battle That Brought Down the Klan by Laurence Leamer
End of Watch by Stephen King
Hogs Wild: Selected Reporting Pieces by Ian Frazier
Clinch by Martin Holmén and Henning Koch
They May Not Mean To, But They Do by Cathleen Schine
Among Strange Victims by Daniel Saldaña París (Author), Christina MacSweeney (Translator)
The Maximum Security Book Club: Reading Literature in a Men’s Prison by Mikita Brottman
I Almost Forgot About You by Terry McMillan
Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen by Jazz Jennings
Baba Dunja’s Last Love by Alina Bronsky (Author), Tim Mohr (Translator)
Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rowley
This Is Not My Beautiful Life by Victoria Fedden
Security by Gina Wohlsdorf
The Hatred of Poetry by Ben Lerner
The Girls in the Garden by Lisa Jewell
NOW IN PAPERBACK:
The Seven Good Years: A Memoir by Etgar Keret
Just One Damned Thing After Another: The Chronicles of St. Mary’s by Jodi Taylor
The Clasp by Sloane Crosley
Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings by Shirley Jackson
Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh
The Daughters by Adrienne Celt
Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal
YAY, BOOKS! That’s it for me. If you want to learn more about books (and see lots of pictures of my cats), or tell me about books you’re reading, you can find me on Twitter at MissLiberty, on Instagram at FranzenComesAlive, or Litsy under ‘Liberty’! (OMG I am OBSESSED with Litsy.)
Stay rad!
Liberty