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Book Radar

The Witcher Prequel Coming to Netflix and More Book Radar

Hey, book nerds! Happy Thursday! I hope you’re all having a lovely week, and if you’re having a not so great week–well, it’s almost the weekend, so hold on. I hope you’ve got a giant stack of books awaiting you!

I’ve got more book news and excitement for you, but remember to be kind to yourself if you’re feeling stressed–we’re in the middle of a global pandemic after all–and wash your hands and wear a mask!

Trivia time: What’s Starr’s dad’s name in The Hate U Give?

Deals and Squeals:

Expect more of The Witcher content in your life! Netflix is moving forward with a six-part limited prequel series.

Tor has announced the 2020 World Fantasy Award Finalists!

Speaking of finalists, the Book Prize Longlist has been announced, and we’re thrilled to see Real Life by Brandon Taylor, Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, and How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang on the list!

The limited series TV adaptations of Little Fires Everywhere and Watchmen have been nominated for an Emmy!

In the yikes category, Newsweek reported that Patrick Rothfuss’s editor reacted to an article published on Book Riot, Authors Don’t Owe You Books, by claiming she hasn’t seen book three of Rothfuss’s series, and that she doubts that Rothfuss has even been working on it in recent years. She expressed lots of frustration felt by fans, but it definitely seems like something that should have been addressed with the author and his agent, not on Facebook!

Ethan Herisse, who starred in Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us, will narrate the audiobook of Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Dr. Yusef Salaam. Herissa portrayed Salaam in DuVernay’s film.

Song of the Sun God by Shankari Chandran is being adapted into a six-part TV series. The novel covers three generations in a Sri Lankan family following the country’s independence in 1948 to the present.

Riot Recommendations

At Book Riot, I’m a cohost with Liberty on All the Books!, plus I write a handful of newsletters including the weekly Read This Book newsletter, cohost the Insiders Read Harder podcast, and write content for the site. I’m always drowning in books, so here’s what’s on my radar this week!

Want to Read: A Map to the Sun by Sloane Leong

I’m always, always on the lookout for gorgeous new graphic novels, and just look at this cover! This book is about two girls who forge a friendship on the basketball court, only for one girl to move away and fall out of touch. When she shows up again years later, the former friends find themselves both on a newly formed women’s basketball team at their school, trying to rebuild their relationship and trust each other again. I absolutely cannot wait for my copy to arrive. It’ll be out next week, August 4th!

My book acquisitions this week:

Being Toffee by Sarah Crossan

Once You Go This Far by Kristen Lepionka

Where Dreams Descend by Janella Angeles

Trivia answer: Maverick! And fun fact–Angie Thomas’s new novel Concrete Rose stars Maverick as a teen!

Read on Book Riot: Screen Time is Money: How Authors Make Money on Ebooks

I hope you have a fantastic weekend full of socially-distanced summer fun! I’ll leave you with a picture I snapped of my hammock reading session with Something to Talk About by Meryl Wilsner, which was probably the most fun I’d had…in a while. There’s something great about enjoying a book while hanging suspended in the air, and this one was extra great!

Happy reading,

Tirzah

Categories
Giveaways

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We’re giving away an audiobook prize pack to one lucky Riot reader!

Enter here for a chance to win, or click the cover image below!

Here’s what it’s all about:

Join Page Chaser for the I Heart Audio sweepstakes! Page Chaser is giving away an audiobook 12 audiobooks and a pair of wireless earbuds! Enter for a chance to win, and be sure to join Page Chaser on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

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The Kids Are All Right

Kidlit Deals for July 29, 2020

Hey kidlit pals! I hope you’re keeping cool and staying busy this week. I can hardly believe that July is winding down already. No matter what your school situation is looking like for August, here’s to staying healthy, safe, and well-stocked in reading material. We’ve got more great book deals for you this week, so let’s dive in!

All book deals were accurate at the time of writing, so get them before they’re gone!

The Princess in Black series by Shannon Hale, Dean Hale, and LeUyen Pham are some of my favorite chapter books, and many of the books in the series are on sale! Check out the latest book, The Princess in Black and the Bathtime Battle, for only $1!

And speaking of Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham, their graphic novel Best Friends is only $3!

The lovely picture book Along the Tapajós by Fernando Vilela is $1.

For a fun book set on a farm, check out Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer by Kelly Jones for $5.

Glory Be by Augusta Scattergood is $4.

The Last Musketeer by middle grade powerhouse Stuart Gibbs is $5–and it’s the first in a series!

We’ve got another great deal from award-winning writer Pam Muñoz Ryan–Becoming Naomi León is $4.

Calling all Rick Riordan fans! Shadows of Sherwood by Kekla Magoon is a fun Robin Hood retelling, and it’s $3.

Looking for a mystery? Girl’s Best Friend is the first in a series by Leslie Margolis, and all the books under under $5!

The Magic Half by Annie Barrows (author of Ivy and Bean!) is a magical, time traveling middle grade book about a girl who wishes she was a twin.

Happy reading!

Tirzah

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Riot Rundown

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Categories
Today In Books

THE WITCHER Gets A Netflix Prequel: Today In Books

The Witcher Gets A Netflix Prequel

Netflix’s Henry Cavill starring series The Witcher, a hit based on Andrzej Sapkowski fantasy novels, will get a prequel limited series: The Witcher: Blood Origin. The conjunction of the spheres–how humans, elves, and monsters came together–will be explored with Sapkowski consulting and The Witcher’s writer, Declan de Barra, serving as showrunner. “A question has been burning in my mind ever since I first read The Witcher books: What was the Elven world really like before the cataclysmic arrival of the humans?”

More Fantasy!

Now certainly feels like a perfect time to escape the current world into other worlds: The World Fantasy Convention announced the 2020 World Fantasy Award Finalists! And, honestly, you should really just read your way through the first category: Queen of the Conquered by Kacen Callender; The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow; The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie; Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir; The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa.

Record Setting Donations

The Madison Reading Project–in Madison, Wisconsin–partnered with local social workers and schools to make sure kids had access to books during the pandemic. And they delivered a record-setting 35,000 free books. “Books give children new knowledge, entertainment, empowerment, and can help keep them out of trouble!”

More Award News

The longlist for the 2020 Booker Prize has been announced!

Categories
In The Club

In the Club 7/29

Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed. I am feeling better this week than I have in awhile and I know a huge part of that is how much time I’ve spent in nature. This feels like a great time to discuss some books on our place in the natural world, so let me take a break from belting out “Natural Woman” to suggest some.

To the club!!

Nibbles and Sips

These words from Anne-Marie Bonneau of Zero Waste Chef have stuck with me as a personal mantra: “We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.” They remind me that real, sustainable change is a group effort and give me the permission to not feel guilty for my ecological shortcomings.

So this week instead of a recipe, I’m suggesting a practice: challenge yourself as a book club to find one thing each of you can do to make your lifestyles more eco-friendly. Maybe you finally pick up a good reusable water bottle or a tumbler for your coffee or tea. Swap some of your Ziploc bags for reusable pouches, use micro-fiber towels and old t-shirts in place of paper towels, or keep some stainless steel straws in your bag, maybe a utensil set too. My favorite thing is to reuse glass jam jars, sauce containers, etc. The amount of joy I get from recycling the jars that once housed blackberry preserves or Trader Joe’s Chili Onion Crunch has made me acutely aware that I am 35, and reminds me that I’m very much the granddaughter of women who keep sewing supplies in Danish cookie tins and salsa in margarine containers.

We Think We Own Whatever Land We Land On

I feel bad quoting “Colors of the Wind” when Pocahontas is all kinds of problematic, but we really do act like the earth is just a dead thing we can claim. These books all dive into our relationship with this planet and its precious resources; in your book club discussions, examine how we can do better and what keeps us from doing so—it’s not as straightforward as we might like to think.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer – Scientist and professor Robin Wall Kimmerer is a member of the Citizen Potowatomi Nation, and this work of environmental science and indigenous wisdom is pretty much a classic in nature writing. She calls on us to play an active role in the protection and restoration of the natural world and in climate change initiatives, reminding us of the harmonious relationship indigenous communities shared with nature before some other humans (ehhem, rhymes with “schmolonizers”) came in and messed sh*t up for all eternity.

Eat Less Water by Florencia Ramirez – A thing I learned from Florencia Ramirez: pretty much everything most of us were taught as kids about water conservation is a lie. Reducing the length of your showers is cool, but shower time isn’t even a little bit close to being the top water consumption culprit.  Know what is? Almonds! Beef! Wine and beer! Ramirez argues—with plenty of jaw-dropping statistics to back up her assertions—that the solution to some of our most daunting environmental problems can be found in the way we eat and drink. Sounds dire, but the good news is that change is possible. This is the book that got me to understand the importance of sustainability practices in agriculture.

The Overstory by Richard Powers – Here’s a work of fiction for you in case you’re more in the mood for a novel. “The whole book is a simple question: What would it take to make you give the unquestioning sacredness that you give to humanity to other things?” It’s the story of nine seemingly unconnected individual’s stories that decries the devastating effects we’ve had on our precious natural resources, begging us with a solid tug at the heartstrings to care, to act, to be passionate about trees and the natural world at large.

Suggestion Section

I have a few quibbles with this Men’s Health piece about a real-life Bromance Book Club, but I like the conversation this encouraged overall. The vulnerability its participants were willing to share and the continuance of the book club give me hope! I hope more men feel compelled to read romance who might not have before, and who will be willing to discuss and learn from them even when that examination is uncomfortable.

Catch up on Part II of Tor.com’s Terry Pratchett Book Club.

Thanks for hanging with me today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with your burning book club questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the Audiobooks newsletter and catch me once a month on the All the Books podcast.

Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa

Categories
Unusual Suspects

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS But With Murder

Hi mystery fans! I have three could-not-be-more-different-from-each-other great reads for you this week: an awesome, super reluctant spy thriller; Friday Night Lights but with murder and horror; a smart cat-and-mouse serial killer novel.

East of Hounslow (Jay Qasim #1) by Khurrum Rahman: You may remember me already shouting about this great thriller back when I read it–before it was out in the U.S. Well now it’s officially out here in paperback, audiobook (great narrator!), and ebook! It’s smart and fun and follows the most reluctant spy ever! Seriously, he’s practically blackmailed by MI5 into working for them.

Javid “Jay” Qasim is a young man who really has nothing figured out but is at that age where he thinks he does. He lives with his mum in West London, sells pot, and just bought himself his favorite thing ever: a BMW. He thinks everything is great, until MI5 realizes they need him, a young Pakistani Muslim, to infiltrate an extremist group to report information about what the group is planning. You know how people in action/thrillers always seem thrilled to become spies? Jay is the complete opposite of that and wants nothing to do with this, or politics, or whatever is going on in the world. He’s happy doing his own thing, thank you very much. Except he’s gotten himself into trouble with his dealer and lost his BMW, and MI5 uses this to their advantage. And so in Jay goes, pretending to be a radical jihadists…

This is equally a coming-of-age story about a young man forced to make difficult decisions, and a page-turning thriller that you don’t want to miss! (TW mass shootings, terrorist attacks/ child deaths/ past attempted suicides mentioned)

The Bright Lands by John Fram: Imagine if Friday Night Lights was gay in a homophobic town, had murder, horror, and a dash of Stranger Things. Yes, awesome. This also has, hands down, one of the most bananapants endings I’ve ever read. So if you’re looking for a small-town murder mystery that married a horror novel here you go!

Joel Whitley gets a weird message from his younger brother Dylan and returns home to the small town he couldn’t have gotten away fast enough from. It’s a football town, and Dylan is the star quarterback. And he’s missing. Joel is very concerned, but no one else seems to be–at least not at first. Now Joel will not only have to figure out what happened to his brother and what is happening with the town, but also relive his trauma from growing up gay in a homophobic town and what led him to flee and not return until now.

We follow a slew of characters and things get big, and go really out there, but there’s a lot of important questions here with a spotlight on a few things, which I’d love to dive into but you know mysteries and their secrets and spoilers…

(TW homophobia, slurs/ talk of suicide, detail/ brief mentions of domestic abuse case, detail/ fat shaming/ forced nude photos/ statutory)

The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard: There is an essay in Lindy West’s The Witches Are Coming (highly recommend) titled Ted Bundy Was Not Charming–Are You High? and this novel feels like the fictional equivalent to that. Which is to say mediocre white men who murder enough people to qualify as serial killers get grossly obsessed about and elevated as being more than mediocre awful white men by our problematic society’s gross obsession with real life serial killers (and mediocre white men). Howard takes aim at this with this cat-and-mouse thriller that starts with a hell of a hook.

Eve Black was a little girl when she survived the night her family was murdered by a serial killer. No one knows this or who she is. Until now. She’s written a book, which we read, along with the serial killer who is just now discovering who Eve is and that she’s decided to come find him…

Alternating between reading Eve’s chapters in her book and the now “retired” serial killer’s reading of the book–including him going to her book signing!–we get front row seats to a cat-and-mouse game where Eve is determined to figure out his identity, and he’ll stop at nothing to keep that from happening… If you like Irish and dual narrators go with the audiobook! (TW rape/ domestic abuse/ mentions suicide, detail)

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. See 2020 upcoming releases and 2021. An Unusual Suspects Pinterest board. Get Tailored Book Recommendations!

Until next time, keep investigating! In the meantime, come talk books with me on Twitter, Instagram, and Litsy–you can find me under Jamie Canavés.

If a mystery fan forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like your very own you can sign up here.

Categories
True Story

New Releases: Origami, Plant-Based Recipes, and the CIA

We’re wrapping up July with some new releases. Remember to support authors with new books out! They can’t do live touring and their publicity is tamped wayy down, so if you can even request their book at the library, you’re doing a good thing. All right, here we go:

Fantastic Origami Flying Creatures: 24 Amazing Paper Models by Hisao Fukui. I don’t know about you, but I bought a bunch of crafts when quarantine started, and then did maybe half of them. That being said, I’ve been getting really into DuoLingo again, and my fiancee and I painted some papier-mache dinosaurs the other night, so maybe skills/crafts are in a second wave? She asked, based solely on her own experience. But for reals, these look VERY fun and then you could have a little origami menagerie on your windowsill.

Is Rape a Crime?: A Memoir, an Investigation, and a Manifesto by Michelle Bowdler. I know, what a provocative title. It points to the idea of “whether rape is a crime given that it is the least reported major felony, least successfully prosecuted, and fewer than 3% of rapists ever spend a day in jail.” Bowdler writes about her own rape and “after a career of working with victims like herself, Michelle decides to find out what happened to her case and why she never heard from the police again after one brief interview.”

Living Lively: 80 Plant‑Based Recipes to Activate Your Power and Feed Your Potential by Haile Thomas. I don’t usually have cookbooks on here, but 1) plant-based and 2) this looks v good. Also the author is nineteen years old. There’s also, in addition to eighty recipes, a journaling section?? And focuses on different kinds of wellness. She starts you off with “My intentions as I read this book,” and honestly I never buy cookbooks, but this looks genuinely helpful and good.

True or False: A CIA Analyst’s Guide to Spotting Fake News by Cindy L. Otis. There is so much garbage “news” out there, y’all. My rule of thumb is usually, if this sounds too much like what I want to hear, I check it out further. But I don’t work for the CIA! So here’s an entire book about tips on how to evaluate news stories and become a better-informed citizen. Otis also walks you through the history of fake news, which sounds A+, and there’re a bunch of illustrations and sidebar graphics.

That’s it for new releases this week! Stay tuned for Themed Friday, and I hope you are having as RESTFUL a week as possible. As always, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime and co-hosting the For Real podcast with Kim here at Book Riot. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

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What's Up in YA

All Your YA Book News and New Releases This Week

Hey YA Readers!

I hope you’re staying healthy and well. If you’re in the northern hemisphere, I hope you’re staying cool and if you’re in the southern hemisphere, keep warm.

Let’s take a peek at this week’s new YA books, YA book news, and more.

YA Book News

 

New YA Books This Week

I’ve noted with a * the books I’ve read and recommend highly!

a girl in orange faces away from the viewer, standing on top of a massive animal's head.29 Dates by Melissa de la Cruz (paperback)

The Beast Player by Nahoko Uehashi, translated by Cathy Hirano (paperback, series) 

The Beast Warrior by Nahoko Uehashi, translated by Cathy Hirano (series) 

The Best Lies by Sarah Lyu (paperback)

*The Boy and Girl Who Broke The World by Amy Reed (paperback)

The Faithless Hawk by Margaret Owen (series)

The Friend Scheme by Cale Dietrich

The Girl In The White Van by April Henry

I Kissed Alice by Anna Birch

King of Fools by Amanda Foody (paperback, series)

*The Mall by Megan McCafferty

The Stepping Off Place by Cameron Kelly Rosenblum

*This Is My America by Kim Johnson

Today, Tonight, Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Solomon

A Wicked Magic by Sasha Laurens

The Year They Fell by David Kreizman

 

YA Book Talk on Book Riot

We really leaned into nostalgia on site over the last week!

 

Speaking of nostalgia, I don’t know who needs to know this, but you can get a Stoneybrook Middle School t-shirt in a billion different colors and styles. I might be buying this one. Price ranges, but this particular dolman style is $24.

Thanks for hanging out, and we’ll see you again on Monday!

— Kelly Jensen, @heykellyjensen on Instagram and editor of Body Talk, (Don’t) Call Me Crazy, and Here We Are.

(Psst: if you preorder my book Body Talk, out August 18, you can snag some sweet thank yous)

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Riot Rundown

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