I can’t be the only one who has had their headphones disconnect in the middle of a sex scene, right? Or the only one who was listening to a particularly spicy scene at the office and had to pause the audiobook and look a coworker in the eye while pretending to not be flustered? Or the only one who was driving with their windows down and stopped next to someone at a red light who heard when they were listening to?...

What is it about trees? They’re beautiful, they’re good for the world, and — if the books are to be believed — they’re damn creepy. Maybe it’s their size. Or maybe the fact that they outlive us all. Maybe it’s the way that they loom, or the way that they will slowly but inevitably reclaim anything left unattended at the forest’s edge. When they grow old and tall they become like pillars, reaching up to the sun, everything on the ground beneath them lost to the dense moss....

The Underground Railroad Reading Guide But first, what’s this book about and why should we read it? The Underground Railroad is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel and New York Times best seller. It also won the National Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It is also an Oprah Book Club pick. Note: this post may contain spoilers. The Underground Railroad Summary This novel by Colson Whitehead follows the path of Cora, a third-generation slave, as she uses a literal (in this world) underground railroad to escape slavery in Georgia....

Less than a week before Christmas, Herbert Henry’s father has lost his job, and worse, his Christmas cheer. Herbert needs the kind of help only Santa can provide! For a lot of people, that was probably the first time they ever heard that the Library of Congress housed anything besides enough books to stack bookcases side-by-side from DC well across the country. Between the three buildings on Capitol Hill and two offsite storage locations, there are millions of items in their permanent collection....

Literati Kids is a try-before-you-buy book club for children. They make finding and buying the right books simple for parents—and joyful for kids—through expert curation, app-enabled feedback, and a generous dash of artistry. Literati Kids blends education, creativity, and technology to bring every young bookworm closer to a lifelong love of learning. There really wasn’t much of a budget to spend on books, but I was lucky enough to have stories to read because of the various libraries I had access to my entire life — and a few books gifted on special occasions, like Christmas and my birthday....

The UK’s National Autistic Society states that 1 in every 100 school children in the UK is autistic and over 40% of them say they’ve been bullied at school. Schools play a crucial role in fighting the stigma around autism and making autistic children’s experiences less stressful. The library plays a vital role in this by providing a safe, quiet space for everyone and ensuring the correct literature gets into the hands of students and staff members to combat preconceived notions around autism....

Wondering if the boxes are worth it? Well, since DC and Marvel both happened to tease some of my very favorite characters in their most recent sets, I got a friend to agree to split the cost and divvy up the spoils with me, and placed my orders. [Spoilers below for the May DC TV and June Marvel Women of Power boxes] I’ll say this overall: the whole process is pretty seamless....

“Because I’m a planner, I took about a week soliciting ideas for organization. I asked friends how they organized their books and even reached out to some experts. Jenna Noll of @jennareadsbooks has me beat at an estimated 450 books in her apartment, which she organizes by category (genre-ish) and then alphabetically by author. She does not mix unread and read, and of her read books, she only keeps those that she absolutely loved....

Have a great day and happy reading. title: “We Re Closed For Labor Day” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-23” author: “Irma Richardson”

A meal I don’t often spend a lot of time on is breakfast: either I’m already at work when the kids get up or I’m trying to convince them that yes, we need to leave for the bus now, meaning quick and easy is the order most days. This morning, we were out of their standard fare and so the process dragged out. I did, however, manage to get them fed, dressed, brushed, and to the bus on time....

The NYT piece mainly looked at authors who were famous and had a big social media platform because of that fame, rather than authors who happened to have a big following but weren’t famous for other things, like acting or being a pop star. So we have a lot of confounding factors here. True, you might expect people who are fans of a celebrity to want their books; there’s a reason why many celebrity memoirs come out in the months leading up to the holidays....

The dust jacket is the first thing we interact with when picking up a new book. Obviously, there are exceptions, but in such cases as paperbacks, if the book doesn’t have a jacket, everything that might appear on the jacket will be printed on the cover, inseparable from the book itself. Though we don’t like to admit it due to an old saying, book covers, the art, and words are there for us to judge the book....

I think one of the reasons so many readers, including myself, are drawn to building TBRs, adding books to our “want-to-read” category on Goodreads, and reading the newest lists of upcoming releases, is that they all allow us to indulge in not just books themselves, but in the fantasy of being a reader. While I’m not reading much now, by making these lists I can tell myself that just as soon as I have more free time, I’ll be the kind of person who finishes a book in one sitting....

While Anna, a former psychiatrist suffering from agoraphobia, peered into her neighbor’s windows, I pried into the life she (mis)represented. She watched what her neighbors tried to keep submerged, and I wondered from what she was keeping herself distracted. After a new family moves in across the way, Anna witnesses a murder that left me wondering not only about the trauma that traps her in her home, but what happens to women “who view too much” (4)....

This isn’t a post about the merits of The Good Place, though. It’s about the cold hard numbers: how good of a bookish person are you? Would you go to The Good Place or The Bad Place based purely on your readerly decisions? In The Good Place, everyone’s actions on earth are assigned a point value. Remembered your sister’s birthday: +15.02. Used the term “bro-code”: -8.20. Poisoned a river: -4015....

The rules of writing in books are, in fact, very simple. You can write in books you own, and you can write in books that you’re going to give to somebody. A handwritten dedication can be one of the most perfect things on earth and I love seeing them in the old books that I collect. It’s amazing how much emotion – both negative and positive – that people can get into a few words....

Web novels are an accessible, exciting, free, and fun way to enjoy stories. Wondering where to read web novels is one thing, and these websites definitely point you where they can be found. But what about choosing individual works? Which web novels should you read now? If you don’t have time to browse all the options, here are the 17 Best Web Novels for Your Serial Fiction Fix. Web novels are mostly works published online, usually on a website....

And check out more of our comics discussions and bookish quizzes while you’re at it!

Although it’s good to know that Swift reads just like the rest of us, it’s disappointing to find out that she hasn’t been paying attention to authors of color. There is a dearth of diversity in this list culled from what she has shared about her reading habits throughout the years. In this day and age where racial injustice can feel like a crime, it’s a shame that at age 30 she isn’t reading more great works from Black people and non-Black people of color....

And so, I resisted. Around the same time, Mariko Tamaki and Brooke Allen began releasing the Lumberjanes novels. The following year, Andy Mientus and Rian Sygh did up a Backstagers novel. By then, I had succumbed to the hype around the Squirrel Girl novels. I found them to be delightful. I read the Backstagers novel, too. Then, this past October, DC put a twist on the comics-to-prose trend and announced that they would be releasing two graphic novels based off of two prose novels from their DC Icons series: Stuart Moore and Chris Wildgoose’s Batman: Nightwalker, based off of Marie Lu’s book of the same name, and Louise Simonson and Kit Seaton’s Wonder Woman: Warbringer, based off Leigh Bardugo’s novel....