Lynn: On the first day of high school in a new town, with a chance to make a new life, Quinn looks at the two wigs on her bureau. Should she be Guinevere or Sasha? It’s been 408 days since she lost all her hair to an autoimmune disorder, during which time her eighth-grade friends drifted […]
Food has the ability to engage at least four of our basic senses, five if you count the sound of popcorn popping or the sizzle of a hot steak. Is it really surprising that food is often an important ingredient in romance fiction? Couple that sensory appeal with just how steamy things can get in […]
The following books, published this week, received starred reviews in Booklist. Want to read our starred reviews before the books go on sale? Subscribe to Booklist! Adult Fiction The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton Black Diamond Fall, by Joseph Olshan Button Man, by Andrew Gross Charlesgate Confidential, by Scott Von Doviak The Infinite Blacktop, by Sara Gran My Struggle: Book […]
I’m a big fan of text-only and typographically interesting covers, so I did a big swoon when I saw the cover of Jill Soloway’s upcoming memoir She Wants It: Desire, Power, and Toppling the Patriarchy, and I was oh-so-pleased when a friend told me about Hey Ladies, a book told entirely through emails, and I discovered its cover also […]
It’s Banned Books Week! In its honor, let’s revisit the list of the 10 most challenged books of 2017, compiled by the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom and released in April. (Watch the video above for more information.) We’ve annotated the titles therein with excerpts from and links to their Booklist reviews, as well as […]
Every weekday we feature a different review on Booklist Online. These reviews are notable for different reasons—they may be starred, or high-demand, or especially relevant to the current issue’s spotlight. We’ve collected the reviews from September 17–21 below. Monday, September 17 Love à la Mode, by Stephanie Kate Strohm Henry’s dying to prove to his strict Korean mother that […]
The Man Booker Prize committee announced the shortlist for its 2018 award, with the winner to be announced on October 16. Find the shortlist titles below, linked to their Booklist reviews when available. (Everything Under and The Long Take will be published in January, while Milkman doesn’t yet have a U.S. publication date.) Everything […]
Is your book group in a rut? Are folks sick of reading World War II-era historical fiction? Is your attendance dwindling? Maybe it’s time to go rogue. We hosted a live event (sponsored by NoveList) where we gathered some book-group experts to talk about what makes a good selection, how to pick something unexpected for […]
I am an eternal optimist. This tendency to think things will work out for the best is sometimes at odds with my inner curmudgeon, but what can you do? I like to think this conflict keeps my also-inner Pollyanna in check, but sometimes, that Pollyanna is strong. Take, for example, the time my book group […]
Donna Seaman, Booklist Adult Books Editor and co-chair of the SJP Picks selection committee, interviewed Nigerian writer Ayobami Adebayo about her debut novel, Stay with Me, a complex and suspenseful portrait of a besieged marriage—and Sarah Jessica Parker’s third selection for SJP Picks. For more information, visit Book Club Central. DONNA SEAMAN: Stay with Me is […]
Lynn: On the first day of high school in a new town, with a chance to make a new life, Quinn looks at the two wigs on her bureau. Should she be Guinevere or Sasha? It’s been 408 days since she lost all her hair to an autoimmune disorder, during which time her eighth-grade friends drifted […]
Lynn: I have great respect for teen readers. They eat up books dealing with serious social issues, books that open doors to diverse cultures, and books carefully examining different points of view. But hey—sometimes even teen readers just want to have fun! So, librarians and teachers, when teens come looking for fun, here’s something to […]
Cindy: Lynn and I teased Bookends readers about this fascinating book in an earlier post after we both read it on the plane home from the ALA Annual Conference. This week, we’re participating in the blog tour for Spooked! How a Radio Broadcast and The War of the Worlds Sparked the 1938 Invasion of America (2018). For […]
Time travel, time paradoxes, time shells, time hollows—are they fantasy? Reality? The following titles are billed as fiction, but they’re also a look into endless possibilities. Last week, we brought you audiobooks about time travel for adults, but it’s time (sorry) younger readers got their due. Go ahead—or back. 47, by Walter Mosley, read […]
Time manipulation—obsession with, desire for, and attempts at—is a timeless conundrum and, thus far, an elusive temptation. Our ever-waxing fascination is evident in classic stories and sci-fi favorites. Contemporary pop culture continues to feed the frenzy, from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, with its foray backward, to the new Benedict Cumberbatch vehicle How to Stop […]
This year’s Audie Award winners were just announced at the 2018 Audies Gala, hosted by Award-winning narrator Simon Vance, at the New York Historical Society in New York City. Lincoln in the Bardo—a production that involved a record 166 narrators—took home the award for Audiobook of the Year. You can read our interview with author George Saunders […]
Without getting too meta, sometimes the juiciest bits of the news are the stories behind the story. With this mix of novels, non-fiction, and wherever Hunter S. Thompson falls between the two, use the buzz from Oscar-nominated film The Post to draw attention to your other journalist-forward titles. All the President’s Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob […]
“More than half of U.S. women have experienced unwanted and inappropriate sexual advances from men, three in 10 have put up with unwanted advances from male co-workers, and a quarter have endured them from men who had influence over their work situation,” says a new ABC News-Washington Post poll. The stories of harassment and intimidation that […]
John Green’s latest unputdownable YA novel, Turtles All the Way Down, tackles the tough topic of anxiety disorders, specifically Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. As Michael Cart writes in his starred review, ” Green, a master of deeply felt material, handles all of this with aplomb. With its attention to ideas and trademark introspection, it’s a challenging but […]
Early in her writing career, which began with the publication of The Diabolical Baron in 1987, Mary Jo Putney began testing the traditional boundaries of historical romance. She tackled topics like alcoholism and domestic abuse, set her stories in a wide range of locales from China to Indonesia, and even added a dollop of magic […]
The National Book Foundation has announced the 2018 longlist for the National Book Award in nonfiction, thus concluding a week of longlist announcements. The finalists are coming in October. To follow are the longlist selections, with titles linked to their Booklist reviews. Stay tuned for a guest column in the November 1 issue of Booklist from nominee Tommy Orange! […]
The National Book Foundation has announced the 2018 longlist for the National Book Award in nonfiction. To follow are their selections, with titles linked to their Booklist reviews when available. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s fiction announcement! American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic, by Victoria Johnson Brothers […]
As we introduce the latest installment of our long-running annual spotlight on romance, we begin the third year of our new tradition: #SeptemberRomance. For the next two weeks, The Booklist Reader will delight all your senses with daily romance injections. Subscribe to our daily updates to get these love notes delivered straight to your inbox. The […]
This morning, the National Book Foundation announced the longlist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the titles from which are linked to their Booklist reviews below. This marks the first longlist announcement of the week: tomorrow comes nonfiction and poetry, and on Friday, fiction. A list of finalists will arrive on […]
Today, the National Book Critics Circle blog ran an interview with our beloved Adult Books editor, Donna Seaman, as part of their series on the craft of criticism. In it, they called her “the queen of the 250 word or less review” and dove into her process. Here are some highlights. On brevity: I think […]
Encouraging Middle-Schoolers to Choose Books
There’s been a lot of discussion among the librarians I know about what to do with middle-schoolers: they just don’t seem to read as much as they used to. I know that here in Chicago, we have a unique perspective on this situation, since our schools run K–8. In my former school system in Maryland […]
Getting Started with the Global Read Aloud
The 2017 Global Read Aloud kicked off yesterday, and I’m here to help. Author and educator Pernille Ripp founded the program as a way to connect students and teachers from different locales around the topics of books. (Think One Book One School or One Book One City, but on a global scale.) Each year, Ripp […]
TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE: Practice Recognizing Fake News
Cindy: There have been a number of YA fiction books with the title “Two Truths and a Lie,” but we’ve found a creative, informational book for middle-grade students that reinforces evaluating information for truth. Fake news, anyone? Two Truths and a Lie: It’s Alive (2017) by Ammi-Joan Paquette and Laurie Ann Thompson is the first […]
Encouraging Middle-Schoolers to Choose Books
There’s been a lot of discussion among the librarians I know about what to do with middle-schoolers: they just don’t seem to read as much as they used to. I know that here in Chicago, we have a unique perspective on this situation, since our schools run K–8. In my former school system in Maryland […]
Getting Started with the Global Read Aloud
The 2017 Global Read Aloud kicked off yesterday, and I’m here to help. Author and educator Pernille Ripp founded the program as a way to connect students and teachers from different locales around the topics of books. (Think One Book One School or One Book One City, but on a global scale.) Each year, Ripp […]
TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE: Practice Recognizing Fake News
Cindy: There have been a number of YA fiction books with the title “Two Truths and a Lie,” but we’ve found a creative, informational book for middle-grade students that reinforces evaluating information for truth. Fake news, anyone? Two Truths and a Lie: It’s Alive (2017) by Ammi-Joan Paquette and Laurie Ann Thompson is the first […]
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