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We hear enough about page-turner books, but what about those books that are easy to put down? For Book Riot, Brenna Clarke Gray takes another look at books that don’t often get a second look: The unputdownables will power you through a readathon, help you get to your book club on time, and make sure […]
...moreAt Book Riot, Kelly Jensen discusses the scarcity of quitters in YA novels, and quitters’ importance in showing readers the accomplishment of self-preservation.
...moreIt’s not that the books that get someone into the “serious reader” club are all or even mostly by men these days. But the books that get you kicked out of the club are almost exclusively written by women. Hannah Engler writes for Book Riot on “women’s literature” and the still-unevolved stereotype of the Woman Reader.
...moreI’m going to learn to let my murder flag fly, flap by tiny blood-stained flap. For some, the fantasy isn’t enough. They have to read about real people dying in horrible ways too. At Book Riot, Rachel Weber discusses her love of true crime, and how pop culture phenomena like Serial and Making A Murderer have […]
...moreNothing connects you with a text or an author like being a translator. Book Riot contributor Rachel Cordasco reached out to twelve literary translators and asked them what inspired them to pursue a career in translation. Their answers will inspire you, too.
...moreOver at Book Riot, Hannah Engler discusses memoir, when the absolute truth is necessary, and why it is okay—even unavoidable—to fabricate facts: Fabrication is inherent in memoir writing. Number one, it’s impossible to have an unbiased view of your own life, period; number two, it’s impossible to write about something in the past tense and not […]
...moreOur love of libraries is nothing new, but there are a particular breed of libraries less discussed—the college library. Book Riot has written a love letter to collegiate libraries and all the weirdness that lives there.
...moreFor Book Riot, Vanessa Willoughby explores the benefits of writing fan fiction, and how notable works are often imitations of timeless stories: Literature that is unforgettable incites a dialogue at the very least, and a conversation at its best. Novels can serve as responses to pre-existing literature. Some of the best pieces of literature are works […]
...moreA lovely and thoughtful argument for writing with a pencil. Hear her out before you decide.
...moreIt’s daunting knowing that you will be the only one of your kind at some of these events. When you’ve been made to feel your otherness so concretely in the past, it’s hard not to notice it. I can’t help but feel out of place, even if it’s only for a moment. One person’s experience […]
...moreSaturday 11/7: Diana Hamilton, Kaveh Akbar, Shira Erlichman, Jason Koo, Katy Lederer, Matt Longabucco, and Angel Nafis celebrate the launch of issue 2 of Prelude. Baby’s All Right, 3 p.m., $10. Lee Ann Brown and Kit Robinson join the Segue Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Zachary C. Solomon, Naomi McDougall Jones, Spencer Everett, and […]
...moreAt Book Riot, Aram Mrjoian explores the question of what makes a sentence beautiful. He conjectures that our brain becomes overwhelmed when it sees words organized and used in a way that is beyond its imagination: Maybe, when words are amalgamated together into some combination that we could never imagine, our brains need a split second […]
...moreBook Riot discusses the lack of female protagonists who’ve had abortions in literature: For millions of women, abortion is not a statistic or a political platitude. Although public discourse around abortion tends to stick to abstractions, there is no one “abortion experience.” Women’s sexualities, pregnancies, and terminations are unique. Every woman has her own complex […]
...moreAt Book Riot, Amanda Diehl brings an optimistic anecdote to the often-bleak conversation on the value of book blurbs (typically rife with accusations of corporatism, cronyism, and empty praise). If the form can rise to the artistry of Margaret Atwood’s one-line praise for Laline Paul’s The Bees—“[A] gripping Cinderella/Arthurian tale with lush Keatsian adjectives”—perhaps there’s […]
...moreS.E. Hinton, a woman, arguably pioneered the young adult genre of literature. So why is it that women are seen as secondary in this genre, and as less valuable as their male counterparts? Book Riot explores this question, and the powerful effects that narratives written for young women can have. Within the pages of these […]
...moreYou may have seen the recent series of UN Women ads using screenshots of Google auto-complete suggestions to educate viewers about sexist stereotypes. This Book Riot post does the same thing but with famous authors—for example, when you type in “Ernest Hemingway was,” what does Google predict you’ll type next? According to Book Riot, “the takeaways […]
...moreDid you see that guest-poster over at Book Riot? She’s some young upstart named Margaret Atwood with some crazy ideas about horror, terror, genre fiction, and literary fiction. To add to that, the complete Edgar Allan Poe was in the primary school library – those were the days in which only the presence or absence […]
...moreBook Riot has a kickass playlist of books in which music is central. From the Scott Pilgrim series to Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize–winning A Visit From the Goon Squad, they’re all books that use bands, records, and mix-tapes to strum at our heartstrings. What books would you add? Let us know in the comments. And as our […]
...moreKick your summer off right with a different kind of beach read: Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. (Okay, it’s more of a sea read than a beach read.) To put you in the right mood, Liberty Hardy over at Book Riot took a stab (from hell’s heart) at a Moby-Dick playlist. From Tom Waits’s “Starving in the Belly of a […]
...moreIf you’re feeling a little queasy about Amazon’s buyout of Goodreads, Book Riot has compiled a list of alternative book-based social networks. A few of them seem defunct, and one is actually also owned by Amazon, but some, especially the ones still in beta, look very promising. Do you plan on quitting Goodreads, and if […]
...moreStrunk and White’s Elements of Style has a soft spot in all our hearts, but some of its rules—no adverbs, an incorrect definition of passive voice—are a little…idiosyncratic. If, as Constance Hale says, the point of grammar is to produce better writing, rather than squeezing words into an airtight mathematical equation, Strunk and White aren’t always […]
...moreEmbrace those subway tears, urban commuters! Busses and trains are great places to read, but how do you cope when you’re on a crowded train making limited stops and the book you’re reading causes those tear ducts to flood? Preeti Chhibber at BookRiot has some anecdotes and solutions of her own on how to play […]
...moreYou know what Ernest Hemingway looked like and what his writing sounded like—but what did he smell like? Inspired by a perfume on Etsy called “Dead Writers,” Book Riot’s Amanda Nelson imagines scents named after various canonical authors. Our favorites include Flannery O’Connor (“Church incense, soap, vanilla, ginger”) and Edgar Allen Poe (“Poppies, absinthe, sandalwood, […]
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