Newsletters Dev – Page 1181

30 Books from the Beginning of 2017 That Deserve Another Look

Post author By Liberty Hardy
Post date November 27, 2017

Hello again, book lovers! The pickings are getting mighty slim as far as new releases go, so I thought I’d do something fun and share 30 books that came out in early 2017 I thought deserve a second look. I tweeted these over the weekend, and thought they were worth collecting here. There might be a hidden gem that you missed! As far as new books out today, you can hear about several great books on this week’s episode of the All the Books! Amanda and I talked about a few amazing books we loved, including Djinn City, Weave a Circle Round, Oddity, and more.

Complicit Is Dictionary.com Word of the Year: Today in Books

Post author By Sharifah Williams
Post date November 27, 2017

Dictionary.com Chooses Complicit As Word Of The Year

Here’s one for the word nerds. Dictionary.com chose complicit as its Word of the Year–“a symbol of the year’s most meaningful events and lookup trends.” The site noted that the first spike in searches for complicit occurred the day after Saturday Night Live aired a skit where Scarlett Johansson played Ivanka Trump. In the satirical ad, Johansson was selling a perfume called Complicit. A second and larger spike occurred after an interview where Ivanka Trump stated: “If being complicit is wanting to be a force for good and to make a positive impact, then I’m complicit.” Dictionary.com chose the word, in part, because of noteworthy stories of people who refused to be complicit in the face of oppression and wrongdoing.

Baltimore Cops Are Studying James Baldwin And Plato

In Baltimore, Detective Ed Gillespie is incorporating the Humanities into officer training. In his classes at the city police department’s in-service training facility, Gillespie teaches officers Plato, Steinbeck, Dostoevsky, and Baldwin. The detective’s methods include having his students discuss real stories of police misconduct in Platonic terms. Amidst calls for officer training on de-escalation and implicit bias following the death of Freddie Gray who suffered a fatal injury in the back of a Baltimore police van, Gillespie is trying to offer his students a way to ask questions about the human condition, themselves, and policing.

Rare 16th-Century Mesoamerican Codex Goes Online

The Library of Congress has made an extremely rare Mesoamerican manuscript available online. The Codex Quetzalecatzin (or the Aztec Codex) is one of the few surviving illustrated Mesoamerican manuscripts dating before 1600. Over at the Library of Congress site, you can take a look at the manuscript’s native Aztec and Nahuatl maps, hieroglyphs, illustrations, and more.

Giveaways

Win a Prize Pack of Audiobooks Perfect for Your Book Club!

Post author By Jeff O'Neal
Post date November 27, 2017

10 winners will each receive audiobooks of Merry & Bright by Debbie Macomber; Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak; My True Love Gave to Me Edited by Stephanie Perkins.

Listening to an audiobook can bring family and friends together this holiday season. Listen to Turtles All the Way Down by John Green on your next family road trip and discuss the important themes of the story. Or, listen to Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak with your friends at book club to prepare for the holiday season. Connect, listen, and discuss with audiobooks from Penguin Random House Audio.

Go here to enter for a chance to win, or just click the image below. Good luck!

The Goods 2

30% Sitewide Cyber Monday

Post author By Rebecca Joines Schinsky
Post date November 26, 2017

It’s the biggest sale of the season, and you don’t even have to put on pants! Get 30% off sitewide, and stock up on tees, totes, mugs, and more rad literary gifts.

And don’t forget, you can give the gift of reading with our Best Books of 2017 box, while supplies last.

Riot Rundown

112617-PRHAHoliday2017-Riot-Rundown

Post author By Devin Service
Post date November 26, 2017

Today’s Riot Rundown is sponsored by Penguin Random House Audio.

Listening to an audiobook can bring family and friends together this holiday season. Listen to Turtles All the Way Down by John Green on your next family road trip and discuss the important themes of the story. Or, listen to Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak with your friends at book club to prepare for the holiday season. Connect, listen, and discuss with audiobooks from Penguin Random House Audio.

Giveaways

Win THE RULES OF MAGIC by Alice Hoffman!

Post author By Jeff O'Neal
Post date November 25, 2017

We’re giving away The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman to one lucky winner (and their friend)!

Here’s what The Rules of Magic is all about:

For the Owens family, love is a curse that began in 1620, when Maria Owens was charged with witchery for loving the wrong man.

Hundreds of years later, in New York City at the cusp of the sixties, when the whole world is about to change, Susanna Owens knows that her three children are dangerously unique. Difficult Franny, with skin as pale as milk and blood red hair, shy and beautiful Jet, who can read other people’s thoughts, and charismatic Vincent, who began looking for trouble on the day he could walk.

From the start Susanna sets down rules for her children: No walking in the moonlight, no red shoes, no wearing black, no cats, no crows, no candles, no books about magic. And most importantly, never, ever, fall in love. But when her children visit their Aunt Isabelle, in the small Massachusetts town where the Owens family has been blamed for everything that has ever gone wrong, they uncover family secrets and begin to understand the truth of who they are. Back in New York City each begins a risky journey as they try to escape the family curse.

Go here to enter for a chance to win, or just click the fancy image below:

Today In Books

Negative Assumptions Trigger Poor Reading: Today in Books

Post author By Sharifah Williams
Post date November 24, 2017

Negative Assumptions Trigger Poor Reading

According to new research published in Scientific Study of Literature, negative assumptions about science fiction trigger poor reading. Washington and Lee University professors Chris Gavaler and Dan Johnson measured how an automatic assumption that science fiction texts are less worthwhile predisposes readers “to a less effortful and comprehending mode of reading – or what we might term non-literary reading.” “We can now show objectively that the weakness is with the reader, not the story itself,” said professor Gavaler.

Bad Sex In Fiction Award 2017 Nominees

The Literary Review announced its 2017 nominations for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. The award recognizes “outstandingly bad” scenes of sexual description in good novels. The nominees are: Seventh Function of Language by Laurent Binet, The Destroyers by Christopher Bollen, Mother of Darkness by Venetia Welby, As a God Might Be by Neil Griffiths, The Future Won’t Be Long by Jarett Kobek, War Cry by Wilbur Smith (with David Churchill), and Here Comes Trouble by Simon Wroe. You can read the cringe-worthy excerpts in the linked piece. Previous winners of the award include Erri De Luca and Morrisey.

Anansi Boys Adapted As Radio Drama

BBC Radio 4 is adapting Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys as a six-part radio drama. The story follows Mr. Nancy, an incarnation of the West African trickster god Anansi, from American Gods. British comedian and actor Lenny Henry will play Mr. Nancy in the radio adaptation; Jacob Anderson (Game of Thrones) and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Misfits) will play Nancy’s sons. Anansi Boys will begin airing on Christmas Day.

We’re giving away $500 to spend at the bookstore of your choice! Click here, or on the image below to enter:

Book Radar

Neil Gaiman’s ANANSI BOYS to Be Adapted and More Book News

Post author By Liberty Hardy
Post date November 24, 2017

Happy Monday! We’re in the last five weeks of the year, when publishing and book news slows down and the shopping increases. But I still have a few great things to share with you today. I hope you also had a wonderful week, and that you’re reading something marvelous! Enjoy your upcoming week, and be excellent to each other. – xoxo, Liberty

Gorgeous Folio Society Edition of The Little Prince

Post author By Karina Glaser
Post date November 24, 2017

Dear Kid Lit friends,

I grew up loving The Little Prince. I first read the story in high school, and I brought my dog-eared paperback copy with me to college and beyond. So I was thrilled when my editor asked me if I wanted to interview Stacy Schiff, the author of Saint-Exupery: A Biography and the author of the introduction of the new Folio edition of The Little Prince, for the newsletter.

First, can we admire the gorgeous Folio edition?

The Folio Society two-volume edition includes a slipcase and a commentary volume by Christine Nelson with Saint-Exupery’s original sketches and drafts of the story.

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Get booky with our new release calendar, exclusive podcast and newsletter, and amazing giveaways. Subscribe to Book Riot Insiders and get booky with us!

I had a wonderful time asking Stacy Schiff some of my burning questions.

You are the author Saint-Exupery: A Biography, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. What led you to explore his life, and what was the most surprising thing you learned about him?

Having reread his earlier works, I was struck by how little I knew about Saint-Exupery. As it turns out, the life consists of equal parts improbability and incongruity, which means there are plenty of surprises. I suppose the greatest was how little time Saint-Exupery — pioneering aviator, and author of various classics of flight — actually spent in the air. He flew the mails for fewer than six years. He was regularly earthbound; the life is sorely deficient in the qualities that make the literature soar. Also, he was a hit-or miss-pilot. Well, not exactly hit-or-miss. As one colleague put it, “When the flight is normal, Saint-Exupery is dangerous. Given complications, he’s brilliant.”

Do you remember the first time you read The Little Prince? What drew you to the story?

My mother was a French professor; I don’t remember a time when The Little Prince was not in my life. I do know that the book was lost on me as a child. I also remember stumbling later on its extraordinary dedication, a short story in itself. And I most vividly recall my first encounter with the manuscript pages reproduced in this edition, their cigarette burns and coffee stains intact. In a passage he later deleted from the book, Saint-Exupery wrote: “I’ve never told the grown-ups that I’m not from their world. I’ve hidden the fact that I’ve always been five or six years old at heart.” Anyone who knew him would have snorted at that.

Tell us a little bit about the process of writing the introduction to the (gorgeous!) Folio Society edition.

It IS stunning, isn’t it?

I spent the early l990s with Saint-Exupery’s friends, girlfriends, editors, colleagues, squadron mates, and family, often to the exclusion of all else. I knew then that he wrote singularly entrancing letters. I failed to grasp, I think, that there might actually not be a more charming biographical subject. It was heavenly to return to him, to his excesses (“If a little bit of tea is good, then a lot of tea is better”) and his eloquence, the courage and the innocence, the practical fumbling and the starry-eyed romanticism. There was a reason why no one who met him ever forgot him. In other words, it was the happiest of reunions, at least on my part.

Why do you think The Little Prince has endured and touched so many generations of people?

That’s a question I can’t properly answer. There’s a purity to the book, Saint-Exupery having distilled in it decades of defeats. And there’s a universality to the slyness, to the condemnation — by an innocent — of the benighted, bean-counting adult world. Who hasn’t wished he could change planets? Who hasn’t railed against logic, quarreled with an irrational loved one, subscribed to the moral superiority of childhood? Across cultures, across decades, it remains lonely among men.

If you could ask Antoine Saint-Exupéry one question, what would it be?

At the time of his death, The Little Prince had sold poorly. Reviewers were perplexed: They expected something else from the virile author of Flight to Arras. Was The Little Prince a children’s book for adults, or an adult book for children? It would not be published in France until after the war. Saint-Exupery’s previous books earned prizes and climbed bestseller lists. So the question would be: How did he feel about The Little Prince proving the title by which we remember him? There’s some irony in the little fable having eclipsed the rest of the oeuvre.

Many thanks to Stacy Schiff and The Folio Society for taking the time to speak with me!

For those of you looking for a stunning gift for the holidays, you can find this special Folio Society edition of The Little Prince exclusively on the publisher’s website. (I have put it on my own wish list – I hope my husband reads this!) There are other wonderful books there, including a gorgeous copy of The 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith, Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, and Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. A complete list of their children’s collection can be found here. Please note that if you’re looking to order this for the holidays, the deadline to order for standard delivery is midnight EST December 8, and midnight EST on December 14 for express delivery.

It might be the holidays, but boxes of 2018 releases keep coming to my apartment. Woohoo! I just started Knock Out by K.A. Holt (Chronicle, 3/6/18), a companion novel to House Arrest. I’m halfway through Facing Frederick: The Life of Frederick Douglass by Tonya Bolden (Abrams, 1/13/18), and I’m really enjoying learning more about this American icon. I just received Jillian Tamaki’s new book, They Say Blue (Abrams, 3/13/18), which I’m very excited about.

As you gear up for holiday shopping, keep an eye out because my December newsletters will be packed with book recommendations for every age!

I’d love to know what you are reading this week! Find me on Twitter at @KarinaYanGlaser, on Instagram at @KarinaIsReadingAndWriting, or email me at karina@bookriot.com.

See you next Sunday,
Karina

It’s always nice to have a reading companion.

*If this e-mail was forwarded to you, follow this link to subscribe to “The Kids Are All Right” newsletter and other fabulous Book Riot newsletters for your own customized e-mail delivery. Thank you!*

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True Story

The Chunksters of the Washington Post’s 10 Best Books List

Post author By Kim Ukura
Post date November 24, 2017

In the past, I haven’t gotten super excited about the best of lists that crop up at the end of the year — I think they make me anxious about all of the books that I haven’t read and how much great stuff there is out there. But this spring I joined a local book club that reads the New York Times top 10 books of the previous year… and so now I’m super interested in best books lists because they’ll be dictating a chunk of my reading in 2018.

Oxford University Press, publisher of A Farewell to Ice by Pater Wadhams

Peter Wadhams has observing for himself the changes in the Arctic over the course of nearly five decades. His conclusions are stark: the ice caps are melting. There is now the probability that within a few years the North Pole will be ice-free for the first time in 10,000 years, entering what some call the “Arctic death spiral.” A sobering but urgent and engaging book, A Farewell to Ice shows us ice’s role on our planet, its history, and the true dimensions of the current global crisis, offering readers concrete advice about what they can do.

This week the Washington Post announced their best books of the year. Of the top 10, five were works of nonfiction:

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky
The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen
I Can’t Breathe: A Killing On Bay Street by Matt Taibbi
I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad by Souad Mckhennet
Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama by David Garrow (this one still amazes me… 1,472 pages from before he was even president!)

In general, I think that’s a pretty interesting list. Three are books that have been on my radar and two — Behave and I Was Told to Come Alone — that are new-to-me, which is an exciting mix of familiarity and surprise.

The Post also put together two other lists that will be of interested to nonfiction readers — 50 notable works of nonfiction from 2017 and the five best memoirs of 2017. So many books, so little time. I’m curious to see what the other major lists will bring!

Mooch Ado About Nothing

The time when former White House communications director Anthony was shopping a memoir was almost as short as his tenure in the Trump administration. According to Newsweek, the Mooch has scrapped plans for a political memoir that he was shopping around this summer because publishers didn’t think his draft was very good. I wish I had something smart to say about this but all I can think is… good. (And salute to Book Riot’s own Jeff O’Neal for the punny headline!).

And In News About Books We Actually Want…

Roxane Gay is editing and writing the forward for a new book is essays, Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture. The publisher’s summary of the book says it will included pieces on “what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence, and aggression they face, and where they are ‘routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied’ for speaking out.” That summary is so good, and the list of contributors that Gay tweeted out is pretty incredible too.

Kindle Deals in History

The end of the year — and all of the long vacations that come with it — always make me want to sit down and dig into some good narrative history. Here are three ebooks deals that might fit the bill:

Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose for $3.99
A Train in Winter by Caroline Moorehead for $1.99
First Women by Kate Andersen Brower for $1.99

And with that, we’ve come to the end. If you haven’t done it yet, but sure to hop over to the site where we’re giving away $500 to spend at the bookstore of your choice! Entries are open worldwide and will be accepted until 11:45 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 26. Click here to enter.

Happy reading!

– Kim Ukura, @kimthedork and kim@riotnewmedia.com