Start your year in reading off right! Get 25% off the Read Harder collection this week.
Obama Lists His Book Recommendations For 2017
Over the holidays, Barack Obama shared 10 of his 2017 book recommendations with the internet. The former president and known bookworm’s picks included The Power by Naomi Alderman, Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward, and Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond. The list included a couple bonus picks for basketball fans, and you can check out the full Facebook post for his music recommendations.
First Teaser For A Series Of Unfortunate Events Season 2
It’s here, fans. The second season of the Netflix series, based on Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events books, will premiere March 30.
The David Bowie Book Club Launches
David Bowie’s son, director and screenwriter Duncan Jones, has launched the David Bowie Book Club, inviting participants to read the legend’s favorite books. The reading selections will be based on Bowie’s Top 100 must-read books, and Jones announced via Twitter that the first title will be Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd. If you want to participate, you have until February 1st to read the novel.
Don’t forget–we’re giving away a stack of our 20 favorite books of the year! Click here to enter.
Today in Books is sponsored by TarcherPerigee, publisher of My Friend Fear by Meera Lee Patel.
From the bestselling author of Start Where You Are comes a vibrantly inspiring look at making peace with fear–to become our truest selves.
On the heels of her bestselling journal Start Where You Are, author and illustrator Meera Lee Patel takes us deeper into her artistic vision and emotional journey in this stunning new four-color book. A mix of personal reflections, inspirational quotes, questions for reflection, and breathtaking watercolor visuals, My Friend Fear asserts that having big fear is an opportunity to make big changes and to discover the remarkable potential inside ourselves.
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We’re giving away a stack of our 20 favorite books of the year. Click here to enter, or just click the image below.
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We’re giving away a stack of our 20 favorite books of the year. Click here to enter, or just click the image below.
First Tuesday of 2018 Megalist!
Happy New Year! Hold on to your hats, it’s going to be the most amazing year for books ever – and that’s a high bar! I’m excited to share the first big list of books for 2018 with you today. (I’m always excited when it involves books.) I hope you had wonderful holidays and that you find so many delightful things to read in the new year. It is an honor to help you learn about new books.
Sponsored by Missing Isaac by Valerie Fraser Luesse and Revell Books, a Division of Baker Publishing Group
When Pete McLean loses his father in the summer of 1962, his friend Isaac is one of the few people he can lean on. Though their worlds are as different as black and white, friendship knows no color. So when Isaac suddenly goes missing, Pete is determined to find out what happened–no matter what it costs him. With vivid descriptions, palpable atmosphere, and unforgettable characters, debut novelist Valerie Fraser Luesse breathes life into the rural South of the 1960s –a place where ordinary people struggle to find their footing in a social landscape that is shifting beneath their feet.
(And like last time, I’m putting a next to the books that I have read and loved. There are soooo many more on this list that I can’t wait to read!)
Speaking of new books, on All the Books! this week, Rebecca and I discussed several 2018 titles we are excited about, including The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore, The Third Hotel, and That Kind of Mother.
And if you’d like to win several of our favorite books of 2017 (20, to be exact), you can click here to enter our Best of 2017 book giveaway for a chance to receive a big beautiful book bounty.
The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
The Spring Girls by Anna Todd
Darkness, Sing Me a Song: A Holland Taylor Mystery by David Housewright
Promise Not to Tell by Jayne Ann Krentz
Between the Blade and the Heart (Valkyrie) by Amanda Hocking
The Wolves of Winter by Tyrell Johnson
Green: A Novel by Sam Graham-Felsen
Robicheaux: A Novel by James Lee Burke
A State of Freedom: A Novel by Neel Mukherjee
Chainbreaker by Tara Sim
Escape from Aleppo by N.H. Senzai
Achtung Baby: An American Mom on the German Art of Raising Self-Reliant Children by Sara Zaske
Love Sugar Magic: A Dash of Trouble by Anna Meriano
The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner’s Guide to Getting Good with Money by Chelsea Fagan
Ink by Alice Broadway
Before I Let Go by Marieke Nijkamp
Chasing King’s Killer: The Hunt for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Assassin by James L. Swanson
The Devil’s Song by Lauren Stahl
The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn
How to Stop Feeling Like Sh*t: 14 Habits that Are Holding You Back from Happiness by Andrea Owen
The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce
The Lost Rainforest: Mez’s Magic by Eliot Schrefer, Emilia Dziubak (Illustrator)
Betty Before X by Ilyasah Shabazz and Renée Watson
The Queen of All Crows by Rod Duncan
Mouths Don’t Speak by Katja D. Ulysse
The Outcasts of Time by Ian Mortimer
Everless by Sara Holland
A Map of the Dark by Karen Ellis
Batman: Nightwalker by Marie Lu
Furnishing Eternity: A Father, a Son, a Coffin, and a Measure of Life by David Giffels
Unbound (A Stone Barrington Novel) by Stuart Woods
Don’t Cosplay with My Heart by Cecil Castellucci
In the Shadow of Agatha Christie: Classic Crime Fiction by Forgotten Female Writers: 1850-1917 by Leslie S. Klinger
The Nothing by Hanif Kureishi
Late Essays: 2006-2017 by J. M. Coetzee
Black Star Renegades by Michael Moreci
Beneath the Mountain: A Novel by Luca D’Andrea
The Pyramid of Mud (An Inspector Montalbano Mystery) by Andrea Camilleri, Stephen Sartarelli (Translator)
The Art of Mystery: The Search for Questions by Maud Casey
Fallen Gods by James A. Moore
Cræft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts by Alexander Langlands
A Conspiracy of Stars by Olivia A. Cole
Meet Cute by Various Contributors
Someone to Love by Melissa de la Cruz
The Refugees: Stories by Viet Thanh Nguyen (paperback)
That’s it for me today! If you want to learn more about books new and old (and see lots of pictures of my cats, Millay and Steinbeck), or tell me about books you’re reading, or books you think I should read (I HEART RECOMMENDATIONS!), you can find me on Twitter at MissLiberty, on Instagram at FranzenComesAlive, or Litsy under ‘Liberty’!
Stay rad,
Liberty
Win a $250 Half-Price Books Gift Card!
We have a $250 gift card for Half Price Books burning a whole in our digital pocket. Let’s give this sucker away.
(By the way, did you know that Half Price books is the largest family-owned bookstore chain in the U.S.? With more than 120 stores? I didn’t.)
Half Price books specializes in great deals on new books, from discounted new releases to unbelievable deals on recent remainders. This gift card is good either in person or on the web, where you can troll for steals from the comfort of…well wherever you’d like.
Go here to enter, or just click on the image below. Good luck!
15% Sitewide
Treat yourself to that gift you were really wishing for this holiday season! 15% off sitewide through 12/31.
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We’re giving away a stack of our 20 favorite books of the year. Click here to enter, or just click the image below.
We have 10 copies of Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig to give away to 10 Riot readers!
Here’s what it’s all about:
Meet Ginny Moon. She’s mostly your average teenager—she plays flute in the school band, has weekly basketball practice and reads Robert Frost poems for English class. But Ginny is autistic. And so what’s important to her might seem a bit…different.
Told in an extraordinary and wholly original voice, Ginny Moon is at once quirky, charming, heartbreaking, suspenseful and poignant. It’s a story of a journey, about being an outsider trying to find a place to belong and about making sense of a world that just doesn’t seem to add up.
Go here to enter for a chance to win, or just click the cover image below. Good luck!
Alright Y’all, here it is: the bigass list of all your favorite audiobooks of the year! Because there are so many, I don’t have much room for description, but if you mentioned something specific about the title (that I didn’t mention in the newsletter last week). And thank you, so much, to everyone who wrote in with their favorites. It was so fun to see what stood out for everyone this year.
We’re giving away a stack of our 20 favorite books of the year. Click here to enter, or just click the image below.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman (full cast production)
- American War by Omar El Akkad, narrated by Dion Graham
- Any Dream Will Do by Debbie Macomber, narrated by Mark Deakins & Laurel Rankin
- Artemis by Andy Weir, narrated by Rosario Dawson
- Bleak House by Charles Dickens narrated by Sean Barrett & Teresa Gallagher
- Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America written and read by Patrick Phillips
- The Bobiverse Trilogy by Dennis E. Taylor, narrated by Ray Porter
- Born a Crime, written and read by Trevor Noah
- The Broken Road written and read by Richard Paul Evans
- Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers, narrated by Rachel Dulude
- Conspiracy in Belgravia by Sherry Thomas, narrated by Kate Reading
- Cork Dork written and read by Bianca Bosker
(Reader says: This wasn’t life-changing, but still a funny listen, especially with the author narrating her own story.)
- Dear Martin by Nic Stone, narrated by Dion Graham
- The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan, narr. Cary Elwes
- Discount Armageddon: InCryptid, Book 1 by Seanan McGuire, narrated by Emily Bauer
- The Diviners by Libba Bray, narrated by January LaVoy
- Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones, narrated by Neil Hellegers
- Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, narrated
by Cathleen McCarron
- Fat Girl Walking: Sex, Food, Love, and Being Comfortable in Your Skin…Every Inch of It by Brittany Gibbons, narrated by Lauren Fortgang
- The Fireman by Joe Hill
- The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng, narrated by Anna Bentinck
- Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, narrated by Nicholas Guy Smith
(Reader says: The book itself is fascinating, and Nicholas has captured the tone and pacing required to convey the “gentleman’s” character. Beautiful!)
- The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice & Virtue by Mackenzi Lee, narr. Christian Coulson Ghost: Paladin of Shadows, Book 1 by John Ringo, narrated by Jeremy Arthur
- Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War by Mary Roach, narrated By Abby Elvidge
- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, narrated by Bahni Turpin
- Homegoing: A Novel by Yaa Gyasi, narrated by Dominic Hoffman
- Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne-Jones, narrated by Jenny Sterlin
- Hunger written and read by Roxane Gay
(Reader says: It was a tough listen, I’m not gonna lie, but it was so much more powerful because Gay actually read the audio.)
- I Can’t Make This Up by Kevin Hart
(Reader says: I loved Kevin Hart’s memoir that he read aloud. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but it had a lot of good life lessons.)
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and narrated by Thandie Newton
- Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, narrated by Rachel Dulude
- Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott, narrated by Karen White
- Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, narrated by Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, et. al.
Long Way Down, written and narrated by Jason Reynolds
- Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley, narrated by Vikas Adam
(Reader says: I didn’t see the movie, but was curious about the story. I loved the audiobook.)
- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides and narrated by Kristoffer Tabori.
(Reader says: Not new but I just listened to it and loved Tabori’s voice. He managed to make every character sound so unique.)
- Norse Mythology, written and read by Neil Gaiman.
- Noel Diary written and read by Richard Paul Evans
- Not Your Ordinary Wolf Girl by Emily Pohl-Weary, narrated by Kate Rudd
- The One by John Marrs
- The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum, narrated By Coleen Marlo
- Priestdaddy written and read by Patricia Lockwood
- The Right Time by Danielle Steel, narrated by Victoria Bevin
- Slavery By Another Name
by Douglas Blackmon, narrated by Dennis Boutsikaris
- Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King, narrated by Marin Ireland
- Sleeping Giants (Themis Files #1) by Sylvain Neuvel (full cast narration)
- Solo, written and read by Kwame Alexander
- The Stolen Marriage by Diane Chamberlain
- A Study in Scarlet by Sherry Thomas, narrated by Kate Reading
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*k by Mark Mason, narrated by Roger Wayne
- This is Just My Face written and read by Gabby Sidibe
- Trying to Live with the Dead: The Veil Diaries, Book 1 by B. L. Brunnemer
- Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel (full cast narration)
- Watership Down by Richard Adams, narrated by Ralph Cosham
The Weight of Ink by Rachel Cadish, narrated by Corrie James
- What Happened, written and read by Hillary Rodham Clinton
- When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, narrated by Sunil Malhotra
(Reader says: I know that the author died before this book was published, but I couldn’t help feeling like he was reading this book and talking to me. I loved this book so much. I made it through the book without tears, until the epilogue by his widow.)
- When the Dead Come a Knockin’: The Veil Diaries, Book 2 by B. L. Brunnemer, narrated by Carla Mercer-Meyer, Kris Koscheski
- Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, written and read by Kory Stamper
(Reader says: This was SO good, and Kory does such a great job narrating. Honestly, it felt like I was having a legit conversation with her she sounded so natural. I feel like that’s the sign of an amazing audiobook, right? You don’t even feel like you are being read to. I primarily listen to nonfiction, so you don’t get that all too often to be honest.)
Alright, folks, how ’bout them audiobooks? Think those will tide you over until January?
As always, feel free to say hello on twitter at msmacb or via email at katie@riotnewmedia.com
Happy Forced Family Time!
~Katie