Today’s Riot Rundown is sponsored by our very own $250 Amazon gift card giveaway!
No need to mince words here: we are giving one lucky Book Riot reader $250 to blow at Amazon. Overstuff those stockings or get a jump on your New Year reading pile–up to you.
Go here to enter.
From now through January, Book Riot is giving away some of our favorite books of 2016.
Up first is one of our favorite mysteries of 2016: IQ by Joe Ide.
Author Joe Ide used his own history, growing up as an Asian kid in South Central Los Angeles, to create IQ, a new mystery set in a tough L.A. neighborhood about Isaiah Quintabe, nicknamed IQ,who is determined to help find justice and solve unsolved crimes the police don’t care about. Quintabe is inspired by Sherlock Holmes and the book has already been compared to a West Coast version of The Wire, so perhaps it’s not surprising that the television rights to IQ have already sold.
We’ve got three copies to giveaway to U.S. and Canada residents. Go here to enter for a chance to win, or just click the image below. Good luck!
Monroeville, Alabama Plans Harper Lee Tourist Attraction
Harper Lee’s hometown announced last week that it is developing the Harper Lee Trail. The tourist attraction will include a 1909 bank building where Lee’s father–on whom she based Atticus Finch–kept an office, along with replicas of three houses that are featured in To Kill a Mockingbird. Led by Lee’s erstwhile lawyer/advisor Tonja Carter, a coalition of local business owners hopes to bring hundreds of thousands of the legendary author’s fans to town. They also hope to avoid accidentally creating “Disneyland for racists” or drawing in white nationalists with an appetite for nostalgia. As with basically everything else connected to Lee’s legacy, “Whether Harper Lee herself would approve of the plans is open to question.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda to Produce Kingkiller Chronicle Series
If you gave me a hundred chances to guess who would be tapped to adapt Patrick Rothfuss’s monster fantasy trilogy The Kingkiller Chronicles for the big screen, I would never have gotten to Lin-Manuel Miranda. But the world is full of wonders, and that’s exactly what has happened. Miranda will serve as a producer and will compose original songs for both a feature film and TV adaptation. What a delightfully weird and unexpected pairing!
The Girl Gets Back on the Train? (New Paula Hawkins Novel in 2017)
The good folks at Riverhead are no doubt hoping to make lightning strike twice. Paula Hawkins, whose novel The Girl on the Train sold a floppity jillion copies and broke almost as many sales records, will release Into the Water in 2017. It’s another work of suspense that will “interrogate the deceitfulness of memory.” Gonna be fun to watch what happens. Will you be waiting for it?
Hey YA fans!
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Swoon Reads.
Swoon Reads publishes the latest and greatest in YA fiction with the help of readers and writers like you. We’re dedicated to the undiscovered, and we seek out the very best in bright, new bookish talent. From heroic epics, to alien adventures, to all-the-feels romance—if you’re loving it, we’ll publish it. We involve our community in every step of the publishing process, and work closely with selected writers to get their book ready for publication. Together, we bring new stories to life, because we believe that great books are better shared.
I’ve gotten and appreciated all of your amazing feedback the last couple of newsletters, so thank you all! Let’s take this week to regroup and catch up on some of the news going on in the YA world:
Let’s take a look at the YA talk over on Book Riot from the last few weeks, too:
Thanks for hanging out again! We’ll be back next week with a very much necessary, crowd-sourced book list and I’ll be asking you to weigh in on your favorite YA reads from this year (& those YA reads you think deserve a bigger readership).
Wanna go deluxe? We have some Best Books of 2016 boxes remaining, as well as some Strange & Peculiar YA boxes and Magic & Myth Book Mail boxes. Snag one while supplies last.
Today’s Riot Rundown is sponsored by William Morrow.
For as long as Jason Diamond can remember, he’s been infatuated with John Hughes’ movies. From the antics in National Lampoon’s Vacation to the teenage angst in The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink to the insanely clever Home Alone, Jason could not get enough. And so the seed was planted in his mind that he should write a biography of his favorite filmmaker. It didn’t matter to Jason that he had no qualifications, training, platform, or direction. Thus went the years-long, delusional, earnest, and assiduous quest to reach his goal. What he did get was a coming-of-age story that fills the pages of this unconventional, hilarious memoir.
Today’s The Stack is sponsored by COMIC BENTO, the original graphic novel subscription box service.
Comic Bento is the original Graphic Novel subscription box!! Every month a box filled with $60-$80 worth of Graphic Novels ships right to your door! With a different theme each month, you’re sure to discover classic favorites, hidden gems and new and exciting worlds among the curated selections! If you’re a longtime comics reader or new to the world of ink and excitement, Comic Bento is for you!
Head to www.comicbento.com and subscribe! Use code RIOT15 and get 15% off your subscription!
This week’s Audiobooks! Newsletter is sponsored by TryAudiobooks.com.
Traveling for the holidays? Make your trip more enjoyable with an audiobook! Plug into a bestseller to catch up on some reading or play a title the whole family can enjoy! Visit TryAudiobooks.com for a full free download for your listening pleasure.
Hello, audiobook friends! My family just got back from a whirlwind Thanksgiving road trip, and I was in charge of picking the audiobook. “David Sedaris,” I thought, feeling like a genius, “You can’t go wrong with David Sedaris, everyone loves that guy.” And truly, Sedaris is a brilliant audiobook pioneer far ahead of his time.
So I congratulated myself for being a genius and queued up Holidays on Ice, a short collection of six Christmas-themed essays that opens with an excerpt from The Santaland Diaries, in which a young Sedaris moves to New York as an aspiring soap opera writer and instead winds up as a department store elf. We were all on board, everyone was laughing, great pick Rachel, high five! Then came the second essay. Ah yes, the second essay. The second essay of Holidays on Ice is ACTUAL FANFICTION about David Sedaris’s favorite soap opera, One Life to Live, in the form of a scheming matriarch’s Christmas newsletter. Suddenly, not everyone in the car was still on board with my audiobook choice. (Their loss.)
The takeaway, dear readers, is this: sometimes everyone is game to listen to experimental soap opera fanfiction together. And sometimes they are not. Best wishes with wherever your group listening takes you this winter!
10 Adventure Audiobooks That Will Make You Clutch Your Heart As Time Soars By
Look, we all like audiobooks here, we’re in on the secret that they can suspend time and transport you to a new world. Add an adventure story to the mix, and you’re in for an adrenaline-pumping, heart-pounding, shortest-car-ride-ever trip of your life. I thought you guys could use a roundup of some of my faves, from super-powered female assassins to secret nuclear cities and everything in between. Still with me? Great, hang on and keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times!
There’s a Lesbian Audiobooks Facebook Group, You’re Welcome
PSA, PSA! One of my fellow Book Rioters just casually mentioned a Lesbian Audiobooks Facebook group the other day, and I was all, 1) Wait a second. 2) Rad! 3) MUST TELL MY AUDIOBOOK PEOPLE, THEY NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THIS. (Sorry for the all-caps, I am just that excited about it.) The group is closed to protect from trolls and spammers, so just click the “Join Group” button and they’ll welcome you in <3
We Heart Rachel McAdams as Anne of Green Gables
Did any of you catch the new adaptation of Anne of Green Gables on PBS last week?! I am HERE for Anne and all her shenanigans on Prince Edward Island, butting heads with the uptight Cuthberts who thought they were adopting a boy to help on the farm. (Really, Cuthberts, that’s how you’re going to play this?) A new AoGG mini series is in the works at Netflix, too, written by Moira Walley-Beckett of Breaking Bad.
Ergo, there’s no time like the present to brush up on the original! And you’re in luck because Rachel McAdams of True Detective reads a brand-new audiobook version that just came out last week. Listen to an excerpt here to see if you love her interpretation of Anne as much as I do! (You will probably love it.) Bonus: McAdams is Canadian, aww yis.
We have 10 copies of Jason Diamond’s Searching for John Hughes to give away to 10 Riot readers!
For as long as Jason Diamond can remember, he’s been infatuated with John Hughes’ movies. From the antics in National Lampoon’s Vacation to the teenage angst in The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink to the insanely clever Home Alone, Jason could not get enough. And so the seed was planted in his mind that he should write a biography of his favorite filmmaker. It didn’t matter to Jason that he had no qualifications, training, platform, or direction. Thus went the years-long, delusional, earnest, and assiduous quest to reach his goal. What he did get was a coming-of-age story that fills the pages of this unconventional, hilarious memoir.
To enter for a chance to win a copy, go here, or just click the cover image below. Good luck!
Today’s Riot Rundown is sponsored by Playster.
Playster is the world’s first all-in-one entertainment service. It takes care of everything — ebooks, audiobooks, music, movies, TV shows and games — and gives you unlimited access to millions of titles for one flat monthly fee. That’s right! Playster lets you enjoy unlimited audiobooks and ebooks — no restrictions, no credit systems.
The service is accessible through all web browsers, and Playster’s Android and iOS apps, on virtually any device. What’s more, the offline mode lets you save all of your favorites for on-the-go reading when there’s no Internet access around. Sign up today to get your free 30 day trial!