Books

Barnes & Noble has a plan to open 30 stores in 2023, making the bookseller the leader in what’s being called a big-box revival. This expansion comes after more than a decade of shrinking its number in response to competition from Amazon. There are even a couple of the new stores being opened in the

The Huntsville Public Library (HPL) has been under fire since this summer, when a book display riled up city officials. Now, following the removal of two book displays at the public library, the city decided to privatize the library. Though officials claim the move to hire Library Services & Systems (LS&S) will reduce library operational

Granbury Independent School District superintendent Jeremy Glenn was recorded telling librarians in the North Texas libraries under his purview to remove books that dealt with “transgender, LGBTQ and… sexuality.” In the leaked recording, he’s heard saying “I acknowledge that there are men that think they’re women and there are women that think they’re men. I don’t

It’s fairly common for SFF writers to write all SFF, all the time. It makes sense: science fiction and fantasy are, like all literary genres, modes with their own histories, tropes, archetypes, and conventions. If an author is successful working within any genre, it makes sense that they might choose to continue doing so. Plus,

2022 has been a wild ride. As I reflect back on the year, it seems like 2022 has been filled with truly scary moments. But at least the horror books of this year have been good scary and not fear-for-the-future-of-humanity scary. Horror novels, as always, remain a great way to escape from the terrors of

New York City is the literary capital of the country, from the abundance of publishing houses based there to the vibrant writing culture. It also has some of the largest public libraries in the United States. We’ve seen a lot of discussion in the past few months of the best books of the year as

Beginning in October, here at Book Riot we’ve been watching as a slew of Best Books of the Year lists came rolling in from publications ranging from The New York Times to Buzzfeed. This was a great year for books, but it’s interesting to see just how little overlap there is between these lists. To

Despite all the candles, tinsel, gifts, and pie, Americans consistently rate the holidays as the most stressful time of the year. That holiday stress may be compounded by family relationships — depending on what kind of family you have. With that in mind, I’ve pulled together a list of the best and worst fictional families

I do not like to be scared. Seeking out media that is designed to be scary — books, films, TV shows, or, I don’t know, music videos? — is something I will never understand or choose to do. I also do not like gore. I can handle some violence in my books, if it serves

Podcasts have become an integral part of our everyday life. We listen to them while doing chores and carrying out errands, while driving or taking public transportation, and sometimes (though this is mostly dedicated to our very favorite podcasts) we simply sit and enjoy them without doing anything else. It’s been predicted that, by the

Yesterday, I was standing in front of my desk, piled high with books I had checked out from the library or received for review, trying to decide what to read next. I shifted from foot to foot and gave myself a pep talk. “Pretend you are a normal reader. You’re just picking whatever book looks

Since about 2014, I’ve always kept an eye on Pantone’s Color of the Year. I like this idea of a color defining or giving shape to an upcoming year, much in the way I like thinking not about resolutions but about words or phrases as a means of organizing the next 12 months. Over the

Making its rounds on social media over the past two weeks is a story from The Atlantic about the end of high school English class. It’s not necessarily what you think it might be. The author, a high school teacher in Berkeley, California, explores how ChatGPT, a conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) system, might radically alter

Here at Book Riot, we publish 8-10 posts every weekday, not counting news stories, deals round ups, and other miscellanea. That’s thousands of posts in a year. Some of them blow up, and some of them are snubbed by social media algorithms. Regardless of the views, likes, or shares, though, our contributors have written some

Ammaar Reshi, a product design manager in California, used an AI-powered chatbot called ChatGPT to make a children’s book over a single weekend. After publishing the 12-page picture book, which he titled Alice and Sparkle, he even began selling it on Amazon. After Reshi’s tweets about the book went viral, there were many artists who

The end of 2022 is fast approaching. How was your reading life this year? Did you read a ton of amazing books? Did you struggle through reading slump after reading slump? Did you discover any amazing new authors, or stick to your tried-and-true favorites? Are you feeling satisfied with what you read, or do you

Yesterday, the U.S. Postal Service announced seven new subjects that will be featured on stamps in 2023. Among the list is prolific children’s book author Tomie dePaola (1934-2020) and civil rights activist and author John Lewis (1940-2020). After participating in vital civil rights protests — even becoming one of the Freedom Riders in the early

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is a nonprofit dedicated to defending free speech. To draw attention to the censorship happening in Texas schools and libraries right now, they’ve put up two billboards. The first, which is up in Keller now, says “Free Speech Makes Free People.” The second will go up December 18th,

‘Tis the season for “best of” book lists, and we’ve rounded up quite a few on Book Riot. The newest addition is the first “The Atlantic 10,” which the magazine defines not quite as the best books of the year, but the books that “impressed us with their force of ideas, that drew us in

Since September, I’ve been putting together this combined list of all the bestselling books, according to all the big bestsellers lists: the New York Times, both Combined Print & E-Book Fiction and Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction lists; Amazon Charts, both Fiction and Nonfiction; USA Today; and Publishers Weekly. To be honest, there aren’t usually