Books

What’s not to love about Only Murders in the Building? The Hulu TV series is led by the dynamic trio of Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short), and Mabel (Selena Gomez). They play three neighbors in a Manhattan apartment complex who become unlikely friends/podcast hosts/amateur sleuths. They’re funny. They’re quirky. They’re endearing. And, most importantly,

Since the early 1990s, Jeremiah Moss has lived in—and fiercely loved—New York City. In 2007, the poet and psychoanalyst launched the blog Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, which became the foundation for 2017’s well-received Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul. In blog and book, Moss bemoaned the damaging outcomes of hypergentrification. Five

When I was a teenager, I had acne. The kind of acne that meant my face was never clear except in rare and random instances, I considered bangs for their ability to hide my forehead, and I got to know the skincare aisle of my local drugstore really, really well. Worrying about my breakouts and

In the popular imagination, the banjo is an instrument played by white bluegrass or old-time musicians plucking out traditional Appalachian ballads on their front porches. Many folks associate banjo music with the theme from the “Beverly Hillbillies,” played by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, or Eric Weissberg’s “Dueling Banjos” from the movie Deliverance. However, in

Books are an ideal helpmate when dealing with mental health issues. I don’t mean self-help books, although they can certainly help if you like them. I mean books in general: literary and genre fiction, nonfiction, poetry. To be clear, books aren’t a substitute for professional help. But they can be an addendum: there is a

Guided by Dadaism, an art movement that sought to reject logic, author Jon Scieszka and illustrator Julia Rothman turn traditional nursery rhymes on their heads in the playful, subversive The Real Dada Mother Goose.  Nonsense and absurdity take center stage as Scieszka and Rothman spin and twist six evergreen verses inside out and upside down.

“Moms for Liberty” and similar groups say that they are fighting for “parents’ rights” by trying to remove books from schools. They claim to speak for all parents. The truth is, though, that most parents (and people in general) do not support book bans. When given the choice to opt their children out of access

When a house appears one day at the end of Juniper Drive, Jacqueline “Jac” Price-Dupree’s reaction isn’t what you’d expect from most 12-year-olds, but Jac isn’t like most 12-year-olds. Five years ago, she was diagnosed with a cancer that should have killed her—but didn’t. Ever since, Jac has been haunted by the fear that it

It’s almost October, which is prime horror reading season. If you’re preparing to pack your seasonal TBR, now is the time to start exploring the best the genre has to offer. Like many genres, there are a few authors and titles that are classics that show up on every list, like Stephen King’s older works

Many books have been written about the pressure cooker effect of working in the White House. But as chief speechwriter during some of the most pivotal days of President Barack Obama’s time in office, Cody Keenan has a unique story to tell. In Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America, Keenan

Transcendent Kingdom is one of those rare books that is about so much, and yet fits together flawlessly. Yaa Gyasi tackles science, faith, work, addiction, grief, complicated family relationships, immigrant experiences, race, Black girlhood and womanhood, and more. It is a richly layered novel full of seemingly endless stories, and it is also intensely focused

When a house appears at the end of Juniper Drive, Jacqueline “Jac” Price-Dupree’s reaction isn’t what you’d expect from most 12-year-olds, but Jac isn’t like most 12-year-olds. Ever since she was diagnosed with cancer five years ago, Jac has been haunted by the fear that it might return, so when Jac sees the house, she

As conservative groups are making their presence known in Canada by proposing book bans, they’re hitting a bit of a road block. Turns out, Canadian school boards have limited control on what is taught in classrooms. Similar to book banning groups in the U.S., conservative groups like ParentsVoice B.C. are targeting books like All Boys

In books, we can find kinship, solidarity and the expression of emotions we may hesitate to share with other people. Author Sara Greenwood draws on personal experience in My Brother Is Away, a compassionate depiction of a girl working through the complex emotions she feels about her brother, who is in prison.   In straightforward and

TIME Magazine has named the people who made 2022’s TIME100 Next list, an annual list inspired by TIME100 that highlights 100 people across different industries who, as they rise within their fields, are also creating change and making impact. The list includes everyone from government leaders to musicians, medical professionals to activists. Here are the

In 2019, Ann Mah published an article in the New York Times about 20-year-old Jacqueline Bouvier’s year in Paris as a college junior. As Mah traced Jacqueline’s days up and down the streets of Paris and into its museums and cafes, she revealed a new side of both the American icon and the postwar city.

To celebrate National Comic Book Day, which took place on September 25th, Wisevoter investigated the most loved comic book superheroes by state. The comic book market size increased by more than 60% between 2020 and 2021, which both DC and Marvel benefitted from. Marvel’s share of the market was 37% in 2021 and DC’s 27.1%—

Nancy Marie Brown’s Looking for the Hidden Folk: How Iceland’s Elves Can Save the Earth is a fascinating inquiry into the Icelandic belief in elves. Brown has a deep attachment to and knowledge of Iceland, its otherworldly landscape, its people and their beliefs. (She is the author of multiple Nordic cultural histories, and she has

If you don’t know about Joyce Carol Oates’s tweet history, I envy you. Suffice to say, she’s notorious for going viral with some truly mystifying hot takes. In her latest example, she claims that “fantasy as a genre is fundamentally YA” and misrepresents Ted Chiang as saying that sci-fi is “impersonal, never ‘magical’” and fantasy

Pakistani British writer Kamila Shamsie is an adept chronicler of how politics impact families in both England and Pakistan. In 2013, she was recognized as one of Granta‘s “20 best young British writers,” and her most recent novel, Home Fire, won the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her eighth book, Best of Friends, delves into

One of the interesting things about the book industry is that you can never get a straight answer on just how many copies a book has sold. Amazon keeps its information to itself, and they control a large part of the market. Different lists are based on their own sources and criteria. No single bestseller

Think life is full of bureaucracy? Try death! According to Therese Beharrie’s A Ghost in Shining Armor, there’s a whole system at work once someone dies to help their soul move on to whatever comes next. For some, this means lingering as ghosts, visible only to rare humans like Gemma Daniels who help them resolve

Halloween is right around the corner, and you know what that means — it’s time to start working on your Halloween TBR! To help you get started, I’ve picked out 12 short horror novels under 300 pages each, so you can pack as many scary stories as possible into your October. There’s just something about

Mr. Wilder and Me by Jonathan Coe (Middle England, The Rotters’ Club) isn’t so much a work of fiction as a fictionalization of some true events. The book covers the period when Billy Wilder, one of the greatest screenwriters and directors in old Hollywood, helmed one of his final films, Fedora (1978), about a Greta

What better way to celebrate the season of crisp air, pumpkin spice, butternut squash, juicy apples, plaid, longer nights, and crunchy leaves than with new paperback books? Paperbacks let you tote your latest read around with you like no big deal, and at a lower price point, let you snag more at your local indie

For 24 years, Hua Hsu has been carrying around a padded envelope stuffed with memorabilia. Things like “a pack of Export A’s with two cigarettes left,” a funeral program, letters, cassette tapes, receipts, punchlines written on napkins, a paperback copy of Edward Carr’s What Is History? Hsu hastily gathered all of these things and more

The Nancy Drew PC games were a huge part of my life for years. From the time I discovered them circa 2000 until 2015, two games were released every year, one in winter and one in summer. Since then, there has only been one game released, but I live in hope that more are on

I’m new to the world of the best word search games. I first started playing mobile apps during quarantine. Before the lockdowns, I had certainly experienced idle time, but never quite so much as I did in April 2020. People I knew played farming simulators and Candy Crush, but I found myself drawn to puzzles.

By and large, our enterprising American ancestors hated swamps, which they saw as obstacles to travel and agriculture. In the timeless war between swamp folk and swamp drainers, most were firmly in the latter camp—supported with vigor by the government. Count Annie Proulx as one of the swamp folk at heart. The acclaimed author of

I love cosmic horror. As the world has become increasingly baffling, nonsensical, and outright terrifying, I’ve been drawn to reading cosmic horror stories more and more. There’s something about humans facing overwhelming powers beyond our comprehension that’s…definitely not comforting, but kind of relatable. H. P. Lovecraft may not be the creator of the cosmic horror