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This episode is sponsored by Harry’s, Penguin Random House Audio, and Whispers by Lisa Jackson. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes (click here) or via RSS (link here). You can also download a free dedicated app for iOS or for Android. Links discussed in the show: Goodreads Choice Awards Hero of the Week: 81-year-old woman who is last fluent speaker of her native language learns to type so she can make a dictionary Barnes & Noble releases new audiobooks apps for iphone and android Ad-hoc committee recommends removal of The Namesake from school reading list Lost Edith Wharton short story found

-record scratch- You’re probably wondering how I got here. Why am I not a normal reader? What does picking out something to read feel like such an intimidating task that I need to psych myself up and put myself in the right headspace? Well, we start with a kid who loves reading, and we end with an adult who has built their life around books to the extent that reading has become a minefield of expectations and guilt....

The Enneagram consists of nine personality types. Each type is defined by its core desire and core fear. Just for fun, here are the probable Enneagram types of one hundred famous authors. Type 1 – The Reformer Ones are driven by their desire to be good and their fear of being corrupt or evil. They tend to have strong ethics, high standards, and, if healthy, a propensity for fighting for justice....

That’s far from the case. Old School Pronoun Language historians trace the use of a singular “they” all the way back to the late 14th century. When the subject of a sentence is both non-specific and quantifiable, “they” has always been appropriate in the singular. Some examples: If a professor catches you cheating, they will certainly give you a failing grade. I called for a plumber. They should be here in an hour....

At Tablet Hotels, A Reading List for Lovers of Travel At Abe Books, 7 Erotica Books That Are Actually Good At Wired’s “GeekDad,” Princess-Free Stories At LitReactor, Top 10 Mad Scientists of Literature At Flavorwire: 10 of the Weirdest Children’s Book Authors of All Time At NPR, Nancy Pearl Unearths Great Summer Reads At Terrible Minds, 25 Reasons You Should Quit Writing At Spotify, A Playlist of All the Songs Mentioned in Patti Smith’s JUST KIDS At The Huffington Post, 9 Fantastic Prep School Novels At The 99%, 7 Types of Creative Block (and What to Do About Them) At The Barnes & Noble Review, 5 Books for Graduates At Kirkus Reviews, Top 10 Fantasy Novels by Female Authors At Jezebel, 15 Thought-Provoking Questions to Ask at Book Club and…....

These boxes in the corner are called…corner boxes, logically enough, and they’re a longstanding comics tradition that has mostly vanished these days. But how did they get started in the first place, and where did they go? To understand the point of the corner box, you need to picture comics being sold not on the beautifully spread-out display racks of your local comic book store — and certainly not online — but on newsstands and in spinner racks....

Insurmountable Messes Every Single Day I’m living my own version of Groundhog’s Day: I clean up the impossible mess my son has made after he has gone to sleep, only to have him ransack every single room within moments of waking the next morning. His enchantment with books has only exacerbated this process now. I’ve never made my bookshelves off-limits to him because I want him to know that knowledge and stories will always be accessible to him, he just has to keep growing for them to continue to be within reach....

Most of the time, rather than dwelling on this bookish conundrum, I just accept the paradox. But recently, I was presented with an interesting idea: speed reading. Although the concept has been around for a while, if you search for it on Google, you’ll find plenty of recently published articles, seminars, and videos about how speed reading can help you read more of the thousands of books published each year in addition to all of the content that pops up on our devices every day....

Natasha is a logical, analytical, sometimes cynical girl. She loves facts and doesn’t believe in fate. Especially since her family in being deported to Jamaica in twelve hours. Daniel is a poet with his head in the clouds sometimes. He is a first generation Korean American and keeps his poetry to himself in order to live up to his parents high expectations. Then he meets a girl. Possibly the girl of his dreams....

But in reality, this resurgence of interest started back in 2014 with the Party Games and continued with 2018’s Return to Fear Street trilogy of books that started with You May Now Kill the Bride. I do not mind admitting that I squealed like a teenager when I saw it, because that was my childhood coming back to life. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that Fear Street has been around as long as it has....

New Teen Titans was published from 1980 to 1984, at which point it was renamed Tales of the Teen Titans and continued under that title. Meanwhile, the title New Teen Titans was given to a new series and started numbering over again from Issue One. A little confusing, maybe, but a milestone nonetheless: the series is still regarded as one of Pérez’s greatest accomplishments. In partnership with writer Marv Wolfman, he took a group of young crime-fighters called the Teen Titans — whose previous series, Teen Titans, had been axed two years earlier after some extremely weird storylines — and rebooted them into the powerhouse they are today....

Thank you. Reading slumps are literally the worst. Whether it’s because you get too busy to read, or because you keep flipping through books that just aren’t that great, it sucks to not be reading. For me it was more the first one. And trust me, I do my best to read whenever and wherever I can. But sometimes, life is unavoidable. But then you came along. You were long enough to sink my teeth into....

Favorite Poems Rainn Wilson, Raymond Antrobus, and Wesley Schultz of the Lumineers were among those who took to Twitter to share selections of Oliver’s work. This led to our Twitter feeds becoming a beautiful sample of Oliver’s direct, unflinching voice. — RainnWilson (@rainnwilson) January 18, 2019 — Raymond Antrobus (@RaymondAntrobus) January 19, 2019 — The Lumineers (@thelumineers) January 19, 2019 Reflections and Retrospectives Considering the breadth of her literary influence and legacy, it is no surprise that some writers took up their pens as tributes to Mary Oliver....

I was elated; reading has been the only consistent hobby I’ve held throughout my entire life, and as an immigrant who still struggles with the language at times, working with books in a Dutch-speaking bookshop was not something I had expected to be given a chance to do. But I was given that chance, and I got to experience it across challenging times. I still like selling books very much....

The book is edited by veteran game developer Jennifer Brandes Hepler (probably best known for her work as a writer at BioWare on the Dragon Age series of video games), and contains 22 personal essays from a wide range of contributors. Each of these women work in different facets of game development, including writers, engineers, technical artists, designers, producers, CEOs, and everything in between. In the space of a short chapter, each of these women speak about how they first fell in love with video games, how they broke into the industry–and how they managed, or didn’t manage, to stay there....

The book sparked a bidding war between several publishers, ending with a $15 million deal from Simon & Schuster that is one of the biggest of all time, next to the Obamas’. The deal announcement comes on the heels of Britney Spears’s lawyer sending a cease and desist letter to Jamie Lynn Spears for her book’s depiction of Britney. Britney Spears has also posted on Instagram, about her experience during the conservatorship: “Lord have mercy on my family’s souls if I ever do an interview....

“A searing tale of predator and prey, transgression and redemption and the immutable power of the truth. An utter triumph!”- Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Paris From the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling novel, The Alice Network, comes a fascinating new historical novel about a battle-haunted English journalist and a Russian female bomber pilot who join forces to track the Huntress, a Nazi war criminal gone to ground in America....

at Autostraddle: 60 Queer and Feminist Books Coming Your Way in Summer 2020 at Bookshop.org: Antiracist Reading List at Bustle: Books About Race In Britain To Add To Your Anti-Racist Reading List at Buzzfeed: 23 Phenomenal Young Adult Books By Black Authors From The First Half Of 2020 at Electric Lit: Fiction By Contemporary Black Authors About Navigating White Supremacy at Epic Reads: 17 New YA Books by Black Authors to Support—Now and Always at Electric Lit: 7 True Stories About the Journey to Seek Asylum in the U....

School boards are by design nonpartisan*, so this push for outspoken conservative candidates outlining their political agendas not only disrespects the purpose of boards but it undermines the value that school boards have for ensuring a school is utilizing taxpayer money to represent the whole of a community. What does a school board do and what are their responsibilities? It’s a little challenging to understand, especially during this era of unrepentant censorship and misinformation campaigns spearheaded by politically aligned candidates who purposefully want to change their purpose....

Well, it turns out I’m not the only one who wants to know! A recent post on Reddit asked these questions and got more than a few answers. Based on the responses, my own reading experience, and some feedback from friends, I’ve compiled a list of the different types of inner narrators. When we read, there are many factors at play. Some people see the words on the page and read it in their own voice....