For diehard fans of the Game of Thrones books, the past few years have been... frustrating, to say the least. The last entry in the Song of Fire and Ice series, A Dance with Dragons, hit shelves nearly seven years ago. The plot of the award-winning…

No matter the subject — or the intended audience — J.K. Rowling, perhaps better known, in this instance, as crime author Robert Galbraith, is an expert at world building. Even if the world is the seedy underbelly of contemporary London and not…

The power of the National Book Awards rests in its simple mission: to honor the best books in America. Now in its 68th year, the National Book Awards honor the brightest in fiction, nonfiction, young people's literature, poetry, and works in…

It's the bookworm dream: being able to cruise through multiple books at the same time. I mean, not literally at the same time. But to be like Rory Gilmore, with a bus book and a lunch book and a book of poems when you're in a poetry kind of mood and…

Extreme opulence, drama, family drama, romance and then also more drama — Crazy Rich Asians has all the makings of a summer blockbuster, and based on its opening day success, it seems like we've got a winner on our hands. But if you're a consummate…

Last week, during a much-needed, 48-hour trip to the beach, I pulled out a book I'd been saving for just such an occasion: Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians, the blockbuster of a book whose film adaptation is set to hit screens any day. And as I opened…

While the origins of National Book Lovers Day are shrouded in mystery, the observation guidelines are pretty clear. On August 9, bookworms across the world take a moment to emerge from behind their book covers, log onto social media and talk all…

There are those who read, and those who love to chat about what they read. For the latter demographic, it can be tough when it feels like you're the only one in your friend group who loves to talk books. But hark, and listen: Here we are, in the new…

National Small Press Month may have passed us by several months ago, but my love for independent publishers is a year-round obsession. It's no secret that there's a diversity problem within the mainstream book world. White editors select white…

At the heart of the United States' current immigration firestorm lies the myth of the American identity, which certain factions claim to be stalwart, never-changing, never-shifting. But the finalists for a new literary award honoring immigrant…

If you ever find yourself combing through the library stacks in search of a book of folktales, you should know it won't be found next to your favorite novel. Fairy tales and folklore are not classified as "fiction" in the Dewey Decimal system, the…

It was summertime in Georgia when Chels Harvey discovered fan fiction. Harvey, then 10 years old, was spending the season cooped up at home while their mother worked. On one lazy afternoon, as their brother digitally tromped through Neopets.com,…

True crime has always been popular, but it seems to have become wildly popular genre over the last few years. Every week, it seems, a new true crime movie is added to the Netflix queue and every week, I find myself gazing, glassy-eyed at the screen.…

I can still remember opening to the first page of Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects nearly three years ago. Within a handful of hours, I'd burned through most of the book, pulled in deep by the voice of Camille Preaker, the protagonist and narrator of…

Three years ago, Kamila Shamsie published a call to arms in The Guardian: The writer challenged the publishing world as a whole to publish books penned exclusively by women for a whole year. That year? 2018. And while most publishers did not pick up…

There are books that are scary — maybe they have a ghost, or a witch, or a zombie, and when you read them late at night, alone, they give you the chills. And then there are the books that are straight up terrifying. The ones that get under your…

As soon as the calendar pages swish to June, it feels like a collective voice erupts, shouting, "It's PRIDE, baby!" For those who identify as the "A" of the LGBTQA spectrum — A for "asexual" and "aromantic" — there is an extreme lack of visibility…

The lobby of the suburban Cleveland JCC smelled like chlorine and Lemon Pledge and sun. It was early in the morning, and as I waited to be called into my interview for a camp counselor position, where I would ultimately spend the summer wrangling…

This fall, a new tome of poetry may be hitting the shelves — but its author, Ursula K. Le Guin, will never witness its debut. Le Guin, the prolific writer who passed away in January 2018, was a visionary creator - and now her final work, a poetry…

We're all familiar with comfort foods — snacks that bring back a memory, that taste good, that lift our moods no matter how awful a day we've had. But for lit nerds, there is also the small, deeply loved collection of "comfort reads" — the books…