May 21

Cold Killing by Luke Delaney (William Morrow)

The debut novel in a terrifying London-based thriller series featuring D.I. Sean Corrigan, who becomes ensnared in an increasingly dangerous psychological game with a killer.

After a young man is found brutally murdered in his own flat, D.I. Sean Corrigan, responsible for one of South London’s Murder Investigation Units, takes on the case. At first it appears to be a straightforward domestic murder, but immediately Corrigan suspects it is much more and it soon becomes clear he is hunting a particularly clever and ruthless serial killer who changes his modus operandi each time he kills, leaving no useable forensic evidence behind…

Then by Morris Gleitzman (Square Fish)

Felix and Zelda have escaped the death camp train, but where do they go now? They’re two runaway kids in Nazi-occupied Poland. Danger lies at every turn of the road. With the help of a woman named Genia and their active imaginations, Felix and Zelda find a new home and begin to heal, forming a new family together. But can it last? Morris Gleitzman’s winning characters will tug at readers’ hearts as they struggle to survive in the harsh political climate of Poland in 1942. Their lives are difficult, but they always remember what matters: family, love, and hope.

Apocalypse Cow by Michael Logan (St. Martin’s Griffin)
Forget the cud. They want blood.

It began with a cow that just wouldn’t die. It would become an epidemic that transformed Britain’s livestock into sneezing, slavering, flesh-craving four-legged zombies. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the fate of the nation seems to rest on the shoulders of three unlikely heroes: an abattoir worker whose love life is non-existent thanks to the stench of death that clings to him, a teenage vegan with eczema and a weird crush on his maths teacher, and an inept journalist who wouldn’t recognize a scoop if she tripped over one.As the nation descends into chaos, can they pool their resources, unlock a cure, and save the world?

Three losers. Overwhelming odds. One outcome . . .Yup, we’re screwed.

Eat the City by Robin Shulman (Broadway)

Beneath the urban shell of New York City is an uprising of local farmers and producers. While the city has historically been a center of food production, the rural, folksy traditions of making beer, planting heirloom vegetable gardens, and cultivating honey are not easily associated with New York’s fast-paced lifestyle. But it is happening, in dimly lit kitchens and vacant lots across the boroughs. Here, the good food movement thrives; its legacy is extensive and as varied as the people who champion its growth.In Eat the City, journalist Robin Shulman explores urban food production from both a historical and cultural perspective to elucidate the origins and history of this movement and why it is so important environmentally, culturally, and socially.

Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye (Vintage)

The story of three women who say no: Norah, a French-born lawyer who finds herself in Senegal, summoned by her estranged father to save another victim of his paternity; Fanta, who leaves a contented life as a teacher in Dakar to follow her boyfriend back to France, where his depression and dislocation poison everything; and Khady, a penniless widow put out by her husband’s family with nothing but the name of a distant cousin in France. As these three lives intertwine, each woman manages an astonishing feat of self-preservation against those who have made themselves the fastest-growing and most-reviled people in Europe. In Marie NDiaye’s stunning narration we see the progress by which ordinary women discover unimagined reserves of strength.

Transparent by Natalie Whipple (HarperTeen)

An invisible girl is a priceless weapon. Fiona O’Connell’s father is a powerful crime lord in Las Vegas, and he’s been forcing her to do his dirty work-stealing cars, robbing banks, and spying on people-since she was five years old. Fiona’s had enough, so she and her mom flee to a small town to try and build a normal life. But her dad isn’t going to let her escape without a fight….

With its contemporary setting and spot-on teen voice, Natalie Whipple’s debut novel is a witty and utterly relatable tale of friendship, family, and romance-with an irresistible paranormal twist.

Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury USA)

Headstrong, high-spirited, and already widowed, Isabella Walker became Mrs. Henry Robinson at age thirty-one in 1844. A successful civil engineer, her husband moved their family to Edinburgh’s elegant society in 1850. But Henry traveled often and was cold and remote when home, leaving Isabella to her fantasies. No doubt thousands of Victorian women faced the same circumstances, but Isabella recorded her passionate innermost thoughtsand especially her infatuation with a married Dr. Edward Lanein her diary. One fateful day, Henry chanced on the diary. Aghast at his wifes perceived infidelity, he petitioned for divorce on the grounds of adultery. Until that year, divorce had been illegal in England, the marital bond being a cornerstone of English life. Their trial would be a cause celebre, and her diary, read in court, was as explosive as FlaubertsMadame Bovary, just published in France but considered too scandalous to be translated into English until the 1880s.

The Double Game by Dan Fesperman (Vintage)

A few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, spook-turned-novelist Edwin Lemaster reveals to up-and-coming journalist Bill Cage that he’d once considered spying for the enemy. For Cage, a fan who grew up as a Foreign Service brat in the very cities where Lemaster set his plots, the story creates a brief but embarrassing sensation. More than two decades later, Cage, by then a lonely, disillusioned PR man, receives an anonymous note hinting that he should have dug deeper. Spiked with cryptic references to some of his and his father’s favorite old spy novels, the note is the first piece of a puzzle that will lead him back to Vienna, Prague, and Budapest in search of the truth, even as the events of Lemaster’s past eerily-and dangerously-begin intersecting with those of his own. Why is beautiful Litzi Strauss back in his life after thirty years? How much of his father’s job involved the CIA? Did Bill, as a child, become a pawn? As the suspense steadily increases, a long chain of secrets may finally be broken.

May 28

The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth (Balzer & Bray)

When Cameron Post’s parents die suddenly in a car crash, her shocking first thought is relief. Relief they’ll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl. But that relief doesn’t last, and Cam is forced to move in with her conservative aunt Ruth and her well-intentioned but hopelessly old-fashioned grandmother. She knows that from this point on, her life will forever be different. Survival in Miles City, Montana, means blending in and leaving well enough alone, and Cam becomes an expert at both.

Then Coley Taylor moves to town. Beautiful, pickup-driving Coley is a perfect cowgirl with the perfect boyfriend to match. She and Cam forge an unexpected and intense friendship, one that seems to leave room for something more to emerge. But just as that starts to seem like a real possibility, ultrareligious Aunt Ruth takes drastic action to “fix” her niece, bringing Cam face-to-face with the cost of denying her true self-even if she’s not quite sure who that is.

The Blue Blazes by Chuck Wendig (Angry Robot)

Meet Mookie Pearl.

Criminal underworld? He runs in it.

Supernatural underworld? He hunts in it.

Nothing stops Mookie when he’s on the job.

But when his daughter takes up arms and opposes him, something’s gotta give…

The Original 1982 by Lori Carson (William Morrow Paperbacks)

What if you could go back to a moment in time and change one crucial thing? How would your life be changed? In what ways would it be the same?

It’s 1982, and Lisa is twenty-four years old, a waitress, an aspiring singer-songwriter, and girlfriend to a famous Latin musician. That year, she makes a decision, almost without thinking about it. But what if what if her decision had been a different one? In the new 1982, Lisa chooses differently. Her career takes another direction. She becomes a mother. She loves differently, yet some things remain the same.

Alternating between two very different possibilities, The Original 1982 is a novel about how the choices we make affect the people we become-and about how the people we are affect the choices we make.

The Raft by S. A. Bodeen (Square Fish)

The harrowing story of a teen girl who is the sole survivor of a plane crash, and ends up stranded in the middle of the ocean. Is she alone? Robie, 16, lives with her family on the Midway atoll, a group of islands in the middle of the Pacific. After a visit to her aunt on Hawaii, Robie is left to return home alone. On her flight back to Midway the cargo plane hits nasty weather, and goes down. Robie is pulled aboard a raft by Max, who is injured and slipping in and out of consciousness. They have a bag of candy and very little water between them. Robie hopes they’ll be found quickly. But she’s not sure she was even on the flight manifest. Her parents must be looking for her…right?

The Year of the Gadfly by Jennifer Miller (Mariner Books) 

Storied, fiercely competitive Mariana Academy was founded with a serious honor code; its reputation has been unsullied for decades. Now a long-dormant secret society, Prisom’s Party, threatens its placid halls with vigilante justice, exposing students and teachers alike for even the most minor infraction.

Iris Dupont, a budding journalist whose only confidant is the chain-smoking specter of Edward R. Murrow, feels sure she can break into the ranks of The Devil’s Advocate, the Party’s underground newspaper, and there uncover the source of its blackmail schemes and vilifying rumors. Some involve the school’s new science teacher, who also seems to be investigating the Party. Others point to an albino student who left school abruptly ten years before, never to return. And everything connects to a rare book called Marvelous Species. But the truth comes with its own dangers, and Iris is torn between her allegiances, her reporter’s instinct, and her own troubled past.

Graveland by Alan Glynn (Picador)

On a bright Saturday morning, a Wall Street investment banker is shot dead while jogging in Central Park. Later that same night, one of the savviest hedge-fund managers in the city is gunned down outside a restaurant. Are these killings a coordinated terrorist attack, or just a coincidence? Investigative journalist Ellen Dorsey has a hunch they’re neither, and her obsessive attention to detail leads her to an unexpected conclusion. Days later, when an attempt is made on the life of another CEO, the story blows wide open—and Ellen’s theory is confirmed. Racing to stay ahead of the curve, she soon encounters Frank Bishop, a recession-hit architect, whose daughter’s disappearance is tied to the murders.

The Last Camellia by Sarah Jio (Plume)

On the eve of World War II, the last surviving specimen of a camellia plant known as the Middlebury Pink lies secreted away on an English country estate. Flora, an amateur American botanist, is contracted by an international ring of flower thieves to infiltrate the household and acquire the coveted bloom. Her search is at once brightened by new love and threatened by her discovery of a series of ghastly crimes.

More than half a century later, garden designer Addison takes up residence at the manor, now owned by the family of her husband, Rex. The couple’s shared passion for mysteries is fueled by the enchanting camellia orchard and an old gardener’s notebook. Yet its pages hint at dark acts ingeniously concealed. If the danger that Flora once faced remains very much alive, will Addison share her fate?

The Difficulty of Being by Jean Cocteau (Melville House)

By the time he published The Difficulty of Being in 1947, Jean Cocteau had produced some of the most respected films and literature of the twentieth century, and had worked with the foremost artists of his time, including Proust, Gide, Picasso and Stravinsky.

This memoir tells the inside account of those achievements and of his glittering social circle. Cocteau writes about his childhood, about his development as an artist, and the peculiarity of the artist’s life, about his dreams, friendships, pain, and laughter. He probes his motivations and explains his philosophies, giving intimate details in soaring prose. And sprinkled throughout are anecdotes about the elite and historic people he associated with.

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Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.

Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life—a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free. Wrenched from everything she knows, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling.

With darkness looming and an entire kingdom depending on her untamed power, Alina will have to confront the secrets of the Grisha…and the secrets of her heart.

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If you have to live in a scary land filled with monsters, you better hope for some magic to help you fight them off. Also, magic is just rad, and it would make the monster-ness a little less unpleasant, don’t you think? Harry Potter had to deal with Dementors and Death Eaters, but at least he had spells and wands to help him. For ast long as fiction has been a thing, it’s been filled with stories about seemingly ordinary people who discover their previously hidden powers to fight off the baddest big bads and save the world. Today we want to know: what are your favorite books about monsters and magic?

Please welcome to the show: Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, everyone!

See, I’m… well, there’s no other way to say this. I’m a fanatic. An obsessive. And like Mr. Hornby, my drug, the object of my lunacy, is a sports team comprised of individuals with whom I have no connection beyond temporary geographic proximity. His is Arsenal Football Club, mine is the University of Kentucky Men’s Basketball team.

I am passionate about a lot of other things too – books, of course, and films and music – but none of these other, I don’t know, hobbies or interests (the words sound pitiful when made to stand against ‘obsession,’ I grant you) occupy my mind – and, for better or worse, affect my happiness and sense of fulfillment – quite the way that sports, and UK basketball in particular, does on a day-in and day-out basis. “But the season’s only four months long” I can hear you saying. HA! What about the month of practice leading up to the season, when I ravenously devour any word of how new teammates are mixing in with the veterans? What about the coaches’ impressions of so-and-so’s mid-range jumper or passing ability from the high post? What about the spring and summer months, when I watch high-school all-star games and track recruits’ every dribble and shot (there’s a kid named Andrew Wiggins who you sane people probably haven’t heard of but whose name I know I haven’t gone a day without mentioning since at least December)?

The point is, I’m a fetishist, and if I didn’t live in an area densely populated by people like me (to one degree or another, anyway), I might be made to feel awkward about it. As it is, I have friends who are just as irrationally devoted to the team as I am, and these people go no small distance toward minimizing my self-consciousness (I’m sure there’s a psychologists’ term for the inherent dangers of just such a social arrangement). Crucially though, I also have Fever Pitch, which argues – as I have had to do – for the value of sports fandom and against the lie that anyone in possession of an intellect must deride sports as brainless escapism. One of the many reasons we read, after all, is to feel that we are not alone emotionally or intellectually, and Mr. Hornby’s book has been a refuge in that way. It provided me with a framework for more fully understanding this part of my being.

I hope you have a book like this, a book that makes you feel sane when other forces conspire to loosen your bearings, a book that values what you value, a book that makes you laugh and nod and gives you comfort. If you think that books don’t have the power to confer validation upon their readers, then I’m afraid we’ve had very different experiences. Because although of course validation comes from a dozen other places in my life, books have their own way of reaching those hard to scratch places right in the middle of my soul (sometimes when I don’t even know that there’s a place in need of a scratch) in a way few other things can. They are intensely personal in this way, these books, and one that speaks to me with power and clarity might sound tinny and distant to you. This exclusivity is one of the reasons they’re so powerful: it sometimes feels as though they were written with us in mind.

So here’s to the books that get everything right, that clarify and define and question and explain the parts of our world – and ourselves – that might remain otherwise mysterious to us. Here’s to Fever Pitch.

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Photo from No End to Books

That might be enough to make any lamp officially bookish, but there are ways you can make your lighting fixtures even more literary.

Lamp In a Box for example, offers inexpensive designs that run the bookish gamut, from Shakespeare to Captain America:

Photo from MyComicShop.com

But there are more inventive options, too, made from actual books. Like these amazing, sculptural lamps:

Photo from Booktagger Blog

Lamp by Michael Bom for Bomdesign. Photo from Lightpublic.

Poetic curl lamp from Ginkgo Studio. Photo from inhabit.

“A Bit of Light Reading,” by Lucy Norman. Photo from inhabit.

Artichoke Mixed Book Page Pendant Light, by Zipper8Lighting

Artichoke Colorful Cartoon Pendant Light, by Zipper8Lighting

Instructions on how to do this yourself are here.

If you want some encouragement to read more at night (because you’ll never sleep again), you could put this wonderfully creepy Edgar Allan Poe lamp at your bedside. Check out that skull!

Edgar Allan Poe lamp, by Christopher Darga. More information at CustomMade.com.

One-and-a-half billion people around the world still light their nights with kerosene, raising risks of injury and making it difficult to read or do schoolwork. So if you’re thinking of buying a bookish lamp for yourself, consider also making a donation to a group like Deciwatt, which has designed a low-cost, gravity-powered lamp that they’re distributing in Africa and India:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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LH: It’s already the middle of freaking May! *insert something witty about the passage of time here* Now, if you’re like me, and I’m pretty sure you are, sugar britches, I think a book you read during summer months = a summer read. It could be because summer is like any other season for me. Even those fishes found at the very bottom of the ocean are able to tan more than I do, so I hide inside with my books, away from the sun, which hates me (even though I think if it got to know me, we could hang.) So let’s talk about things we’re looking forward to reading in the next few months!

RJS: An excellent plan! I mostly don’t vary my reading by season, but I do sometimes gin up my courage and take my ginger self out into the sun, and when I do, I want a cocktail that’s cold and a book that’s hot. And hot can mean a lot of things. Mostly, I want the books I read during summer to be extra engaging and pageturner-y, and so much fun that I don’t notice I’m doing the work of reading. There are also some books that just feel like they’re meant to be read while you’re sweating it out in the sun. Know what I mean?

LH: I will start with The Magus by John Fowles, because I was just looking at it in the store, thinking, “I wish I could read this again for the first time.” Do not be intimidated by its size! It’s so sinister and fantastic. And it takes place on a hot Greek island. Sizzle and soak it in! Other delicious, sinister novels set during hot weather are The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan (I call it Magus Lite), and Disquiet by Julia Leigh.

RJS: My first sizzle and soak-it-in re-read of the summer (and of pretty much every summer) is James Salter’s A Sport and a Pastime. It’s excellent any time, but it’s extra-awesome on a really hot day, and it feels like the first time every time. Talk about summer lovin’! Now, for sinister, I have my eye on NOS4A2 by Joe Hill. I do love a bone-chilling read on a sweltering day.

LH: I rarely re-read books, because there are just so many others I haven’t read yet, but I have a list of favorites that I want to revisit some day. Topping that list is Just Like Beauty by Lisa Lerner. It takes place in future America, where mutant grasshoppers are eating up the land, groups of delinquent boys roam around with flame throwers, and teen girls are forced to participate in a beauty pageant, in which one of the talent requirements is arousing a blow-up doll. It’s so mad effed-up and awesome. And scathing. Imagine if Anne Tyler wrote a dystopian novel. That’s Just Like Beauty.

RJS: My list of re-reads is short too, for the same reason. But sometimes I get so hot and bothered about a book when I get it in pre-publication that I can’t wait to read it near the release date, so I read it once when it shows up at my house and again near release date so I can talk about with fresh eyes. Alissa Nutting’s debut novel Tampa (coming in July from Ecco) is one of those. Narrated in the first-person by a 20-something middle school teacher with a Humber Humbert-esque thing for 14-year-old boys, it is dark and twisty and steamy and scary and SO much fun to talk about. I read it a month or so ago, and I can’t wait to read it again in the middle of the summer.

LH: Sweet baby carrots, people are going to lose their minds over Tampa. There’s no denying that Alissa Nutting is a brilliant writer. I am looking forward to Kelly Braffet’s Save Yourself, which will be released in August. Early word is that it’s really wonderful. I have the ARC waiting for me, and I hope to get to it soon! I need about eighteen more hours in a day so I can get through my unread stacks of books. You understand – you’ve seen them.

RJS: I don’t know if you can even call those things stacks at this point. They’re more like mountains. Or walls! The actual walls of your apartment could crumble, and you might not know because the books are so solid. It’s a good problem to have, kitten. Another good problem to have? Reading a book that’s so awesome you can’t stop talking about it. J. Courtney Sullivan’s new novel The Engagements (due from Knopf on June 11) is that one for me right now. It’s about marriage (why some people want it desperately and others want it not at all), advertising (particularly how De Beers convinced the world that he doesn’t love you unless he buys you a big diamond), feminism, and family, and it is so super freaking good. I think it’s narrower and deeper than Sullivan’s previous smash-hit summer novel Maine, and it’s exactly the direction I was hoping to see her grow in.

LH: My last pick today is the second book in the Claire DeWitt series. I may have mentioned before that I am a Sarah Gran fangirl. I think she’s effing brilliant, and I think Claire DeWitt is the first formidable female detective of the 21st century. And as awesome as I thought the first book was, the second one is so mind-meltingly fantastic, I want to punch things out of pure joy. It’s called Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway and it comes out in June. Apply it directly to your eyeballs. Also: Here’s a photo of my friends’ daughter, Sam, picking out her own library books. So proud of her.

RJS: Only one pick left! I have no idea how to choose. I guess I’ll go with Neil Gaiman’s new novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane, due out June 18th. I’ve never read him before (I know, I know), and I’m taking the occasion of this publication as the final nudge to pop my Gaiman cherry. I’m going to light candles and put on Marvin Gaye and get it on with a bunch Neil Gaiman. His books, I mean. Not a bunch of him. I don’t want Amanda Palmer to beat me up, and you know she totally could. We’d better wrap this up before I get myself into any more hot water. See you on the beach, babes.

Shout it out, friends! What sizzlicious summer reads do you have your eyes on?

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We hear from readers all the time who want to read Virginia Woolf but don’t know where to start, so it’s only fitting that we should wrap up our series of awesome START HERE giveaways with this 14-book set of Woolf’s work from the good folks at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

To enter, just share the link to the Kickstarter campaign on Facebook, Twitter, and your other social networks of choice. Getting the word out is crucial for making START HERE, Vol. 2 a reality, and we’re willing to reward you for helping us do it! After you’ve shared the link–be sure to tag Book Riot in your tweets and Facebook posts–leave a comment here to enter. Entries accepted until the Kickstarter closes at 11:59pm Eastern, Friday, May 24th. One winner will be randomly selected. Good luck!

Here’s the full list of titles the winner will receive:

Mrs. Dalloway

To the Lighthouse

Orlando

A Room of One’s Own

The Common Reader

The Voyage Out

Between the Acts

A Writer’s Diary

Flush

Jacob’s Room

Moments of Being

The Waves

Three Guineas

The Years

First off, let’s run down the list of what makes a work Luhrmann-daptable.

1.) Drugs- Or a very emotionally fraught or physically grueling situation that makes you act like you’re on drugs.

2.) Parties- You got to have one great party in your story if Luhrmann is even going to think about laying one of his glitter-dusted fingers on your work. It’s preferable that every scene in your entire book/play is some version of a party.

3.) A Love Story That’s Going to End So Badly- The more jacked up your ending is, the better.

4.) An Anachronistic Soundtrack- If you make him use period appropriate music, Luhrmann walks.

5.) Sparkle and Histrionics Everywhere- If your book doesn’t have much in the way of this, never fear, Luhrmann will gladly bring his own

6.) At Least ONE Great Death, If Not Eight- It’s got to be on par with an R&J double suicide or Nicole Kidman consumption-ing away until she’s just a pile of tuberculosis glitter. Nothing else will do!

7.) A Sundry List of Other Things He Likes: Swimming pools, inappropriate 3D, roles for Leonardo DiCaprio. 

And now a list of adaptations Luhrmann should seriously consider doing next.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Riot bosses Jeff O’Neal and Rebecca Schinsky pitched this because they are the smartest around. This is a PERFECT Luhrmann adaptation. I don’t want to give too much away for Rioters who haven’t read (if you haven’t read WHAT have you been waiting for? Get on that train right now and don’t come back until you’ve ridden it to the last stop!) I will say there’s a small liberal arts college, accidental and intentional murders, and a MODERN BACCHANAL.

Hollywood’s been trying to make this book work on the big screen since it was published. Luhrmann, wave your magical, cubic zirconia-encrusted fingers and make it happen!

Role for Leonardo DiCaprio- Professor Julian Morrow… I guess? This might be a wash. However, Luhrmann can use the Teen Leo Doppelganger who played Young Gatsby in like four of the college dude roles. Consolation prize!

Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laceless

This French epistolary novel is a match made in Luhrmann heaven. Check it. Pre-Revolution French Aristocracy being psychotically mean to each other. Pre-Revolution French Aristocracy means parties like whoa-nelly. And it means costumes like whoa-whoa-nelly. A love story that’s going to end SO badly AND a great death! Bam bam bam!

Role for Leonardo DiCaprio- Valmont, of course!

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Luhrmann, you’re not allowed to Americanize this. You’re maybe not allowed to make this in English. And you’re definitely not allowed to have Leonardo DiCaprio in this adaptation. But you should still for sure do it. Because this book is a madhouse of psychic prostitutes, sociopath teen girls, magical blue face marks, disappearing and reappearing cats and wives, and a Mongolian who might actually be scarier than Atilla the Hun. How can you NOT?

Role for Leonardo DiCaprio- None, he can produce this one like Jay-Z produced Gatsby. It’s going to be okay, Leo, you will Luhrm-act again, I promise you.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

No parties, no drugs, no sparkle for King of the Magpies Luhrman. There’s death. But there’s mostly Puritans and symbolism. So what gives? What gives is I think Hawthorne could USE a little more Luhrmann. Blasphemy, I know, whatever, this book bored me so much in school I almost ate the pages just to make it more interesting.

Role for Leonardo DiCaprio- Dimmesdale, obvs.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

This is actually what Luhrmann is eyeing next. And I get it. EVERYONE DIES. There’s the role to end all roles for DiCaprio. And the DEAD DAD PLAY WITHIN A PLAY. You guys, THE DEAD DAD PLAY. THE DEAD DAD PLAY IN 3D. Also ghosts. Win!

Role for Leonardo DiCaprio- Hamlet! Which will either be the best or worst thing ever. If we’re all very lucky boys and girls it will be the best AND worst thing ever.

So what do you guys think Luhrmann should adapt next? Don’t be lame and say “nothing,” if you don’t want to play, just don’t play!

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The only type of paid review that Amazon supports is an editorial review. An editorial review is a more formal evaluation of a book usually written by an editor or expert within a genre, but can also be written by family and friends. If you have received an editorial review of your book that you’d like to post to the Editorial Review section of your book’s detail page, please visit our Author Central Help Page.

This is a weird little part of Amazon’s review policy. Editorial reviews written by family and friends can be submitted for the editorial review section, but are not allowed in the customer review section. Odd.

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The publisher suggests that customers pay $10 for the download, but there is a drop down option to pay other amounts including: nothing, $2, $5, $25, $50 or $100.

Brave. Hope it works out for them.

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“[T]he launch of the pay model is the most important and most successful business decision made by The New York Times in many years. We have around 700,000 paid digital subscribers across the company’s products so far and a new nine-figure revenue stream that is still growing.”

Gotta ask yourself, though, how many other successful business decisions has the NYT made recently. Still, good for them.

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Amis is one of the finest stylists alive, but I thought “Lionel Asbo” was a bad novel. A really bad novel. In fact, my review of “Lionel Asbo” was a finalist for the Hatchet Job — a prize given for the most negative book review of the year. And yet, on the new paperback — on thefront cover, no less — appears this ringing endorsement from The Washington Post: “Amis is a force unto himself. . . . There is, quite simply, no one else like him.”

All true. But caveat emptor. That line is drawn from a review of “London Fields” that my colleague Jonathan Yardley wrote . . . 23 years ago.

This is pretty embarrassing stuff from the publisher.

Here are a few things I’d like to to tell my own students on the occasion of their graduation. Maybe a little more muted than most administrations would like, but it’s advice I myself would have liked to have heard at 22 (and am trying to remind myself of at 35).

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At this moment, you are more open-minded than you will ever be again. As you get older, your interests might deepen, but the range will almost certainly narrow. Fight this as hard as you can.

Over the next decade, you will probably be able to count on one hand the number of times you will sit in a room with people that are not your friends and talk about ideas. Find ways to have conversations with people who don’t think like you do.

Most of you will try to hold on to your youth for the next 10-20 years. The longer you try, the more painful and hindering it will be. Nothing ages you faster than trying to be something you are not.

You will never feel like you know what you are doing, so don’t wait for it.

Outside of your small circle of family and close friends, no one cares what you wear, what you do, what you read, or what you watch. This can be both liberating and terrifying. Choose liberating.

The more you enjoyed your time here, the more the memory of it will sting.

You were taught principally by people who have no idea how business works, though most of you will spend your professional lives outside of academia.

The difficulties ahead of you will make what you have faced to this point seem trivial.

It is easy to make decisions about your life without even knowing you are making them. You will regret the decisions you did not make a hell of a lot more than the decisions you knew you were making.

You don’t deserve anything. Your passion, effort, and creativity may not pay off. But you still have to try.

The things you care strongly about now might mean nothing to you in five years. And that’s OK. You haven’t failed or given up. You will just care about different things.

The pursuit and maintenance of health insurance will govern far more of your life than art.

Do not think that because you dated a lot in college you have any idea what it means to be in a healthy relationship. Most of this education is still in front of you.

What you will turn out to be will probably not bear much resemblance to what you thought you would be. Try not to mourn this overmuch.

If you pay attention and exert enormous effort, you might be able to mitigate some of your flaws, but this will be an on-going effort.

There are exponentially more possibilities than you can imagine.

Your favorite song right now is likely to be your favorite song for the rest of your life.

Favorite songs will matter to you less and less.

If there is an art to living, it is knowing when to be hard on yourself and when to go easy on yourself. This is more difficult than it seems.

The small patch of understanding and meaning you can create for yourself will be the anchor of your happiness. Grow and guard it.

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Storied, fiercely competitive Mariana Academy was founded with a serious honor code; its reputation has been unsullied for decades. Now a long-dormant secret society, Prisom’s Party, threatens its placid halls with vigilante justice, exposing students and teachers alike for even the most minor infraction.

Iris Dupont, a budding journalist whose only confidant is the chain-smoking specter of Edward R. Murrow, feels sure she can break into the ranks of The Devil’s Advocate, the Party’s underground newspaper, and there uncover the source of its blackmail schemes and vilifying rumors. Some involve the school’s new science teacher, who also seems to be investigating the Party. Others point to an albino student who left school abruptly ten years before, never to return. And everything connects to a rare book called Marvelous Species. But the truth comes with its own dangers, and Iris is torn between her allegiances, her reporter’s instinct, and her own troubled past.

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We asked you to share your favorite stories of campus life, and you came up with quite the list.  Take a look, and let us know if we’re missing anything.

Pnin and Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy

The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies

Looking for Alaska by John Green

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling

All That Sparkles Isn’t Real Sapphire by Daisy Jordan

Tam Lin by Pamela Dean

 Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

Straight Man by Richard Russo

Moo by Jane Smiley

Campus Trilogy by David Lodge

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

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The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan (Knopf, on sale date June 11, 2013)

This book is an iteration of the technique where a book follows a number of different stories that turn out to be linked. In this novel, the common thread is a particular antique diamond ring. The stories connected by the ring are interwoven with the snapshots from the life of Frances Gerety, the advertising copywriter responsible for penning marriage’s most famous tagline, “A Diamond is Forever.”

The Engagements sounds potentially saccharine - like a novelized version of several people’s wedding Pinterest boards - but it isn’t. These happily-ever-afters involve a healthy dose of realistic imperfection. The questions raised by the relationship of marriage traditions and advertising are interesting and will prod you gently to think, but don’t overshadow the story. Parts of this novel are better than others, but the good parts range into excellent and the weaker parts are never awful. This book won’t change your life, but it’ll entertain you if you let it.

Verdict: Buy if this subject matter is your jam. Otherwise, borrow.

Trains and Lovers by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon, U.S. sale date June 11, 2013)

The premise: four strangers in a train compartment strike up a conversation and end up trading stories about love. The reader jumps between the characters’ minds, experiencing each of their stories through their own eyes as well as through the minds of their listeners. The love stories are quietly lovely, varied, and vivid, but the book as a whole reads more like several short stories tied together rather than a novel. The characters don’t seem to grow from sharing their experiences with each other, and only one of them gains any new insight from telling is story out loud. It’s still an enjoyable read, but for it to be more than that I would have needed to see the characters disembark the train as subtlety different people than who they were when they boarded.

Verdict: Borrow.

Astor Place Vintage by Stephanie Lehmann (Touchstone, on sale date June 11, 2013)

Astor Place Vintage tells the stories of Amanda, a vintage clothing store owner who discovers a diary in an antique fur muff, and Olive, the long-ago girl who once hid her diary for safekeeping. According to the book summary, reading Olive’s diary is supposed to teach Amanda valuable lessons about her own life, but that’s not evident from the text. The connection between the stories never really expands beyond a series of forced-feeling coincidences and the characters themselves aren’t dynamic enough to carry the story. The one subplot that really grabbed me was Olive’s quest for accurate information about sex and contraception in the early 1900’s; I found the variation of misinformation she encountered and the depth of the taboos she challenged fascinating. Unfortunately, this was a minor part of the novel.

Verdict: Bypass.

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Exterior of the Fairy Castle
Image by Kthypryn

Earlier this month, Derek wrote about The Smallest Book in the World (and Other Really Little Books). Everyone loves the charm of miniature books, but a few collectors have taken this love above and beyond to create some of the most unique and valuable libraries in the world.

That’s right, I’m talking about doll house libraries. In the 1920s, two women created doll houses so fantastic they’ve both been described as invaluable. But among the many tiny treasures in each house, the library collections are the most unique.

Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle

A silent film star, Moore started building her fairy castle in the late ’20s with the help of an actual architect and contractor. It has running faucets, electricity, and themed rooms for all of Moore’s favorite fairy tale characters. The star of the Fairy Castle, though—at least as far as we’re concerned—is the library, which contains over 150 miniature books, including original works by writers such as George Bernard Shaw and Edgar Rice Burroughs, written in the authors’ own hand.

The library in Moore’s Fairy Castle.
Image by kthypryn

Originally the library consisted entirely of antique books dating from the 18th- and 19th-centuries, including the world’s smallest printed Bible, a gift from one of Moore’s costars. But Moore sought to expand her collection, and had numerous 1-inch bound books made up, which she then sent to famous writers in the hopes they would contribute some of their own work. The list of writers who accepted Moore’s challenge is a who’s-who of early 20th century literature: Agatha Christie, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Aldous Huxley, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, Daphne du Maurier, Edgar A. Guest, and John Steinbeck, just to name a few. Some, like Fitzgerald, transcribed a few lines from their previously published work; others, like Edna Ferber, wrote a simple thank you along with their signature. But a few authors wrote whole, original stories, like Shaw’s wildly spelled story (he would get a kick out of LOLcats, I’m thinking) about a fairy prince and “prissess,” and her struggle to afford a new lace gown. Pretty heavy stuff for a 1-inch book! Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote “Tarzan, Jr.,” a multi-chapter story illustrated by John Coleman Burroughs about a little Princess who disobeys her mama and goes into the forbidden forest.

These images of “Tarzan, Jr.” are used with permission from ERBzine:

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

Image by llee_wu.

Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House

Even more impressive is the library in Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House, which Stephen Gaselee called, “a miniature picture of English literature in the nineteen-twenties.” Unlike Moore’s Fairy Castle, Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House was created with a nationalistic sensibility. Started in 1921 and finished in 1924, what originally started as plaything for the Queen to display her collection of miniatures became a symbol of Britain’s recovery from World War I. Over 1500 people were employed in its creation, including 600 writers, from all corners of the British Empire.

The Queen’s Dolls’ House was actually the brainchild of Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein, King George V’s cousin and a childhood friend of Queen Mary, and it was she who became the Doll’s House unofficial librarian, sending out hundreds of personal requests to authors to contribute to the project as well as creating the library’s catalog. The list of authors whose work is housed in Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House library is truly dizzying. Unlike Moore’s library, the vast majority of books contributed are original works written specifically for the House, including “How Watson Learned the Trick” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “Meditations of a Refugee” by Max Beerbohm, “A Tragedy in Outline” by Anthony Hope, and “The Haunted Dolls’ House” by MR James. Two of my favorite olde-timey writers, GK Chesterton and Edith Wharton, both contributed poems; and John Buchan, William J Locke, Edmund Blunden, Siegfried Sassoon, and Sir Philip Gibbs all wrote pieces about WWI.

Image via Pinterest.

It wasn’t just fiction that earned a place in the Dolls’ House: famed surgeon Sir John Bland-Sutton wrote “Principles of Dolls’ Surgery” (rather gruesome); the woman who oversaw the creation of the House’s garden, horticulturalist Gertrude Jekyll, wrote “The Book of the Garden,” which is placed in the garden (so meta, you guys); and her sister, Agnes Jekyll, the very first food columnist for The Times, oversaw the stocking of the House’s kitchen and wrote “The Dolls’ House Cookery Book,” which advises brioche with hot chocolate and whipped cream for breakfast, and Chelsea buns with Russian ice made of blackcurrant leaves for tea parties. I don’t what either of those things are, but they sound delicious. And in every book in the House is an itty-bitty bookplate designed by Ernest Shepard and inscribed MR (for Mary Regina) Ex Libris.

These doll house libraries are fascinating not just because of the books they contain, but because of the leap of imagination and curiosity both books and doll houses require. You can’t enter a doll’s house, but you can picture yourself inside, or perhaps envision miniature residents who have stepped out for a few hours and might return any minute. Likewise, books can take you to other places or give you a peek at others’ lives. Unfortunately, that potential is lost on both of these libraries, as the vast majority of their books have never even been opened, let alone read.

There is, however, one book that’s an exception–the Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House library’s most famous volume, a book of verses by “Fougasse,” the celebrated cartoonist who was an editor at Punch Magazine. It has been printed in life-size under the title J. Smith and you can not only read it, but own it for your personal library.
Further Reading:

• The Queen’s Dolls’ House by Lucinda Lambton (Royal Collection, 2010)
• Within the Fairy Castle (Museum of Science and Industry, 2010)
• ERBzine: Tarzan, Jr.
• Daily Mail: Tiny Children’s Book Hand Drawn for Queen Mary’s Doll’s House to be Published in Human Size
• The Royal Collection: Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House
• Museum of Science and Industry: Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle

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Words on the page aren’t the only place this is happening. “Turning the tables,” an exhibition currently on display in Urbana, Illinois, is artist Eszter Sápi’s playful efforts to reclaim and rethink the myths and tales she grew up with. Sápi’s drawings aren’t books, but they do offer us a useful opportunity to think through the tools and methods authors use when they reimagine folk and fairy tales. After seeing Sápi’s show, my way of thinking about what authors like Téa Obreht or Marjane Satrapi are doing has shifted. So I thought I’d share some of her work here, in hopes that it might spark something in you, as well.

Sápi was raised in Nyíregyháza, Hungary, and almost every night, right around bedtime, she sat down in front of the TV to watch the animated versions of traditional Hungarian folk tales that aired on national television. “For the longest time, they tricked me,” she remembers. They taught her that women’s pleasure was frightening, that economic inequality was natural, that violence was a just tool of the powerful.

But now, years later, a lesbian artist living in Illinois, Sápi is revisiting these tales, rereading and reimaging them in peculiar ways. Sápi’s drawings pull characters out of context, taking them out of the stories that made violence and inequality seem inevitable. Rearranging and recontextualizing the characters, she both disrupts and opens up the stories, revealing the strange, queer themes that had been hiding there all along.

For example, a lot of the old folk tales were, as she puts it, “pretty kinky.” Indeed, spanking and whipping appear again and again in the stories she grew up with. But where consensual fun is one thing, coersive violence is another. So, in several of the drawings in her new show, Sápi takes an iconic scene—of castle guards being tricked into taking a whipping

From an animation you can watch here.

—and decontextualizes some elements and repeats others. Here’s a powerful example:

Drawing and photograph by Eszter Sápi

There’s a tension here that’s central to many reimaginings of folk tales and fairy tales, between the momentum of the story and the possibilities of its retelling. In the top three lines, the figure with the switch strikes and strikes but never hits, the repetition emphasizes the violence but at the same time highlights its futility. And below, the traditional object of the whipping lowers his pants, but, at a distance from the switch, he reads less complacent and more, well, cheeky.

This is, I now better understand, what authors do when they take a familiar tale and reinterpret it: they rearrange characters and plots, creating gaps and spaces where there didn’t seem to be any distance, any reprieve, any uncertainty. The princess no longer must marry the prince, the war no longer must produce a hero, the dead no longer keep to their graves—contingency and possibility erupt on the page and something new is built of old bones.

In another drawing, Sápi takes on another common feature of the folk tales: exposed female bodies. In tale after tale, women were tricked into disrobing or were bent over for a spanking or used nudity to convince kings to give them treasures. (As Sápi muttered at one point during the opening of her show, “That’s a lot of nudity to watch with your family when you’re a kid.”) In this piece, Sápi excavates joy—look at that grin!—and power from the tales’ often troubling depictions of women:

Work and photograph by Eszter Sápi

Like Gail Carson Levine or Marion Zimmer Bradley, Sápi confronts head-on the often violent misogyny of older stories and then reworks, rethinks, reimagines them into something glorious and full and powerful.

In another piece, Sápi reworks an original scene where a man forces open a woman’s legs yelling, “Come out, devil, so I can get in!”

Yes, this was a cartoon for children. You can see the animation here.

In her adaptation, the man is gone, and the woman is free to experience pleasure and desire and happiness and independence without the inevitable intercession of men and their demands. “So, the woman with the continuous orgasm can enjoy herself,” Sápi explains, “without shame and without having to worry about some dude who is on an unrequited quest to save her”:

Work and photograph by Eszter Sápi

Speaking of power and joy, I’ll leave you with a piece that plays with the story of a girl who outwits a king, and another where the threat of devil-induced pleasure is redrawn as a cluster of women happily enjoying themselves.

Work and photograph by Eszter Sápi

Work and photograph by Eszter Sápi

Sápi’s work, as you can see, is gleeful and unsettling in equal measure as only folk and fairy tales can be. So next time you pick up The Tiger’s Wife, or Fable, or The Sigh, I urge you to keep Sápi and her figures in mind. Let them dance, uncontrolled, a bit wild, through your mind. The pages will reward you for it.

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Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, circa ANGELS AND DEMONS.

Handsome Symbologist Robert Langdon is at it again! He wakes up with retrograde amnesia in a hospital in Florence, barely escapes an attempt on his life, acquires a plucky female sidekick, and gets down to the important business of being handsome and symbology-solving. And that’s all within, like, the first twenty pages of Dan Brown’s new novel Inferno, a thriller that, predictably/reliably (take your pick) draws on Brown’s/Langdon’s wonkish knowledge of obscure art history and European architecture to save the world from a madman whose clues are drawn from Dante’s work of the same name.

Unpopular though it may be to admit it publicly, I kind of love Dan Brown. The books are ridiculous, sure, but they’re consistently fun to read and perfect for summer weekends when the old brain needs a vacation. It’s nice to be able to unplug and let Robert Langdon do all the worrying for me. If you’ve read Brown, you know there’s a formula to his stories, and you can count on certain items and ideas making repeated appearances. So just for kicks, I kept track of a bunch of Brown’s favorite things during my latest adventure with Robert Langdon.

Fellow Rioter Greg and I will be breaking down our full reactions to the book together in a separate post, so today I give you, simply, Inferno by the numbers. I drank while reading, so, you know, the counts might not be totally accurate.

Bad guys who jump off buildings: 1

Deaths: 4

Reminders that Robert Langdon is a symbologist: 16

Portentous dreams: 1

Dwight Schrute-style declarations of facts: 1

Times Robert Langdon thinks he is going to die: 3

Attempts to kill Robert Langdon: 5

Robert Langdon is caught in a cramped space/afraid he’s about to be caught in a cramped space/reminds someone that he is claustrophobic: 13

Eye-roll worthy self-selected Bad Guy nicknames: 2 (The Shade? I mean, really, D. Brizzle. I expect more.)

Mentions of the Girl Friday’s (her name is Sienna Brooks) ponytail: 13

Symbols actually printed into text of the book: 4

People who are not what they seem: 2

References to Robert Langdon’s beloved collector’s edition Mickey Mouse watch: 6

Hints that Robert Langdon is suave with the ladies: 4

Number of times I wondered if Robert Langdon would be any good in bed: at least a dozen (verdict: probably not, but I’ll bet he has one solid go-to move)

Laps swum by Robert Langdon: 0 (which must be a first for a Robert Langdon book…but he does think about swimming once)

Puzzles solved/devices unlocked/codes cracked: 11

Comments about Robert Langdon’s eidetic memory: 5

Mistakes Robert Langdon recognizes he made just in the knick of time: 1 (he wouldn’t be likable if he were perfect, you know)

Number of times Robert Langdon channels Dante and swoons: 3

Boats with symbolic names: 1 (The Mendacium….come on, you know that’s great)

Lengthy expositions about architecture, art, history, and Robert Langdon’s taste in clothing: you know I wasn’t counting that closely

Do you think Langdon’s preference for Harris Tweed is an autobiographical detail? Hmmmmm.

Publishing jokes: 4 (the best being when Langdon’s editor thinks he would be more deserving of favors if he wrote, say, Fifty Shades of Iconography)

Any recurring tropes I missed? Do you have a favorite Dan Brown detail?

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The black-and-white tells you I’m a serious reader of literature.

Hm. I’m not sure about this new Franzen novel. Seems overdone.

I put on these glasses so people think I’m reading something serious; this is really my fourth time through FIFTY SHADES OF BEIGE.

Is it just me or do Dan Brown novels seem to get longer and longer and longer?

Huh. That guy I dated finally published his chapbook. Utterly juvenile, self-obsessed presentation.

Ok, I’m just going to read enough of GONE GIRL so people stop harassing me about it at parties.

Well this is a monocle-popper of a New York Times review section this week, I tell you.

I DON’T KNOW HOW TO BOOK

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Storied, fiercely competitive Mariana Academy was founded with a serious honor code; its reputation has been unsullied for decades. Now a long-dormant secret society, Prisom’s Party, threatens its placid halls with vigilante justice, exposing students and teachers alike for even the most minor infraction.

Iris Dupont, a budding journalist whose only confidant is the chain-smoking specter of Edward R. Murrow, feels sure she can break into the ranks of The Devil’s Advocate, the Party’s underground newspaper, and there uncover the source of its blackmail schemes and vilifying rumors. Some involve the school’s new science teacher, who also seems to be investigating the Party. Others point to an albino student who left school abruptly ten years before, never to return. And everything connects to a rare book called Marvelous Species. But the truth comes with its own dangers, and Iris is torn between her allegiances, her reporter’s instinct, and her own troubled past.

*Not sure what RSS is? Here’s a good primer on a tool that will change the way you read online.

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Here goes:

1. There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it.

2. Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.

3. He said the pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day was lying from morning till evening on a bank of heath in the middle of the moors, with the bees humming dreamily about among the bloom, and the larks singing high up overhead, and the blue sky and bright sun shining steadily and cloudlessly.

4. 124 was spiteful. Full of baby’s venom.

5. In a hole in the ground there lived a [redacted]. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a [redacted]-hole, and that means comfort.

6. One day when he was out walking, he came to an open place in the middle of the forest, and in the middle of this place was a large oak-tree, and from the top of the tree, there came a loud buzzing-noise.

Time to check your work? Here are the answers.

Blume has “zero -interest” in penning more YA—a genre that didn’t exist when she was writing it. “I don’t consider myself a young-adult writer,” she says firmly.

Is it just me or is that sort of a sick burn by Judy Blume?

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And I have a real problem with this idea that only what is “good” deserves financial success, or that something is off when what is “not good” sells eleventy billion copies.  Because I think there is a judgment implied there that carries over to the reader – like, we can dismiss the thoughts of Twilightfans, because we’ve already decided we can dismiss Twilight.

This, I like.

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But the movie’s excess is okay. Think about how great it would be if there were a major new Walt Disney World ride dedicated to jazz age underground New York City, and then think about the fact that Baz Lurhmann’s The Great Gatsby really is a long and excellent Walt Disney World ride through jazz-age underground New York City. What’s not to like about this?

Nothing, that’s what’s not to like about that.

Besides the ridiculousness of this statement (I mean, why would secret material about the Dark Arts even BE on the web?), it makes me legitimately sad to think that a kid wouldn’t understand why a library is a valuable place. Besides, J.K. Rowling loves libraries!

-from A Librarian’s Response to “What’s a LIbrary?” by Rita Meade

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Gone with the Wind was to be called:

Sounds…. 50-Shades naughty.

-from 5 Books with Awful Original Titles by Johann Thorrson

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I read it because I finally talked myself into the idea (maybe call it the “Downtown Abbey Effect”) that I could be interested in this story, as British and soapy as it may be. And I’m here to tell you (even without stupid zombies), if you’re a dude, and you’ve rejected this novel out of hand (despite its canonical status) because it’s “only for women,” you’re wrong. It IS a good story, and despite your own pride and prejudices about this novel (did you see what I did there?), there’s plenty of fun to be had.

-from Five Reasons Dudes Should Read PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Greg Zimmerman

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Book staircase by Thatcher Wine. Photo from Juniper Books

It may look like this staircase, in the Juniper Books warehouse, is stacked with books. But those are actually guillotined spines from leftover bestsellers glued to the risers, giving impressions of both depth and bookish abundance.

-from Awesome Bookish Staircases by Derek Attig

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And the most popular post from Food Riot this week was…

I have been told I have the sexiest fridge in the world. I cannot disagree. It’s a three-quarter sized sexy silver beast.

-from What’s In Your Fridge: Bringing Sexy Back by Liberty Hardy

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Sign up for our newsletter to have the best of Book Riot delivered straight to your inbox every two weeks. No spam. We promise.

To keep up with Book Riot on a daily basis, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, , and subscribe to the Book Riot podcast in iTunes or via RSS. So much bookish goodness–all day, every day.