In his best-known work, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Adams explained the supreme utility of the towel in intergalactic travel:

“…it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very, very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.”

Adams’ artistic sensibility is both specific and elusive. He can go from distraught to delighted in the space of a modifier. He combines Gary Larson’s irony, Bill Watterson’s wistful idealism, Oscar Wilde’s keen social observation, and Dorothy Parker’s mischievousness. But set in space. In short, he is a genre all to himself.

So, to remind fans of his great gifts and to introduce newcomers to his unmistakable voice, here are the 42 best lines from his Hitchhiker series, in no particular order:

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1. There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

2. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

3. “My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre,” Ford muttered to himself, “and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes.”

4. The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.

5. “You know,” said Arthur, “it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.”
“Why, what did she tell you?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”

6. “Space,” it says, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

7. “Funny,” he intoned funereally, “how just when you think life can’t possibly get any worse it suddenly does.”

8. Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

9. A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

10. Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.

11. The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub meson electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitchhiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around in.

12. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons.

13. The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the ‘Star Spangled Banner’, but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish.

14. The chances of finding out what’s really going on in the universe are so remote, the only thing to do is hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied.

15. “Listen, three eyes,” he said, “don’t you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.”

16. “Forty-two,” said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

17. Not unnaturally, many elevators imbued with intelligence and precognition became terribly frustrated with the mindless business of going up and down, up and down, experimented briefly with the notion of going sideways, as a sort of existential protest, demanded participation in the decision-making process and finally took to squatting in basements sulking.

18. The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.To explain — since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation — every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake. The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.

19. “Shee, you guys are so unhip it’s a wonder your bums don’t fall off.”

20. It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

21. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm’s way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another.

22. Make it totally clear that this gun has a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone standing at the wrong end that things are going badly for them. If that means sticking all sort of spikes and prongs and blackened bits all over it then so be it. This is not a gun for hanging over the fireplace or sticking in the umbrella stand, it is a gun for going out and making people miserable with.

23. It is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

24. “Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.”

25. In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in about 2:55, when you know you’ve taken all the baths that you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.

26. He gazed keenly into the distance and looked as if he would quite like the wind to blow his hair back dramatically at that point, but the wind was busy fooling around with some leaves a little way off.

27. “He was staring at the instruments with the air of one who is trying to convert Fahrenheit to centigrade in his head while his house is burning down.”

28. There is a moment in every dawn when light floats, there is the possibility of magic. Creation holds its breath.

29. “You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my mind works so phenomenally fast, and I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number.”
“Er, five,” said the mattress.
“Wrong,” said Marvin. “You see?”

30. There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

31. It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

32. He hoped and prayed that there wasn’t an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn’t an afterlife.

33. Eskimos had over two hundred different words for snow, without which their conversation would probably have got very monotonous. So they would distinguish between thin snow and thick snow, light snow and heavy snow, sludgy snow, brittle snow, snow that came in flurries, snow that came in drifts, snow that came in on the bottom of your neighbor’s boots all over your nice clean igloo floor, the snows of winter, the snows of spring, the snows you remember from your childhood that were so much better than any of your modern snow, fine snow, feathery snow, hill snow, valley snow, snow that falls in the morning, snow that falls at night, snow that falls all of a sudden just when you were going out fishing, and snow that despite all your efforts to train them, the huskies have pissed on.

34. The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying “And another thing…” twenty minutes after admitting he’s lost the argument.

35. He was wrong to think he could now forget that the big, hard, oily, dirty, rainbow-hung Earth on which he lived was a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot lost in the unimaginable infinity of the Universe.

36. “It seemed to me,” said Wonko the Sane, “that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a packet of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.”

37. “Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”

38. The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79.

39. Protect me from knowing what I don’t need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don’t know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen.

40. All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it’s pretty damn complicated in the first place.

41. In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

42. Don’t Panic.

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A brief description of Towel Day from the folks at Slate:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The official trailer for the 2005 film adaptation:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dolphins are such misunderstood creatures:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Always know where your towel is.  

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When did you first pick up Hitchhiker’s? Why?  

JN: As a girl with an older brother who was into sci-fi (and who ruined his eyesight as a teenager by staying up late reading with a flashlight) and a mother who introduced her children to Monty Python and the Holy Grail at the earliest possible opportunity, it was inevitable that H2G2 would be part of my early fandom life. We must have found them in a used bookstore because the editions we had were the older covers, and I remember tearing through them as quickly as I could. It didn’t stop at Hitchhiker’s, either — I went through the whole Douglas Adams catalog. Dirk Gently! Last Chance to See! I think I maybe even thought at some point that I would dig up the radio plays and get through those, but I probably got distracted by something else before I could get quite that far.

In any case, I could practically recite the opening paragraphs of Hitchhiker’s (yellow!) and spent many hours daydreaming of being Trillian when I grew up.

PC: I honestly can’t remember my exact reasoning for picking up Hitchhiker’s when I did. I was 16, I think, and just browsing at B&N, probably coming off of a Harry Potter high, when I found The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I was mildly familiar with it only because I went to a nerdy high school and a friend of mine would tell this story about sophomore year English.

His class was tasked with doing an oral report on an American author. He chose Douglas Adams, who as we all know, is not American. But Adams was Will’s favorite author and he would be damned if he didn’t get to do a report on him at some point in his academic career. So he did it, and managed to not mention Adams’ nationality at all.

… I’m pretty sure he got an A.

This was enough to spark an interest for me, so when I came across the massive four book trilogy, I figured, why not? And that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

What’s so great about these books, anyway?

JN: Let me tell you a story. No really, it’s a good one. It’s about a girl who grew up reading a lot of fantasy, and wasn’t particularly bad at math and science but wasn’t particularly good either, and thought magic was far more interesting than the laws of physics or prime numbers. Enter Douglas Adams. Enter the Improbability Drive, and bistromathics, and a brilliant astrophysicist named Trillian who went planet-hopping with a dude with two heads. Enter quantum theory and a psychic detective who gets hired to solve Schrodinger’s Cat. Suddenly, math and science and technology were not only cool but hilarious, and worthy of every bit as much interest as magic — no wait, more, because these things were wildly improbable but based on real-life things that were actually pretty cool in their own right. Douglas Adams brought me to Michio Kaku and Neil deGrasse Tyson, and for that I will be eternally grateful.

PC: Imagine the funniest thing you’ve ever heard / seen / read. Are you imagining it? Are you chuckling at it?

Well, quit. Because it’s not that funny. At least compared to the hilarity of Douglas Adams. I read this book over a decade ago and it is still hands down the funniest, like laugh-out-loud-in-embarrassing-places-just-by-remembering-a-line-funniest, book I have ever had the pleasure of reading in my life.

Why the reread? Why now?

JN: Well, Towel Day! And also, I have residual guilt from 2005, when the movie came out. I meant to reread all the books over again, so that if the movie sucked (which it did not! Triumph!) it wouldn’t taint my memory of the books. Because that’s what you do, right? Like with Lord of the Rings? (Shut up, you know you do that.) But for whatever reason (probably mostly having to do with having a real job and paying bills and whatnot for the first time that year) I never did get around to that reread. Every other year or so, I look at that Ultimate collection and think, it’s time! And then not do it. So, my friends, I will procrastinate no more! It is time to find out: Are they as funny as I remember them being? Will they stand up against the test of time and professional reader-brain? God I hope so.

PC: Like Jenn said: Towel day! Also, I haven’t reread the entire series since in forever. Probably since just before the movie came out. I’m ready for some good ole fashioned dry, British humor, also for some nonsensical humor, also for some lies, and also for a whale to fall out of the sky.

So, we’ll see you in round one of The Reread at the End of the Universe when we discuss The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!

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Rereads must be earned because there are too many great books out there to read an okay one twice. My guaranteed rereads are: classics like Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and the Alice books; Margaret Atwood and Sarah Waters novels; beloved series like Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, and the Looking Glass Wars; and my new favorite book, Summer and Bird, which I know I’ll revisit at least once a year from now on.

from What Your Reading Rules Reveal About Your Personality by Jeanette Solomon

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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.)

from Dan Brown’s INFERNO by the Numbers by Rebecca Joines Schinsky

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The (Fill in the Blank)’s Wife/Daughter 

Why are you pushing that feminist soapbox toward me? Why are you lifting it up and forcing me to stand on top of it? I don’t need to yell about how annoying it is for the central female character to be defined in the title of the story by the primary male figure in her life! I would much rather rant about how I hate how derivative and overused this type of title is! Get me my “I hate all things derivative” soapbox!

Also, this kind of title feels like book club bait. Probably because it IS book club bait. But still. Turn down the volume on the obvious, dudes.

from 4 Types of Book Titles I’m Totally Over by Kit Steinkellner

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Lamp by Michael Bom for Bomdesign. Photo from Lightpublic.

from Awesome Bookish Lamps by Derek Attig

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And this week’s most popular post over at Food Riot appeals to both foodies and book lovers…

I shared these covers with my mom and this was her favorite… I’m horrified. Maybe her love of balloon whisks just runs deep?

-from The Best Kitchen-Themed Romance Novel Covers by Nikki Steele

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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.

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Those Canadians and their scandals.

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Shakespeare wrote his finest work while living in Southwark, and he enjoyed the local beer – his work is full of fond references of the virtues of a pint of ale, and there are written records of him visiting pubs with contemporaries like Edward Alleyn or Christopher Marlowe. The trouble is, no one ever specifies which pub.

It’s always interesting to read about the spaces writers work in – or that they might have worked in. Maybe.

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The remaining whiff of Orwell, whose five years at various stations in Burma as an officer of the Imperial Police Force ended here in 1927, is a spacious two-story wooden house with fireplaces and a once-elegant staircase. Paint peels off the walls, and dust coats the interior. The outdoor kitchen where Orwell’s servants cooked his meals lies in ruin, the roof missing and dead leaves piled on the floor. The family members of a government official squat in an annex, and hang their laundry outside the front door.

This means that the lives of the Burmese people have changed little since the days of “Shooting an Elephant.”

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One of the most surprising and endearing moments in raising a child is the joy of sharing an amazing book. With a good book, you can see each character, joke and exchange seep into your child, the words bonding to them like skin and shaping their humour and thoughts on life.

Anyone want to guess which book brought this writer and her daughter together? Here’s a hint: 42.
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The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau (Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, June 4) In the future, after the Seven Stages War has destroyed much of the planet, children of the remaining inhabitants must pass The Testing – a series of challenges to prove whether or not they have what it takes to go on to college. (And you thought the SATs were stressful!) Please check your Hunger Games comparisons at the door: Charbonneau chisels her own shiny spot in the YA/dystopian genre with this fabulously fun series. And the other two books in the trilogy will be out in the next twelve months, so there’s no super-long wait for the conclusion! Add +5 points for being considerate.

TransAtlantic by Colum McCann (Random House, June 4) McCann’s Let the Great World Spin was a devastatingly wonderful book. And if anyone can follow up a National Book Award-winning novel with another stunner, McCann can. (Heh, can-can. Tee hee.) TransAtlantic is a luscious collection of stories (mostly) based around journeys across the Atlantic Ocean to Ireland. Historical figures such as Frederick Douglass, Senator George Mitchell, and Alcock and Brown, the first aviators to fly nonstop across the Atlantic, all make appearances. And this book has my new favorite last line. No, I’m not repeating it here. And, hey, NO PEEKING.

In Times of Fading Light by Eugene Ruge (Graywolf Press, June 11) The first reason I love this book is because Ruge is fifty-seven, and this is his first novel. Hooray for doing awesome things at any age! The second reason I love it is because it’s a big, gorgeous, messy novel about a family in Germany, highlighting different decades and different family members and their issues. Hooray for messy family dynamics!  Ruge is an amazing writer, and In Times of Fading Light (which won the prestigious German Book Prize) is a wildly impressive debut. The third reason I love this book is Graywolf Press. Hooray for indies!

Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway by Sara Gran (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, June 18) I talk about Sara Gran so much, I am surprised I haven’t been served with a restraining order. BUT SERIOUSLY. She is so awesome. And this book, the second in the fantastic Claire DeWitt series, is uh-may-zing. Claire investigates the murder of her ex-boyfriend, but there’s so much more to it than that. The book’s many complex layers are delicious. Buy it, read it, lick it, rip out the pages and stuff them in your ears: All of these things are good. Bottom line: Sara Gran rules.

In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods by Matt Bell (Soho Press, June 18) Oh, kittens, this book is so wonderful and weird. Put Italo Calvino, Cat Valente and the Grimm Brothers in a blender, and you get Matt Bell. In the House is about a husband and wife who live — say it with me now — in a house upon the dirt between the lake and the woods. The couple’s attempts at starting a family are unsuccessful and beginning to take a toll on their relationship. Add to the blooming mysteries and suspicions one sly unborn baby, an extra moon, and a bear, and you have an effing amazing debut novel. This is one hell of a book.

Bonus mentions: Speaking of Graywolf Press, the wonderful City of Bohane by Kevin Barry is now in paperback, and early buzz about Idiopathy by Sam Byers is fabulous – and it has hipster cows on the cover!

Jeff and Rebecca talk about finishing Dan Brown’s Inferno, along with discussions Stephen King’s new print-only novel, Amazon’s foray into fan-fiction, turning unproduced movies into books, a hypothetical app to see what the people around you are reading, and the vagaries of airplane reading. This week’s episode is sponsored by Nolet’s Silver Dry Gin and Start Here, Volume 2.

You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes (click here) or via RSS (link here).

Links discussed in the show:

1. Stephen King has no ebook planned for Joyland, hopes to drive readers “to an actual bookstore” 

2. Amazon Starts Selling Fan-Fiction

3. Turning unproduced movies into ebooks

4. Booklvrs

5. Changing Airline Policies about Ereaders

6. Books exactly as long as your flight

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Browse previous episodes of The Book Riot Podcast.

I like to save the word “excited” for sentences like “I hear ice cream truck music coming down my street and I’m excited because I have three dollars in my pocket.”

I wasn’t excited, but I was intrigued. I like Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who plays the title role, his face is very handsome to me. I think he’s also good at acting. I think. It’s hard to tell because I’m usually too focused on his face to be analytical about his scene work. You guys, I’m just not very good at multi-tasking!

I also like that the series is being helmed by the producers of Downton Abbey, that magical show that made old-fashioned servants sexy again for the first time ever!

So I was intrigued by the series order.

Then I saw the trailer.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Just give me a second to remove my fingernails from my eyeballs.

I guess I should start with something positive. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you give constructively criticism of something, right? Something positive. Okay. Wait. I’m going to figure this out. Okay! Got it.

At least they didn’t make the series a modern-day retelling set in New York City. That COULD have happened.

Right then, can I go nuclear now? Too late, I typed in the launch codes, it’s done.

WHAT THE WHAT? They’ve turned Dracula into this Monte Cristo figure out for revenge? Why? I get that his thirst for vengeance makes his character “complicated” and “dimensional” and gives him understandable reasons for slicing and dicing the good folks of London. The thing is, I don’t want complicated from Dracula! I want pure and unadulterated holy terror! Let Holden Caulfield hang out in Anti-Hero-land. Dracula belongs in Sleep-With-The-Lights-On-And-Your-Dresser-Pushed-Up-Against-Your-Bedroom-Doors-ville. THAT’S WHERE WE LIKE HIM.

Also they made Mina Murray a LOVE INTEREST instead of just one of a bajillion victims. That happened. Also, the new and improved (ha ha ha) Dracula doesn’t want to turn Mina into a vampire because, as he says, “To turn her into such as I am would be an abomination.” THAT happened.

Oh Dracula, you schmadorable creature of the night with your heart made of the goldest gold, why don’t you just step into the sun and show everyone your skin sparkles and call it a day?

I HATE this trailer. And if the trailer accurately depicts the pilot, I’m going to DOUBLE HATE this pilot.  What makes Dracula such a rad story is that Dracula is not relatable. BECAUSE ONE DOES NOT RELATE TO EVIL INCARNATE. Dracula doesn’t come to London to hang out with his bro-slice Renfield and have cartoon hearts pop out of his eyes every time he sees Mina Murray, no he most certainly does not! Also where’s Lucy Westenra aka “The Actually Interesting Female Character in Dracula?” Does she not deserve a sassed-up line and five seconds of trailer time? Also, what’s Renfield doing out of his mental asylum dungeon cell? Why is he riding around in carriages and speaking in complete sentences? I should also say right here I am a huge proponent of diversity casting, but they better give a very plausible and historically accurate reason regarding how a black male character (who I’m pretty positive is American based on the accent) can have that much status and power in turn of the century England. Don’t color-blind cast and then be lazy about it. That’s all I’m saying.

I’m derailing a little bit, let’s get back to how much I despise making Dracula an antihero. Dracula is a villain through and through. He’s Jaws from Jaws and It from It. There’s no identifying with him and no feeling empathy for him and there’s DEFINITELY NO SWEET CUDDLING AND MAKING OUT WITH HIM! Lord, you’d get your forehead bitten clean off! That’s no cuddle at all!

I get what’s happened. Twilight and Vampire Diaries and their hundred million rip-offs happened. Apparently in the 21st century it’s not a vampire story if it’s not a misunderstood hot monster who just wants a little love from the most boring human girl imaginable.

So now Dracula’s ripping off its rip-offs. No, really, there’s a whole “I’m a creature of darkness in love with the doppelganger of the girl I was in love with a couple hundred years ago” subplot that was completely cribbed from Vampire Diaries. DRACULA YOU GET AN F MINUS FOR CHEATING OFF ANOTHER VAMPIRE SHOW’S TEST!

NBC is playing it VERY safe this season. It’s ripping off Modern Family in the comedy department, there’s some procedurals, a pirate show (I’m actually a little psyched about that) and Dracula: Boring is the New Black.

This is what I hate about adaptations of classics. Nothing’s broken and still there’s all this fixing. Sometimes there’s a reason a classic is a classic. Let an old pro do what he does best.

What do you think of this adaptation? Any Dracula fans in the house excited? Any Dracula fans in the house want to bite NBC in the neck?

—and who can blame them? It’s been nearly a decade since campaigns to save the critically-acclaimed show failed and several years since efforts to bring it back seemed doomed. But here it is, returning like a hilarious zombie.

Given this level of flailing anticipation, I expect (like Netflix must) that most viewers will binge-watch the new episodes, which are being released simultaneously this Sunday. But at some point, you might want to come up for air, at least to prolong the viewing experience. (The new season will, after all, only be 8.5 hours long.) So here are some recommendations for books to read before, during, or after your headlong rush into the land of Bluth.

A note: I could have recommended Rashomon and Other Stories, since each new episode will tell the season’s story from the perspective of a particular character. Or I could have suggested any number of dysfunctional-family novels. But I kept it to nonfiction, in hopes of giving your brain a more thorough break from what promises to be non-stop, fantastic insanity.

The Revolution Was Televised by Alan Sepinwall

Low-rated and icorrigibly weird, Arrested Development nevertheless had an outsized impact on our culture. Indeed, I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that the show transformed television comedy forever. For better (complex, long-form comedic narrative) and worse (pervasive, self-referential irony), Arrested Development‘s rise and crack-up provided the specs and spare parts out of which so many great comedies have since been built. It’s hard to imagine, for example, 30 Rock, Community, or Parks & Recreation without the Bluths. Alongside this Bluth-prompted shift in TV comedy was another television transformation: the rise of  thoughtful, creative, character-driven, complex, and blessedly-not-procedural drama. Sepinwall’s The Revolution Was Televised, newly in paperback, offers readings of some of the shows that changed the dramatic landscape: The Wire, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (yes!), The Sopranos, Friday Night Lights, and more. One of our sharpest, most interesting television critics (today a large and hugely rich fraternity, thanks in part to the effects of Arrested Development), Sepinwall has written a book that may help us understand Arrested Development  in the larger context of its medium—not to mention it offers a great to-watch list for when you finish the new season. And perhaps we can pitch some combination of the two worlds to Netflix. Who’s up for Buffy moving from Sunnydale to Sudden Valley? Crossover hijinks ahoy!

Last Harvest by Witold Rybczynski

Aired in the midst of the housing bubble that inflated, deformed, and then popped so dramatically in the first decade of this century,the early seasons of Arrested Development told a story of a weird-ass family, yes, but also a story of houses and hopes. From the family’s shoddy model home to George Sr.’s light treason to the epically, awesomely weird scene in which a giant mole and a rocket-man fight in a miniature housing development, this was a show for which the grand artifice of the McMansion was a defining aesthetic. But to understand how housing developments actually happen—how you go from land (which we should make more of!) to houses—Arrested Development probably isn’t your best source of information. If you’re curious how a development like Sudden Valley would get built if a company not run by incompetent Bluths was in charge, this is the book for you. With enjoyable prose and  fascinating detail, renowned architecture Rybczynski digs deep into the specific processes by which a cornfield turned into New Daleville and reflects on the complicated role of housing in American life. This surprising, and surprisingly optimistic, book is definitely worth a read, offering conclusions far less dire than the disastrous developments of Arrested Development might suggest.

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

When you’ve finally run out of new episodes, why not trade one iconically quirky family for another? As Arrested Development is adept at television humor born of the awkward juxtapositions and uneasy alliances that family requires, Sedaris is its king in printed form. Extended conceits, freaky wordplay, unexpected sexual attraction, a surfeit of strange siblings—Sedaris uses familiar tropes and topics in ways that will smooth your transition out of the world of Bluths and back into the world of your everyday obligations. (Surely no one can expect you to go to work while you still have Arrested Development episodes to watch, right?) Sedaris also offers a counterbalance to one of the things that makes the earlier seasons of Arrested Development somewhat strange to watch today: the troubling, and troublingly constant, gay jokes. In the first three seasons, more than half the jokes about Tobias or Barry Zuckerkorn, a chunk of the jokes about George Michael, and side-plots with numerous bit characters (receptionists, Hot Cops, etc.) depend on the humor supposedly inherent in the fact that someone might be gay or fail to sufficiently perform heterosexual masculinity. It’s deeply weird, and we can hope the new season avoids it. If not, Sedaris lets you move to jokes by LGBT/queer people rather than jokes at their expense—always a good move. In other news, just look at the picture: doesn’t Sedaris look more than a little like Buster Bluth? Awesome.

And, in the spirit of that sentiment, I’d like to shine a light on a few great books I’ve read recently (or, at least, relatively recently) by women. These are fantasy novels or short-story collections of the highest quality, since my go-to genre tends to be fantasy, or at least fiction with a supernatural slant.

1. Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link

Pretty Monsters is a collection of short stories and novellas by Kelly Link. It includes artwork by Shaun Tan (look him up), and the whole book is very pretty and full of monsters. There are werewolves and magicians and worlds-in-a-handbag. I picked it up on a whim after “accidentally” missing the bus (who puts a bus stop next to a bookstore anyway?) and spending a few minutes in my local indie bookstore. The book is deeply magical, and beautifully written. It is quite dark in parts, and something about the way the stories are written made me think of Neil Gaiman as I read. My favorite story is “The Wizards of Perfil,” and it is totally worth the price of the book. It includes an eponymous Locus-award winning novella. Yes, eponymous.

2. Moscow but Dreaming by Ekaterina Sedia

This is a collection of short stories by Russian-turned-New-Jerseyian Ekaterina Sedia. I first encountered her when she wrote an eye-opening post on the Clarkesworld site about female characters’ superpowers being “one of the guys”. Go read it now and then come back (or bookmark it for later reading). I’ll wait. The book collects Ekaterina’s short stories which are dark and unforgiving. Those fond of birds chirping, happy endings and a simple worldview should look elsewhere. Fantasy and horror mix with Ekaterina’s easy style of writing. The story “There is a Monster Under Helen’s Bed” still breaks my heart, many weeks after I read it.

3. The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

This book has yet to hit shelves in the US but it is already on top-ten lists in the UK, and it is small wonder. An excellent supernatural thriller that reads like it was plotted by Stephen King himself. A truly evil man finds a house that can transport him through time, and he uses this to murder girls that “shine” to him. The House (always a capital H) lets him escape the police easily. But then one of the girls survives, and she is plenty pissed off. It’s been a while since I read a book this fast. Lauren writes well, though I would have liked to have more details in places, and the book could well do with being 100 pages longer. Maybe this just means I wanted more… I guess that’s a good thing, right?

4. The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke

I don’t think I’ll ever tire of recommending this collection of short stories. Susanna Clarke wrote the very good Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which is a Victorian fantasy where gentlemanly wizards engage in a rivalry of sorts. Neil Gaiman and I agreed that the world would be a better place if everyone read Strange & Norrell. In The Ladies of Grace Adieu, we are treated to a number of stories that are lovely little gems. The Duke of Wellington wonders into the faerie world of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, and this is an apt description of the book as a whole for those of you familiar with Stardust. The stories are dark and beautiful and leave you with a smile. My favorite is Mr Simonelli or the Faerie Widower. Fans of Mr. Gaiman, fans of fantasy and fans of well-written short stories should get this collection.

5. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

I feel, in the interest of prefect honesty, that I should inform you that I have not completed this book. That’s simply because it’s the book I’m reading right now. I saw it a while back and unfortunately thought it was a paranormal romance that took place in a circus. If I see a book marketed with the words paranormal and romance together I rather quickly lose interest, Twilight-style. And so I left this one alone. But it kept popping back up on my radar and I finally bought it. Boy was that a good choice. Far from being a paranormal romance, this is a beautifully written fantasy of wizardly rivalry. It has an intricate world and puts me more in mind of Susanna Clarke’s aforementioned Strange & Norrell. It is not a quick read, but that is fine; I’m savoring it. This is very much a book-lover’s book, a proper fantasy without dragons or castles, but one with illusions and the most colorful black-and-white circus ever.

Finally, and because I feel it has to be said. The five books mentioned here are not “Great books by women.” They are just great books, period.
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All That Is by James Salter

It has been more than 30 years since Salter last published a novel. He’s granite. He’s damp skin. He’s an unflinching eye. I don’t know anything about the gestation of this novel, and in a way I’m glad because it nearly doesn’t feel like fiction. It feels like a life: the trajectory, in some ways enviable, of Philip Bowman, a young WWII soldier who becomes a New York book editor. The story eddies and curves, as Salter often looks over to secondary characters and follows them for a little while. Forgive the pomposity, but it reminds me of the angels in Wim Wenders’s “Wings of Desire.” At the moment, something quite devastating is about to happen to Bowman. I had to put the book down, to catch my breath, to hope he escapes.

–Jennifer Paull

Blessed and Cursed Alike by Kiarna Boyd

One of the millions of great things about books is how you learn things. Learning is fun! Open head, insert information. Most of the main characters in Blessed and Cursed Alike work for motorcycle courier companies, which I learned is a real-life occupation. It’s like being a bike messenger, only louder, faster and crazier. Boyd based her characters on the motorcycle couriers of London after witnessing them in action. It’s wild, dangerous work, and a motorcycle courier’s life expectancy while on the job is only two and a half years. Gulp! So add to the adrenaline-fueled courier lifestyle a dark, wet, unnamed city, an occult conspiracy, and familial bonds and friendships, and you have a fantastic fantasy novel. The action scenes are wonderfully realized, the sexy bits are sexy, and the characters are all worthy of the attention they’re given. This book made me want a motorcycle, a girlfriend, a two-legged cat, and cake. (I just realized that most of those things purr.) I loved it.

–Liberty Hardy

The Brinkley Girls edited by Trina Robbins

In the 1910’s Nell Brinkley went to New York City to work as an illustrator for one of William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers, The New York Evening Journal. Brinkley’s illustrations of women wearing the latest fashions and possessing masses of curly hair made every woman want to look like a “Brinkley girl.” Through WWI and the 1920s, Brinkley published weekly full-page color comics with surprisingly feminist storylines—women who go on adventures and save the hero, rather than vice-versa—in a visual style that influenced the fashion of women for an entire generation. I adored this book, and not just because Brinkley grew up not very far from where I did; her illustrations are gorgeous and it’s easy to see why women wanted to obtain her “look,” even going so far as purchase Brinkley hair products. All of Brinkley’s color comics are included, and they reminded me of manga series today. Definitely recommend this for anyone interested in Jazz Age or Edwardian art and fashion, or if you read manga.

–Tasha Brandstatter

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

I know, I know, everyone else already read this book and loved it and it’s silly that I’m even gushing about it now because I’m so far behind, right? (Actually, I know a lot of people who haven’t read it, so there.) I haven’t finished it yet, but I am loving it a lot. It’s the perfect combination of a likeable, gently snarky tone, excellent writing, and impeccable historical research. I know I’m apparently in for a lot of twists and turns, and I’m looking forward to them all.

–Jeanette Solomon

The Coldest Night by Robert Olmstead

The 1950s conflict in Korea may be “The Forgotten War,” but once you pass through the pages of Robert Olmstead’s devastatingly real novel, it will be hard to disremember the Korean War.  Olmstead often turns his attention to historical military conflicts (see also: Coal Black Horse, his 2007 novel about the Civil War), but with The Coldest Night, he has reached a new level of gritty, unsparing literature that also floats like a lyrical dream, sentence by sentence.  The book is the saga of Henry Childs and is essentially divided into three parts: the years before Henry ships off to war which tells the beautiful love story between Henry and a girl named Mercy; the harrowing battle accounts in Korea; and Henry’s return from war and his troubled attempts to re-enter civilian life.  Olmstead’s descriptions of battle are deceptively simple in detail, but it’s been hard for me to shake them from my head.  Like this sentence: “Then the flanks exploded with gunfire and grenades until there was no sound at all but the long unceasing sound of the world’s endless thunder concentrated in one place.”  Olmstead fills all of his pages with linguistic thunder.

–David Abrams

Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight by M.E. Thomas

M.E. Thomas is a sociopath, but she’s never killed anyone. She’s also a law professor and a Sunday school teacher. Confessions of a Sociopath is both Thomas’ story of self-discovery and the introduction to a fascinating, mostly silent community. She investigates the development of the concept of sociopathy, from the first time a similar condition was described to brain scan studies of famously murderous families. She even touches on how she would recommend parenting a child sociopath, which is fascinating. Thomas not entirely benign – her favorite hobby is “ruining people” which she explains in depth with fascinating candor and detail.  Thomas’ bold, blunt voice and well-researched ideas are captivating; more than once I caught myself thinking wow, I wish I was a sociopath too. (Final verdict: no, I don’t.) My favorite part was when Thomas told the story of the time she came closest to vengeful murder. What was the one thing that nearly pushed her over the edge? The DC metro system.

–Becky Cole

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell 

I’d been meaning to read Eleanor and Park for months. It kept popping up on my Tumblr dash, and then John Green wrote that amazing review for in the NY Times. I finally got my chance when a coworker dropped it off with a post-it note that said: “Get ready to make a playlist.”

I took it home that night, started it, finished it, and spent the rest of the night feeling nostalgic for a time I’d never experienced. High school in the ’80s. I loved Eleanor and Park. I loved how realistically Rainbow Rowell portrayed both sides of their relationship: the insecurity, the hesitancy, the miscommunications. I loved Park’s first generation-otherness. I loved Eleanor’s misguided family loyalty. All of it. The music was almost another character in the book, with Park’s punk to New Wave, and Eleanor’s disbelief that he doesn’t really know The Beatles. I only have one complaint, and that is the last four pages. I didn’t love the last four pages. That being said, like John Green, Rowell knows exactly how to write teenagers who don’t fit in to any one track. Who, for whatever reason, find themselves on the outside. I can totally tell why (beyond the handsome, nerdy half-Korean Park) that kids on Tumblr are obsessed with this book. I kind of wish I could go back in time and reread it again for the first time.

–Preeti Chhibber

The Hunters by James Salter

I’m shamefully late to the Salter-appreciation party, but with All That Is just released I decided to start with his first novel–which not only lived up to the hype, it shot the hype clean out of the sky. The Hunters is ostensibly about fighter pilots in the Korean War, but it is as much a meditation on the nature of ambition as it is about the dangers of aerial combat.  Most of the drama actually takes place in the quiet moments on the ground, suffering along with Captain Cleve Connell. He is crippled with angst by every missed opportunity and filled with jealousy as he watches less worthy pilots getting all the glory. As you read about the fleeting joys of achievement and the daily torment that comes with lofty ambitions, you sense that Salter (who was himself a pilot in Korea) is talking as much about his artistic aspirations as he is recounting life in the cockpit. This is reinforced by a scene that occurs while Connell is on shore leave and far from all the action (at least combat action—it is, after all, shore leave). Visiting a family acquaintance who is a Japanese painter, Connell is struck by the beauty of the artist’s work. It becomes clear that while they operate in completely different worlds, Connell sees the artist as a comrade in arms, someone who has also dared to reach for the heavens and knows the rarified air of true greatness.

–Minh Le

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

It’s tough to tell people what the premise of Atkinson’s newest novel is, without completely bungling it. “Well, see, this woman Ursula who was born in 1911, dies over and over again. But she keeps being reborn at the same time, with slightly different circumstances, so that she makes it a little bit farther in her life before she dies again in some other way.” This makes it sound like the a downright confusing and pointless story (the same life over and over?), when in fact it is the exact opposite of those things. Atkinson beautifully unfurls a life again and again and the same moments are told in varying ways so as to make it feel fresh and new each time. Whether she switches the point of view or the timing, each life that Ursula lives is a snapshot, elegantly framed and lit, so as to allow the reader a glimpse of the artistic eye behind it all. Small choices, brief hesitations, a wary feeling in the stomach mean the difference between life and death, countless times over, and the lingering sensation is that, not only is life fragile, it is also random and powerful at the same time. It’s a haunting sensation that has stayed with me long after finishing the last page (which I did in a flurry. The last 250 pages sped by.) This is THE book of the year for me, and 2013 is only halfway done.

–Rachel Manwill

The Lion Seeker by Kenneth Bonert (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, October 15, 2013)

Its pub date maybe a long way away, but I think this book is worth getting excited about now. Following the life of a Jewish Lithuanian immigrant family in Johannesburg, South Africa, before and during World War II, The Lion Seeker is a knockout of a historical novel. The voice, a close third-person, is full of the cadences of different dialects; the plotline is revelatory (at least for this reader — South Africa in the 1940s was something I knew nothing about), nuanced, and compelling. This one should be at the top of your TBR list for Fall.

–Jenn Northington

Moneyball: The Art of Winning An Unfair Game by Michael Lewis

When a conversation takes place on a subject only few people have access or interest in, for example my husband and a friend gassing on and on about Star Trek, a third person (me) might come in and say, “Guys, you’re a little ‘inside baseball,’” meaning Byzantine, nerdy, nitpicky, and clubby. However in the case of this book I loved it. And now when I watch an Orioles game and some little kid next to me is going on about how his hero on the team is able to hit it outta the ballpark,  I’m like, “Whoah, buddy, sure, but what’s his on base percentage?”

–Elizabeth Bastos

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

I had actually not intended to read this book. I blame marketing. I thought it was a sweet, sweet, slightly girly romance fantasy that took place in a cute circus. It did not appeal to me. But people kept recommending it, and everyone just seemed to love it. I picked it up at an airport bookstore to go along with GRRM’s Dance With Dragons in a 2-for-1 book deal that was going on. DWD was a bit heavy to start reading on a short plane ride, so I opened The Night Circus instead, and was immediately whisked away into a complete and detailed world of magic and intrigue. Sure, there is romance, but this is not a romance novel. It has often been compared to Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and I think it a fair comparison; both books are long and intricate, both books have interesting characters that perform magic, and both books are an absolute joy to read. Believe the hype, buy this book.

–Johann Thorsson

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Continuing my foray into Austenland, I half expected to be disappointed by the uber-popular Pride and Prejudice. I had my doubts about a book that managed to inspire such spin-offs as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Spank Me, Mr. Darcy. As it turns out my concerns were unfounded. I think the mania that surrounds Austen’s seminal work has diluted the power of the original story to some extent. Nevertheless, it’s impossible not to fall in love with the plucky, ahead-of-her-time heroine and everyone’s favorite grumpy INTJ.

–Kate Scott

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

In Ready Player One’s distant dystopian (of course) future, much of humanity spends the bulk of their time plugged into an immersive online RPG called the OASIS. This virtual world has its own economy, its own schools, and, naturally, its own predatory multinational corporate villains. These baddies are after the same prize as Wade Watts (OASIS name: Parzival), an easter egg – worth a fortune – planted in the OASIS by its deceased genius creator. Ready Player One is stuffed with more eighties geek nostalgia than I would’ve thought possible, but Cline does a brilliant job of maintaining a sense of accessibility and a brisk enough pace that his near-constant geeky references never derail the reader (I probably “got” 35-40% of them, but was amused by and enjoyed almost all of them anyway). By the end, I was convinced that Ready Player One should have the same obsessive following that The Hunger Games does. Many of the same action-hero tropes are there, but a more mature approach to character and a smartly (and often hilariously) constructed setting (both the real and virtual) make Cline’s book stand out. Plus, (and I don’t know exactly why this matters, but it made a difference for me) it reads like the work of someone who had an indecent amount of fun writing it. Every page just pops with the joy of somebody head over heels for the world he’s created. Plug in, turn on, read away.

–Josh Corman

The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway

When I decided to take Tasha’s advice and buy The River of No Return, I neglected to pay enough attention to the second part of her recommendation: “make sure to start it on a day you don’t have to go to work.”Oops. I didn’t end up sleeping through a meeting early the next day, but it was a near thing. I was immediately drawn into Ridgway’s engrossing debut novel, which follows a nineteenth-century marquess who’s ripped out of his own time, deposited in the twenty-first century, and then sent back to Regency England with an ambiguous mission. The technicalities/paradoxes/etc. of time travel are kept (for the most part) to a merciful minimum, leaving room for a passel of complicated, entertaining characters and exceptionally well-drawn settings. Now if only I could pop into a future where Ridgway’s written more books…

–Derek Attig

The Son by Philipp Meyer

A multi-generational saga of the American West that’s one part East of Eden and one part Cormac McCarthy. Starting with the pre-Civil War Texas frontier, the book follows the rise and fall of a violent and complicated family, all the way to its present-day, oil-money-drenched state. It examines the ideas of what it means to be loyal, what it means to be “a real man” (and whether or not that’s even a thing) and what money does to a family when the present generations have done nothing to earn it. It will make you simultaneously want to hug your children and protect them from the world, and send them outside to earn their keep. It’s beautifully written, and so thought-provoking that I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I put it down.

–Amanda Nelson

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

My takeaways from the initial buzz about Steve Jobs were: 1) He was kind of a jerk, and 2) He ate a lot of weird orange food. 650 pages later, I agree that Jobs would’ve been an asshole to work for, yet I admire his determination to bring his visions to life without sparing any egos. Isaacson entertained me with dishy stories about Jobs’ early hippie ethos — his obsession with meditation, veganism, LSD, and Bob Dylan sparked a lifelong tension between fighting versus becoming Big Brother. But the big shiny jewel of the biography is the debate between closed versus open systems. While I’m fundamentally an open systems kinda girl, this book makes a convincing argument that closed systems CAN win the prize for most poetic and pretty user experience.

–Rachel Smalter Hall

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

There’s the resonance: the daily news of the revolt become civil war in Syria, the ongoing upheaval and instability in struggling European and Middle Eastern countries, the gaping disparity between rich and poor in America—all echo elements of the world (and it is a world) portrayed by Dickens. If you want, you can dwell on common criticisms—the over-plotting, the plethora of heavy drama, the typing of whole classes. But this book is one of those truly special works of art: a master fully engaged in his craft at work on an absolutely ambitious and ultimately successful project. And as a side bonus in this 21^st century, it’s free for download on iTunes.

–Loyal Miles

The Tilted World by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly (William Morrow, October 1, 2013)

What do you get when a Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner co-writes a novel with his Pushcart Prize winning wife? The Tilted World by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly gives you the answer AND lights it on fire. I think two copies of the book should hold tiny champagne flutes and toast each other because AWESOME. Set during the great flood of 1927, you have a bootlegging woman who lost her infant son, a prohibition officer, an orphaned gypsy baby, rising flood waters, HOOCH, and of course… natural enemies who fall in love. It’s a great story that hopefully will make people want to dive deeper into the Mississippi Flood of 1927, which is often forgotten. The way Tom and Beth Ann are able to mix his prose with her poetry is just outstanding. I wish you all could read it yesterday, but you’ll have to wait until October.

–Emily Gatlin

Uses for Boys by Erica Lorraine Scheidt

There is a section in this fabulous, mesmerizing young adult novel that was so sad I could feel it throughout my entire body. My limbs grew heavy and my frown deepened. At one point I said to myself, “I don’t think I can bear this.” It was so awesome. This is the story of sixteen-year-old Anna who struggles through teenagedom, raising herself because her mom’s always off trying to find or keep the latest boyfriend. Anna finds many uses for boys on her journey, not all those uses are good or good for her. This a book like Marcy Dermansky’s Bad Marie, that flies by in a blink because you become so entangled in Anna’s voice and the decisions she makes that you can’t seem to stop reading it.

–Jodi Chromey

The World’s Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne 

When I told people I was reading a memoir by a Mormon weight-lifting librarian with Tourette Syndrome, I got some pretty quizzical looks. And I suppose I understand why — there are a lot of ways a memoir about such widely different subjects could go awry, but Josh Hanagarne manages to avoid them all. In fact, The World’s Strongest Librarian was one of the best memoirs I’ve read in a long time. It’s funny, smart and a little sad, but Hanagarne approaches every incident with humility and a deep appreciation for the people in his life who have helped him succeed. I loved this one.

–Kim Ukura

Your turn, readers! What was your best book of the month?

Gina’s entry on C.S. Lewis received the most votes, and she has won a $50 gift card to her favorite book retailer. Her chapter will also be considered for inclusion when START HERE, Vol. 2 is published. Congratulations to Gina, and a big thank you to all our finalists and everyone who entered.

Here’s the winning entry:

Our friends at Pop Chart Lab have given us this rad 18″ x 24″ poster of cocktails from film and literature, and we just know you’re dying to have it on your walls. So we’re going to make it easy on you.

Share the link to the Kickstarter page on Facebook, Twitter, and your social networks of choice, then leave a comment on this post telling us you’ve done so, and you’ll be entered to win. One lucky winner will be randomly selected. Entries are accepted ONE DAY ONLY until 11:59pm Eastern tonight, May 24th. Good luck!

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 who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.

at Thought Catalog, 25 Things You Didn’t Know About THE GREAT GATSBY

at Flavorwire, The Funniest Meanest Reviews of Dan Brown’s INFERNO

at The New York Times’ Paper Cuts, Anthologies That (Mostly) Stand the Test of Time

at Writer Unboxed, 10 Ways to Torture Yourself as a Writer

at HTMLGIANT, A Summer Reading List of Conceptual Literature

at EduHacker, 5 Reasons Libraries Will Fail–Published in 1864

at Word and Film, The Literary References Informing Mad Men

at Longreads, 6 Stories for the Science Fiction Newbie

at The Huffington Post, 17 Proper Ways to Treat a “Literary Lady”

at Ebook Friendly, 10 Examples of Book Love Gone Wrong (in Pictures)

Reducing an entire genre to one person’s books as a source of comparison is limiting and reductive of the nuances, the depth, and the range of voices that exist within it. Believe it or not, John Green is not the be all, end all of contemporary realistic YA fiction.

I hope you have your nerdfighter repellant handy.

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One caveat is that Open Road wants to run special sales involving promotional codes — to give a reader 10 percent off a title, for instance. Friedman said that with the exception of Sony, the retailers don’t support these yet, and so Open Road might run a limited number of promotions itself in the future.

Man, it’s stupid that online retailers don’t support promotional codes. This would work, folks.

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If readers upgrade their ‘phone or tablet then why should they have to buy the same book content again?

Ummmmm. You know you don’t have to do this, right? You’ve heard of apps, right?

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At the time of the final Borders store closings in September 2011, Borders had approximately 17.7 million outstanding gift cards with unredeemed balances of $210.5 million.

You mean there are people out there that don’t use gift cards within 17 minutes of getting them? Freaks.

As a geek who divides his time between books and video games, I seriously cherish those wonderful moments when literature and gaming find a common ground. Like when a game has a series of well written tie-in novels or you’re able to fight Agatha Christie as Edgar Allen Poe.

Recently Spry Fox!, a game developer from Seattle, announced a new puzzle game that totally hits that sweet spot.

Entitled Road Not Taken, the original game takes your character through an “ever-changing forest in the aftermath of a brutal winter storm”, and is influenced by Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. The game is an exploration of at least one answer to the question… what happens when someone wanders off the path, and onto that road not taken.

You can learn more about the game over on Spry Fox’s website, but all you really need to do is watch that trailer, which features lines from Frost’s poem. The game hits at the end of 2013. And I can’t wait!

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Say you’ve always wanted to read something by William Faulkner. You probably know a bunch of his books: The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay Dying; Light in August; Absalom, Absalom! Maybe you’ve even come close to buying one. But every time you think about it, there’s that big question: Which should you read first? Start Here solves that problem.

It tells you how to read your way into 25 amazing authors from a wide range of genres–children’s books to classics, contemporary fiction to graphic novels. Each chapter presents an author, explains why you might want to try them, and lays out a 3-4 book reading sequence designed to help you experience fully what they have to offer. It’s a fun, accessible, informative way to enrich your reading life.

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Here we go:

Name Authors Who Wrote Books in Multiple Languages

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The panel was held at Politics & Prose (DC’s preeminent independent bookseller) and featured some of the heaviest hitters in the industry: leading children’s literature scholar Leonard Marcus, editor Neal Porter, authors Jon Scieszka, Meg Medina, and Mac Barnett and author/illustrators Christopher Myers and Laura Vaccaro Seeger.

Now, if you expect a picture book panel to be all fluffy bunnies and birthday cake, then you would have been terribly disappointed. However, if you’re looking for an erudite discussion about the future of picture books with topics ranging from David Foster Wallace to nipples, then my dear friend you came to the right place.

Seated before a full house on a sunny Sunday afternoon, the panelists wasted no time taking a deep dive into the key issues of their field. For those who don’t have the good fortune of living near Politics & Prose, here are some highlights from the sprawling 90-minute conversation.

(Disclaimer: all quotes should be considered paraphrasing because while I did take notes, my handwriting makes chickenscratch look like Lucida Calligraphy.)

• The Price We Pay: Does the high price point of picture books limit access for economically challenged populations? “We are pricing kids out of great stories,” Barnett lamented.  He and Scieszka pointed to literacy programs that betray their cause by distributing low-quality books (often cheap movie tie-ins) posing as literature. Scieszka, the first ever National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, made the simple but important point that “the way to get kids to be readers is to give them something great to read.” And while many of the panelists agreed that the art of bookmaking is thriving, Myers wondered if there is a danger in commodifying books as artistic objects–if we’ve reached a point of no return where books are no longer viewed as essential, but as luxury items. Marcus then provided a counterpoint by bringing out the nerd hammer and declaring the picture book to be actually quite affordable once you’ve “ammortized the cost over a year of reading”.
• Reflections on Race: Medina spoke forcefully about the challenges of writing geared towards a Latino audience, pointing out that “[America] is the only place where we’re Latinos, everywhere else we’re Guatemalans, Mexicans… there’s incredible diversity here and yet we’re all lumped into this one category.” Elaborating on the importance of diverse characters in literature, she described a potentially vicious cycle, because “children like to see themselves reflected in their books and if we want these children to become authors, we first have to fuel the fires that keep them interested in reading.”
• Uptight Americans: Speaking on the global publishing industry, Porter was asked if the international community viewed Americans as uptight. While wary of playing up cultural stereotypes, he said, “My short answer is yes. Everywhere I go people say, ‘Oh you Americans, you are so afraid of the nipple.’”
• Metafiction is Hilarious: Vaccaro Seeger (who’s brilliant First the Egg is an all-time great) pointed out that its “important to give children enough credit to challenge them—whether that’s using vocabulary that is not considered grade-level appropriate or challenging them conceptually and visually.” Barnett (who studied with David Foster Wallace) was especially excited about picture books as a perfect vehicle for experimental fiction (which is a particular soft spot of mine). Using the misadventures of Wile E. Coyote as an example, he said that while children might not get all the complexities of the joke, they laugh because, well, metafiction is hilarious. However, he also emphasized that the story still has to appeal to the young reader on a basic level because, “the stakes are high—if we don’t deliver [on other aspects of narrative], then they’ve been burned by experimental fiction.”
• Eeeeeee! Books!: On the topic of ebooks, Barnett had a very even-handed perspective. This is where he brought the thunder by mentioning “skeomorphism” (in short, design intended to make one medium look like another material or technology.  Think faux-leather, or in this case, the animated page turn.) “Books for the iPad should be written for that format.  There can be amazing stories for ebooks… but they’ll be something different, they won’t be picture books.” Porter was more blunt, comparing the experience of the animated page turn to “pushing a dead fish”.
• Whimsy vs. Dark Matter: Myers was most passionate when describing his desire to go to the dark side in his subject matter. “Children are dark little beings,” he declared to the delight of the crowd, “we have to give them a place to channel it.” And while describing the challenges of finding the right balance between the whimsical and the serious, he warned about the dangers of dichotomizing the two.  “We are giving kids ways to talk about their life, a vocabulary. If our stories only give them one or the other [the whimsical or the serious], then we have failed them.”

It was only a matter of time though before the conversation took its inevitable turn to fluffy bunnies and birthday cake—but not how you might expect. Scieszka and Barnett are collaborating on a new book. The concept is that a child receives a book called The Birthday Bunny, the most trite, cloying book imaginable (which Scieszka and Barnett wrote by “turning off their brains”).

The kid then takes it upon himself to alter the text and pictures, transforming it into the book he actually wants to read: The Battle Bunny.

This is a fun concept that kids can relate to that just happens to feature a complex layering of visual and written language and challenges children to consider (consciously or not) the intricacies and possibilities of narrative. This is both kid’s play and not–and exactly what makes me love the world of picture books.

The field is filled with these incredibly innovative and passionate thinkers who are very serious about their craft, but do not take themselves too seriously. As the panel ended and the crowd dispersed, one thing was abundantly clear: while we may not be able to predict the future of the picture book, we do know that it is in very good hands.

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Novel Cheeseboard: Spare your actual books the knife marks and grease spots, with bookish teak cheeseboards.

Charles Bukowski Onesie: For the future hipster babies everywhere. Because who hasn’t peed in the sink?

Metroros Print: Game of Thrones’ Westeros as a subway map. Because it doesn’t get any more awesome.

Penguin Classic Luggage Tags: Never pick up the wrong bag at baggage claim again, with that familiar orange cover design you know and love strapped to the handle.

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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.