Our Blog

The holidays are a time when we surround ourselves with people we rarely see. How do you, a voracious reader, talk to these people? Sure, you’re pretty adept at throwing out a well-timed Dickens reference, and you’re the only one who has read that YA series your niece is now into, but what about when the conversation turns away from books? What if it turns to…sports? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

The long-anticipated reboot She-Ra and the Princess of Power is now on Netflix, led by showrunner Noelle Stevenson. Think that name sounds familiar? She’s the creator of one of our all-time favorite graphic novels, Nimona, and co-creator of the badass middle grade comic series Lumberjanes. If you’re on our feminism-meets-pop-culture wavelength – and we hope you are – you might be thinking, “Oh hey! I know a bunch of other rad women whose work would thrive on Netflix!” Well, come on board, nerds. Because we were thinking the exact same thing.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

November is a bit of a down month. Summer is long gone, the fun of Halloween is over, Christmas is still too far away to get excited about, it’s probably raining outside, and suddenly, it’s getting dark before you even leave work. It’s no wonder that this is a bit of a gray, grumpy month and that all we want to do is stay at home with a good book and a giant mug of tea (or wine). Whether you just have the November blues or you are dealing with something else that’s got you down (a bad breakup, a lost job, or just a day where everything has gone wrong from the moment your feet hit the floor), these books are guaranteed to make you feel just a little bit better about life.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay;

National Take a Hike Day is this weekend and despite snow and near-freezing temperatures across the country, we’re going to do everything in our power to get out and hike this weekend. To make this late-season hike more appealing, we’ve gathered some of our favorite books about the great outdoors – pairing them with the hikes that inspired their authors.

Photo by Leah Kelley from Pexels

The People’s Choice Awards happened this past Sunday and we know what you’re thinking. The People’s What? The (ahem) E! People’s Choice Awards honors contributions to pop culture and winners are entirely decided by the general public. It’s like Dancing With The Stars, but for everything. Which got us thinking: what would the People’s Choice Awards look like if they were all about books? Y’all are about to find out!

Best Psychological Thriller

Winner: Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott

Megan Abbott is prolific, but it’s Give Me Your Hand that has us constantly looking over our shoulder. The novel starts innocuous enough — a workplace drama about postdocs who work in a lab studying a rare uterine condition. But the dynamic turns quickly when a new fellow shows up at the lab. And you’ll just have to read it to find out how!

Runners up: The Witch Elm by Tana French and Vox by Christina Dalcher

Best Comedic Character

Winner: Eleanor Oliphant in Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Comedy is a tough to convey in novel form, but Gail Honeyman found the sweet spot with her titular character Eleanor Oliphant. We had to stop reading this book in public because we were laughing too much! This is Honeyman’s debut novel and we’re excited for every book she writes.

Runners up: Arthur Less in Less by Andrew Sean Greer and David Sedaris in Calypso by David Sedaris

Best Nostalgia Read

Winner: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The second season of this terrifying (and incredible!) Hulu series has a lot of readers turning to the original novel — some for the first time! We want to honor how well this 1985 pseudo-science fiction novel has held up. And that probably has a lot to do with Atwood’s original intention to not include anything that hadn’t already happened somewhere in the world. Bravo, Margaret Atwood! Now please hold our hand while we read this scary book.

Runners up: 1984 by George Orwell and The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Best Young Adult Adaptation

Winner: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before on Netflix

If you’re anything like us, you’ve already seen this movie three or four times since its August release. As huge fans of the Jenny Han series, we give this movie an A+, two thumbs up, every confetti emoji available, and five Peter Kavinsky GIFs. And if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to go watch it one more time.

Runners up: The Hate U Give and Love, Simon

Best Book

Winner: The Ensemble by Aja Gabel

No book has ever made us hear music when we read it and we’d award it the Best Book award for that reason alone. But Aja Gabel has created four incredibly layered characters who grow and change together in this epic tale of love, art, and collaboration. You won’t want to put this one down. It’s that beautiful.

Runners up: There There by Tommy Orange and The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

Photo by Felipe Hueb from Pexels

Horror is hard work, y'all. People underestimate just how exhausting it is. Not only do you have to battle masked serial killers, deadly space aliens, or haunted videotapes, but then you’re expected to clock in by nine if you want to keep your job at the local [insert movie trope here]. That hardly seems fair! Still, work is one of those inevitable things, regardless of whether or not you made it to the final cutscene. So at the end of the day, if you’ve just got to pay the bills, here are a couple of the best gigs in horror movies. Feel free to grab an application. Most of them are hiring…