NONFICTION
BITE SIZED HORROR: SHORT SCARY STORIES SURE TO TERRIFY YOU
"‘Tis the season folks for the spooky and the scary. Halloween is right around the corner and hot chocolate is my go-to hand warmer against the chill. After work or school or the errands that keep me occupied all day, my favorite thing is to grab a blanket and scare myself so bad it’s hard to sleep at night.
"While there are thousands of books and movies and game recommendations thrown at you this time of year, some of us don’t quite have the time to dedicate to 500+ page novels (I’m looking at you, King)...
8 BOOKS LIKE THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE TO HELP YOU HEAL
"I’m a firm believer that books find you at the right time in your life. I put The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk on hold at my library months before it became available to me. And, somehow, I was notified it was ready for download just days before I needed it most in my life.
"Considering what everyone has gone through over the last two years, I think we all could benefit from reading about trauma and recovery. Coping mechanisms and how to get back in touch with our bodies and ourselves...
GOOD FOR YOU: 8 AUTHORS TO FOLLOW ON TIKTOK WHO ARE DOING GREAT
"I can’t be the only one whose screen time has skyrocketed to a shameful degree since downloading TikTok. As the fastest-growing social media platform in the world, I am decidedly not alone. We’re all spending countless hours scrolling through our FYPs (For You pages).
"I think what’s so captivating with TikTok is the specificity of the videos that wind up on your FYP and the quickness in which you consume content. With videos only a few minutes long, it’s easy to blow through hundreds without coming up for air...
COME ON IN, THE HORROR’S FINE: HORROR BOOKS FOR BEGINNERS
"Putting together a list of horror books for beginners is quite a daunting task. The horror label collides with many others: thrillers, mysteries, speculative fiction, the list goes on. Anything can skew horror. It’s not exactly a contained genre. But, that’s what makes it so exciting!
"I was a scaredy cat as a kid. The Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland had me convinced I was going to die and the scene in The Goonies when they put Chunk’s hand in the blender still has me scarred to this day...
WHY I READ WRITING ADVICE BOOKS TO COPE WITH A TRAUMATIC EVENT
"It sounds strange, but let me tell you why I read writing advice books to cope with a traumatic event. In February, something happened that shattered my sense of safety. I won’t get into the details, but the actions of a stranger revealed to me just how exposed I was. I spent a few hours that day in this weird liminal space between being in life-threatening danger and being perfectly fine. Uncertainty stretched and stretched until, finally, it broke. It wasn’t, in the end, ever truly dangerous despite what it looked like through those few hours...
6 BOOKS FOR SUBMITTING TO THE MORTIFYING ORDEAL OF BEING KNOWN
"If you’ve been on social media lately, you’ve likely come across some variation of the phrase “mortifying ordeal of being known.” Sometimes used in earnest, sometimes in jest, the phrase comes from the essay “I Know What You Think of Me” by Tim Kreider. He opens it with an anecdote about an email a coworker accidentally CCed him on an email about Kreider. A reply-all tragedy we all live in fear of that had a few less-than-nice things to say about him...
COWBOY POETRY: THE WHAT, WHO, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, AND HOW(DY)
"Cowboy poetry began during the long cattle drives of the 19th century when cowboys herded cattle for months, traveling hundreds of miles on the job. From the 1860s to the 1910s, more than 25 million cattle were driven from Texas to Kansas and elsewhere. Human contact was minimal, with only their fellow workers to communicate with. Many walks of life came together on these long hauls. The men on them could be veterans of the Civil War, Mexican vaqueros, Native Americans, or formerly enslaved. The men, out of necessity, got over the differences quickly....
PANDEMIC ADVICE FROM LITERATURE (AND DIARIES) OF THE PAST
"Wash your hands to the tune of Happy Birthday, learn how to bake, sit outside for ten minutes every day: we’ve all heard the same pandemic advice one hundred times over. Everyone, it seems, has advice for getting through this challenging time. Even my emails are chock full of it.
"But, what about those who have been through pandemics past in fiction and in fact? What kind of advice do they have to offer? As it turns out, a lot. And I reckon you’ll find many of them ringing a similar tune to what you’re hearing today...
HOW READING EBOOKS CHANGES OUR PERCEPTION (AND REVIEWS)
"It’s safe to say, the reading ebooks vs print debate has been hashed out many a time, both scientifically and over the dinner table of book lovers alike. As an avid Kindle reader myself, I hold no allegiance to either party. But, I am curious about the ways reading ebooks changes the way we interact, and review, the novels we consume.
"Before the early ’90s, studies, according to The Scientific American, “concluded that people read slower, less accurately and less comprehensively on screens than on paper.”
THE HISTORY OF THE BOOKWORM
"As a kid, I was scolded by my librarian for trying to check out The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. It remained restricted; only checkoutable by the older ever-beautiful-and-out-of-reach 8th graders. I came home, mortified and ashamed. I was a shy people-pleasing bookworm in love with the library. Any hint of criticism had me reeling. Especially from a librarian.
"My mom, not having any of that, ordered every S.E. Hinton book she could find. In my house, I read anything I wanted to. Anything...
I BUY BOOKS AS SOUVENIRS IN EVERY CITY I VISIT
"When I travel, my souvenirs of choice are not mugs or hats, not socks or pens. No, when I’m exploring far from home, the souvenirs I bring back are books. I buy one (or two or maybe even three and, yes, sometimes four) in every city I visit.
"This touristy habit started three years ago, by accident, when I went to New York City for the first time. I had always wanted to go, inspired partially, of course, by the many books set there....
MINI-SYLLABUS: ISOLATION TO ENGAGEMENT
"We live our lives in orbit around the planets of loneliness and connection. Alternating between the two. We are, all of us, at times apart from the world around us. Separate in some way. Isolated. But, we are also engaged in the world. Connected. Reaching out and touching the world. We circle back to old feelings, old friends then propel forward to new places, new faces. Whatever we are feeling at one moment, we are not doomed to feel forever. Instead, it’s a constant movement from isolation to hesitation to engagement. From within ourselves, to without and then back again...
WHY NOT BOTH? 8 BOOKS WITH LOVE TRIANGLES THAT END IN POLYAMORY
"The love triangle trope has been popular, it seems, forever. Movies like Titanic, Casablanca, and dozens of others in the 1980s, ’90s, and 2000s all put three people, all pining for each other, into the ring to duke it out. Particularly in the YA space in the early 2000s, it was a frequent theme to find when you plucked something at random off the shelves. Twilight, Divergent, and Hunger Games all did it. After that, so did everybody else.
"Recently, though, tastes have shifted away from the love triangle...
EIGHT HORROR BOOKS ABOUT THE OCEAN THAT WILL MAKE YOU GLAD SUMMER IS OVER
"As summer draws to a close and fall emerges, us beach-goers say goodbye to the water for now. It is time to pack up our towels and umbrellas and swap them for warm drinks and cozy sweaters. That makes this the perfect time to recommend some horror books about the ocean that are sure to make you glad to stay away for a while.
"Ocean-focused horror is often less about the water itself and more about the unknown. The depths that are unexplored and the creatures lurking there. Things with teeth and spikes and appetites...
I ONLY READ UQUIZ BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS FOR A MONTH
"If you’ve been on the internet at all over the last year, I’m sure you’ve seen uQuiz quizzes everywhere. Quizzes about anything from your zodiac sign to what trope you’d be in a horror movie flooded my feeds. And, I’ll be honest, I clicked on every single one. Yes, every single one.
"I answered a lot of questions about song lyrics, personal memories passed off as universal experiences, and chose my favorite color hundreds of times. I was prescribed therapy even more often...
I DON’T KNOW YOU: DON’T ASK ME FOR BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
"This month, I moved to a new state where I knew a handful of people. And “knew” is a strong word to describe the relationship I had with people I had only ever spent three days with a year ago. I didn’t know last names, hobbies, likes, dislikes, nothing. For all intents and purposes, I was alone in a strange city. Of course, I met a lot of people at my new job and in my neighborhood. New people means new small talk. New small talk, as many readers know, means answering questions about what we do in our free time. Which, obviously, is read....
THE MOST POPULAR IN-DEMAND BOOKS IN U.S. LIBRARIES: JANUARY–MARCH 2021
"Each quarter, Panorama Picks takes a deep dive into the data about ebook use at libraries across the U.S. It’s a fascinating look at not just the most popular ebooks in public libraries — they don’t stray too far from what you’d expect of the bestseller lists — but also at the books that are seeing uniquely high demand at libraries.
"These are books which are seeing a lot of interest but haven’t necessarily stayed atop bestseller lists for months and/or books with particular interest locally...
GIMME! GIMME! GIMME! BOOKS LIKE MAMMA MIA!
"I’ve been on the hunt for books like Mamma Mia! my whole life. I always joke that I watched Mamma Mia! too many times in my formative years and that’s why I’m obsessed with Pierce Brosnan in white linen pants, ABBA, and literally every musical that has ever been made. My birthday after the film came out was Mamma Mia!–themed, with plates and napkins plastered with the cast and everything. I talked through the entire movie. How my friends remained my friends after that, I haven’t a clue...
COFFEE TABLE BOOKS: THEIR ORIGIN, PRECURSORS, AND RISE TO POPULARITY
"Every Christmas, I’m sure to unwrap coffee table books about a pop culture thing I’m obsessed with. I have Mamma Mia! How Can I Resist You? and The Art of Mad Max: Fury Road and Guillermo del Toro Cabinet of Curiosities now stashed away on my bookshelf to one day pull out and display. If you, like me, have ever stopped to wonder about the history of coffee table books, the answer is more complicated than you think. Let’s take a walk through book history to find out why it is we’re sure to get at least one of these books every holiday season...
THE DOSTOEVSKY DASH: THE REASONS FOR DASHED OUT INFORMATION IN LITERATURE
"If you’ve ever found yourself sitting in Sophomore English class, flipping through Frankenstein, you’ve met the Dostoevsky Dash before. Chances are, if you’ve read Crime and Punishment or Jane Eyre, you’ve come across a date dashed out. Or, often, a name. Even listening to the audiobook version of Pride and Prejudice would have brought you Austen’s “blankshire” regiment. As with Chekov’s “N─── Reserve Artillery Brigade” and Les Misérables‘ “Madame de R──”, these instances often leave behind only the first letter of the word, the rest scratched through....
I WROTE A POEM AFTER EVERY BOOK I READ IN 2020
"I wrote a poem after every book I read in 2020. I’m doing it again in 2021 and I think you should too.
"At the end of 2019, I hit a reading slump. Hard. Where I’d typically be reading four, five, six books a month, I was reading zero. Zip. Nada. I kept picking up books, getting 20 or so pages in, and setting them down to never pick them up again. I meant to, of course. But, I looked at them and didn’t feel that excitement I wanted, that itch to read and read now. My nightstand became a graveyard...
YA LGBTQ+ BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS BASED ON YOUR ATTACHMENT STYLE
"There are thousands of book recommendations based on your Myers-Briggs and Enneagram. But what about your attachment style?
Most often developed in childhood, your attachment style dictates how you form relationships with family, friends, and significant others. Are you prone to fleeing at the first sign of intimacy? Do you love the chase of a relationship, but worry about rejection the minute your affection is returned?
MY YEAR OF MOVIE POEMS
"My primary emotion as a writer is guilt. I am guilty when I don’t write and when I have written, but not enough. When I have written, but written badly. When I meant to write but got caught up doing something else. I am guilty when I have no ideas and when I have so many ideas I can’t write them all and also when I have one idea, but can’t figure out how to write it.
"Mostly, I am guilty when I do anything that isn’t writing...