All posts tagged: Books

Best Apps for Reading Books for Every Type of Reader

Best Apps for Reading Books for Every Type of Reader

Published by Jenni Sidey

Readers now move between print, ebooks, digital summaries, and audiobooks, depending on the day. Print still reached more readers than either ebooks or audiobooks, so digital formats have expanded the available choices without displacing paper. The best apps for reading books are tailored to different reading habits. Some sell full ebooks, and some connect to public libraries. Others can track reading or condense nonfiction. For example, if you are trying to find ways to catalog what you finish or care more about reviews and book discussions, you may also want to explore dedicated Goodreads alternatives. There is no single app that solves every reader’s needs, so finding your match means looking at how you actually spend your time. Let’s now compare the options below to find one that fits your preferred format and available reading time! 1. Headway App: Learning Key Ideas During Short Breaks Headway suits readers who want the main ideas from nonfiction books before committing to a full edition. Its library contains more than 2,500+ text and audio summaries, with most taking …

Vick Hope: Books gave me the tools to understand my world — today’s children need that gift

Vick Hope: Books gave me the tools to understand my world — today’s children need that gift

Published by Sam Flores

Growing up, my mother always taught us the importance of giving back where we can. Along with working, she would always spend a day a week at a local hospice, and she’s now volunteering in a local primary school. It’s therefore always been engrained in me that if we’re in a position where we’re safe, we have food and we’re happy; then we should pay it forward. When I found the opportunity to volunteer at the after-school reading programme with the Literacy Pirates charity, it really clicked for me. As a person who loves reading, I’m passionate about helping children discover the joy that comes when you get lost in a book. While new research from the National Literacy Trust shows a modest upturn in children’s enjoyment of reading (from 32.7 per cent to 36.1 per cent) and daily reading habits (from 18.7 per cent to 20.3 per cent) after hitting a 20-year low in 2025, engagement levels remain significantly lower than a decade ago (when each was 58.6 and 32 per cent respectively). There …

Natalie Portman May Be Dark Portrait in Rachel Cusk’s New Novel

Natalie Portman May Be Dark Portrait in Rachel Cusk’s New Novel

Published by Daniella Wilson

Natalie Portman famously saw a twisted version of herself in mirrors as part of her Oscar-winning performance as a tortured ballerina in Black Swan. She may experience the same queasy sensation if Unherd writer Valerie Stivers is to be believed, as she suggests in a July 17 column that Cusk’s upcoming novel, Life of M, is a thinly-veiled portrait of Portman. And Portman, despite apparently being friends with Cusk and a cheerleader for her novels, may not be flattered with what she sees in the literary mirror. “Chatter in New York literary circles says that Cusk’s upcoming novel, Life of M, is based on Cusk’s relationship with Portman,” Stivers reveals in her Unherd column, entitled A Novelist’s Dark Portrait of Natalie Portman — Rachel Cusk’s New Book Mines the Actress’s Life. The novel, set for an Aug. 25, 2026 release and available for pre-order, centers on a famous actress, M, and a writer tapped to chronicle her life amid the glamor of olive groves, beaches and from behind the tinted windows of limousines. “The movie star …

The Books Briefing: A Pulitzer Winner Who Keeps Pushing Himself

The Books Briefing: A Pulitzer Winner Who Keeps Pushing Himself

Published by Daniella Wilson

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. Many novelists—including some great ones—circle one subject and style for much of their career. Colson Whitehead isn’t among them. He has written a zombie novel, a fantastical escape-from-slavery narrative, a supernatural elevator-inspector thriller, and, most recently, a trilogy of heist capers that concludes with Cool Machine, which comes out on Tuesday. The critic David Hajdu, in a new Atlantic article, describes the book as “crime fiction without apology” that entertains “for the sake of a moral imperative.” Don’t mistake Whitehead’s restlessness for aimlessness; his knack for pinballing among genres has marked out an instructive path for adventurous authors—he’s taken a joyously circuitous journey toward literary mastery. First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic’s Books section: This mastery took decades to achieve. Whitehead’s first three novels earned him a reputation as a deft satirist of the transactional cultural ecosystem of the aughts—but one who could fall into the glibness he was sending …

Exclusive: In-Depth Lane Kiffin Biography to Drop Just In Time For LSU Vs. Ole Miss

Exclusive: In-Depth Lane Kiffin Biography to Drop Just In Time For LSU Vs. Ole Miss

Published by Sam Flores

As Vanity Fair’s Chris Smith wrote in his May bombshell profile of LSU’s firestarter head football coach, the Lane Kiffin Show is never dull. When Louisiana State University and the University of Mississippi, Kiffin’s former employer, meet on the gridiron on September 19, 2026, just three games into the college football season, there’ll be even more fuel for the competitive fire. Days before the game, John Talty will publish Lane Being Lane: The Story of Lane Kiffin, College Football’s Agent of Chaos. “It is a biography, but I think it’s more than that,” Talty tells Vanity Fair. “College sports has undergone unbelievable transformation, especially in just the last six years, and the argument is no one has capitalized more on that change than Lane. I think you can kind of track the evolution of football through Lane Kiffin.” Also included: A non-zero number of F-bombs, unsurprising given the colorful vocabulary Kiffin has been known to use. “People certainly have very strong thoughts,” Talty says. “Let’s put it that way.” Talty, the national college football reporter …

The Best Books of July, Rapid Readalikes, and More Links for Library Workers

The Best Books of July, Rapid Readalikes, and More Links for Library Workers

Published by Jenni Sidey

Welcome back, library friends. I have a treasure trove of buzzy book resources that are useful whether you’re ordering for your library’s collections, recommending books to patrons, or just looking to build your own TBR. We have the best books of July (and the year so far), rapid readalikes for buzzy books, author and genre resources, and so much more! Let’s dive in. Best Books of July July picks from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Crime Reads, Kirkus, L.A. Times, New York Times, NPR, Reactor (sci-fi, fantasy, horror, romantasy), Time, and Vulture. Book Riot’s best books of July, plus picks for mysteries/thrillers, romance, SFF, horror, historical fiction, nonfiction, LGBTQ+ reads, and children’s books. The best new comics & graphic novels in July. The best audiobooks of July. Best Books of the Year + Upcoming Releases Check Your Shelf Sign up to receive Check Your Shelf, the Librarian’s One-Stop Shop For News, Book Lists, And More. Subscribe to Selected No Thanks New Books You May Have Missed Readers Advisory Resources Rapidfire Readalikes For Buzzy Books We love …

Middle Grade Fantasy Books for Fans of Fablehaven

Middle Grade Fantasy Books for Fans of Fablehaven

Published by Jenni Sidey

Random House Children’s Books The instant New York Times bestseller Forbidden Mountain is the first in the brand-new Guardians series from Brandon Mull, the bestselling author of Fablehaven. Prepare to explore an expansive new fantasy set in a world where children bond with spiritual guides called guardians—some promising greatness and glory, while others, destruction and death. Follow Mako and Arden, two kids whose fates collide as they journey across Tinoval. Together, they must face bandit armies, dark secrets, and untold dangers to fight an enemy who could destroy all they’ve ever known. Don’t miss this thrilling series opener. It seems impossible, but Brandon Mull’s bestselling Fablehaven novels have been delighting readers for two decades now! It’s understandable: the middle grade fantasy series is the perfect blend of adventure, mystery, and magic, with two wonderful, relatable young characters. When Kendra and her younger brother, Seth, are sent to stay at their grandparents’ mysterious estate while their parents are on a cruise, the siblings discover that behind the gates of Fablehaven are ancient woods that house magical …

Andrew Motion: ‘Wilfred Owen became a kind of sacred text for me’ | Books

Andrew Motion: ‘Wilfred Owen became a kind of sacred text for me’ | Books

Published by Sam Flores

My earliest reading memoryMy parents were country people who thought that looking after or chasing animals was more fun than reading: my father used to say that he’d read half a book in his life (The Lonely Skier by Hammond Innes), and while my mother got through three or four novels a year, she didn’t expect me to do anything equivalent. But I do remember enjoying something my grandmother gave me – My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett. I must have been seven or so, and thought it was amusing and ingenious. The books that changed me as a teenagerAt my first school, I somehow got my hands on White Eagles Over Serbia by Lawrence Durrell, which my parents thought was unsuitably violent. I never finished it, but enjoyed carrying it around as proof of how grown-up I was. Then, at my secondary school, my history teacher read us some Wilfred Owen (we were studying the first world war), and the poetry-lights in my mind immediately flickered on. When I subsequently bought Owen’s Collected Poems it became a kind of …

‘The Odyssey’: 10 Major Changes From Book to Screen

‘The Odyssey’: 10 Major Changes From Book to Screen

Published by Sam Flores

So, Who is Odysseus? “Tell me about a complicated man.” So opens Wilson’s (somewhat controversial) translation of The Odyssey. “Complicated” here is translated from the ancient Greek word polytropos, which literally means “twisty-turny” or “much-turning”—a term that speaks both to Odysseus’s rollicking adventures and to his many-sided nature. What does it mean to be a man? Can someone who’s undergone many experiences return home and even be recognized? These are the poem’s central questions. But the titular hero frustrates any straightforward answer. Odysseus is a king, a thief, a warrior, a leader who loses his men, an absentee father, an adulterer, and a devoted husband yearning for home. Ironically, his most stable trait is that he’s a masterful liar. In the poem, he even lies to his long-suffering father, Laertes, about his identity, then watches Laertes cry. More often than not, Odysseus’s deceit is manipulative and self-serving. Yet one reason both Athena and the nymph Calypso, played in the film by Charlize Theron, favor him above other mortals is because they view his capacity for …

A voyage of discovery: an idiot’s guide to reading The Odyssey | Books

A voyage of discovery: an idiot’s guide to reading The Odyssey | Books

Published by Sam Flores

The Odyssey was once all Greek to me. I struggled to keep up with the characters, the mass of heroes and villains, the swarms of sons and daughters. I found the Homeric formula – repeated stock phrases passed down from the oral tradition – confusing and tiring. The prose in my 1946 EV Rieu translation, revised by his son DCH Rieu, felt laboured and laborious. I have put the Odyssey down, several times, in the course of my life. But, like Sirens, difficult books tend to have a hold on us. The recent film adaptation pushed me to once again try reading the Odyssey, so I decided on a new approach. I spoke to classicists and conducted research, aiming to render the inaccessible accessible. To read the Odyssey, start by avoiding the Odyssey. “Begin with contextualisation” – get to grips with themes and content – Antony Makrinos, associate professor in classics at UCL and director of the Summer School in Homer 2026, told me. He sent me an exhaustive list of recommendations, and I found …