Books

Books

'The Old Gays' of TikTok publish their first book, a guide to life and living for all

8:19am December 23, 2023

by Ryan Benk

We hear from a group of friends known as "The Old Gays" on TikTok, who have just published a book called "The Old Gays Guide to the Good Life" — part self-help, part memoir, and intended for all ages.

Martin Luther King Jr. waves to supporters on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Activists marked 60 years since the march in 2023.

2023 was a year of big anniversaries

6:00am December 23, 2023

by James Doubek

In 2023, we marked 20 years since the Iraq War, 50 years since the birth of hip-hop, and 60 years since the JFK assassination. Here's a roundup of historical events we wrote about over the past year.

(L-R) Taraji P. Henson as Shug Avery, Fantasia Barrino as Celie and Danielle Brooks as Sofia in The Color Purple, a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

'Everyone walked away with part of themselves healed' – 'The Color Purple' reimagined

11:30am December 22, 2023

by Michel Martin

Blitz Bazawule's musical re-imagining of the 1982 Alice Walker novel The Color Purple finds new joy among the pain.

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Author Alice McDermott on linking the dramas of women's lives and wartime Saigon

4:52pm December 21, 2023

NPR's Juana Summers speaks with author Alice McDermott about her new novel Absolution and its central question: what do you sacrifice in order to do something good for someone else?

Cover of Far from the Rooftop of the World.

Q&A: Author Amy Yee on Tibetan refugees in 'Far From the Rooftop of the World'

4:39pm December 20, 2023

by Danielle Preiss

Yee moved to Dharamsala in 2009 and for a year followed the lives of exiled Tibetans there. But when they started to move elsewhere, she continued to stay in touch, learning about their lives abroad.

Books
Arts

Still shopping for the little ones? Here are 10 kids' books we loved this year

2:00pm December 20, 2023

by Beth Novey

If you've found yourself reading the same picture book over and over (and over and over) to a small but determined audience we see you and salute you! Is it time to add a few new titles to the mix?

Amazon-owned Goodreads makes little effort to verify users, and critics say this enables a practice known as review-bombing, in which a book is flooded with negative reviews, often from fake accounts, in an effort to bring down a its rating, sometimes for reasons having nothing to do with the book's contents.

Books
Arts

Goodreads has a 'review bombing' problem — and wants its users to help solve it

8:00am December 17, 2023

by Jim Zarroli

Posting a torrent of fake negative book reviews — sometimes before a book is out or has even been written — is a known problem on the literary social media site.

Books

NPR staffers share their non-fiction picks from Books We Love

7:53am December 17, 2023

NPR staffers recommend non-fiction reads from our Books We Love list: "On Minimalism," "Anansi's Gold," "Asian-Americans in an Anti-Black World," and "The Wager."

Books

Paul Lynch discusses his Booker Prize-winning dystopian novel 'Prophet Song'

8:40am December 16, 2023

by Scott Simon

This year's Booker Prize winner is a dystopian novel about an Irish biologist and mother of four whose husband is taken by the government. NPR's Scott Simon talks with Paul Lynch about "Prophet Song."

Books

'The Shortest Day', a poem and children's book celebrates the winter solstice

8:40am December 16, 2023

Susan Cooper's poem "The Shortest Day," celebrating the winter solstice, is also a children's book illustrated by Carson Ellis. They collaborated by mail.