Book News & Features

Books

Libraries Get Creative With E-Books And Other Online Offerings

4:26pm March 27, 2020

Want to read, but your library is shut because of the coronavirus? Head over to your public library's website and find out how you can download books to read and listen to.

Queue Listen Now

Physical books may be more difficult to obtain for free these days, but the nonprofit Internet Archive is trying to keep digital bookshelves stocked through the end of the national coronavirus crisis.

'National Emergency Library' Lends A Hand — And Lots Of Books! — During Pandemic

12:28pm March 26, 2020

by Colin Dwyer

With coronavirus concerns closing libraries around the world, the nonprofit Internet Archive has suspended its waitlists for the digital copies of more than a million books.

Books
Arts

William Gibson Says Today's Internet Is Nothing Like What He Envisioned

4:51pm March 19, 2020

by Tom Vitale

Gibson's latest is Agency — set in a future where climate change has mostly wiped out humanity. The cyberpunk godfather says today's online world is "utterly banal" compared to his original vision.

Queue Listen Now

E-readers are lined up at the 2019 Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany.

Books

Publisher Macmillan Backs Off Policy Restricting E-Book Sales To Libraries

9:10pm March 18, 2020

by Rose Friedman

At a time when libraries are closed because of the coronavirus, Macmillan has reversed a policy it adopted last fall limiting the e-books it would sell to each library just after publication.

Books

Remembering Barbara Neely, A Pioneer In Crime Fiction

4:27pm March 11, 2020

Author Barbara Neely died last week at 78. Neely was a trailblazer for black women in crime fiction, and her books used the mystery genre to call attention to issues of race, class and gender.

Queue Listen Now

Books
Arts

Exclusive 1st Read: 'The City We Became,' By N.K. Jemisin

7:00am March 10, 2020

by Petra Mayer

N.K. Jemisin's new novel kicks off a trilogy of stories about a world in which great cities can be born into human avatars, who must battle eldritch horrors to defend themselves and their people.

NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, pictured at the 2017 Academy Awards, was one of the women profiled in the book and film Hidden Figures. She died Monday at 101.

Katherine Johnson, NASA Mathematician And An Inspiration For 'Hidden Figures,' Dies

4:59pm February 24, 2020

by Russell Lewis

Johnson was one of NASA's human "computers" and wrote trajectory equations for missions in the space agency's early days. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.

Queue Listen Now

Who Should Decide What Books Are Allowed In Prison?

8:04pm February 22, 2020

by Lee Gaines

The Color Purple, The Hate U Give and American Sign Language textbooks have all been censored in U.S. prisons. A recent report describes the restrictions as "arbitrary" and "opaque."

Jake the Fake Keeps It Real, by Adam Mansbach, Craig Robinson and Keith Knight

Books
Arts

Not Too Rude, Not Too Tame, 'Jake The Fake' Is A Just-Right Read

7:00am February 21, 2020

by Juanita Giles

Our kids' books columnist Juanita Giles says she was at her wits' end trying to find a funny (but not mean-funny) book for her son, a budding humorist. Jake the Fake Keeps It Real was just the thing.

Just five books have been named finalists for the 2020 Aspen Words Literary Prize: Patsy, by Nicole Dennis-Benn; Lost Children Archive, by Valeria Luiselli; Lot, by Bryan Washington; Opioid, Indiana, by Brian Allen Carr; and The Beekeeper of Aleppo, by Ch

Books
Arts

5 Finalists Still Have A Chance At Aspen Words Literary Prize

11:21am February 19, 2020

by Colin Dwyer

The annual award, doled out in partnership with NPR, honors fiction that doesn't shy from grappling with thorny social issues. Just one of the five books remaining will win $35,000 come April.