There are an astounding number of travel books out there. How to choose the best of the best? You can start by asking the experts. Read more
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Author: GR
Bitch by Lucy Cooke: A Joyous Debunking of Gender Stereotypes in Nature
From lemurs to spiders, this gleeful exploration of female sexuality in the animal world overturns a host of outdated assumptions. Read more
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Danica Novgorodoff wins Kate Greenaway medal for graphic novel Long Way Down
Danica Novgorodoff’s “innovative” graphic novel adaptation of Jason Reynolds’ novel Long Way Down has won the Yoto Kate Greenaway medal, making it the first graphic novel to win the illustration prize since Raymond Briggs’ Father Christmas in 1973. Meanwhile, Katya Balen has won the Yoto Carnegie medal, which celebrates outstanding achievement in children’s writing. The “expertly written” October, October was inspired by Balen’s father-in-law, who lives off-grid. Read more
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Inside the Colorful, Campy, Unapologetically Horny World of Erotic Cookbooks
While it’s easy to dismiss them as gag gifts, there’s way more to erotic cookbooks than double entendres and naughty illustrations. Read more
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Ruth Ozeki’s ‘complete joy’ of a novel wins Women’s prize for fiction
The novelist, film-maker and Zen Buddhist priest takes the £30,000 award for a book that “stood out for its sparkling writing, warmth, intelligence, humour and poignancy”, according to the chair of judges, Mary Ann Sieghart. Read more
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How Anton Chekhov became the playwright of the moment
More consumed with questions than with answers, Chekhov’s plays depict human beings rather than heroes or villains. Life is captured in plots in which not much seems to happen yet by the end everything is changed. All of this runs counter to our sensation-seeking, moralizing, politically divisive zeitgeist. But theater artists, filmmakers and novelists, drawn to the interior richness of Chekhov’s dramas, have discovered not only the timeliness of his untimely work but also its aesthetic pliancy and openness. Read more
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Shifty’s Boys by Chris Offutt
Offutt has fashioned a mystery plot that’s fast-paced, efficiently plotted, atmospheric, and compelling, but what again distinguishes the book is the author’s command of and affection for the setting and the people who live there. Come for the thriller, by all means; it delivers nicely. But stay for, and linger in, the marvelous incidentals and atmospherics: arguments about mall names; lore about snakes and birds and mushrooms; descriptions of a local shade-tree tinkerer’s Slinky-like version of a perpetual motion machine … Terrific characters; taut suspense. Another winner from Offutt. Read more
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Costa book awards scrapped suddenly after 50 years
The Costa book awards, after running for half a century, have been abruptly scrapped. The coffee shop chain has said the 2021 awards, which were announced in February this year, were the last. Read more
New species of alga named for poet Amanda Gorman
Researchers discovered a new species of alga in central New York and named it Gormaniella terricola, with the genus named after poet Amanda Gorman. The new species is quite interesting in that its chloroplast genome is highly repetitive and contains quite a bit of DNA from fungi and bacteria, meaning it was likely invaded multiple times from other species through a process called horizontal transfer. Read more
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A New Way to Choose Your Next Book
Most books are sold online, where it’s impossible to replicate the experience of browsing in a brick-and-mortar store. Book-discovery apps aim to change that. Read more
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