It’s officially summer, which means you have more hours of sweet daylight to spend tackling your the books you’ve been neglecting or those beach reads you’ve been saving.
We at MashReads always delight in sharing book recommendations with you, …
Category: Mashreads Podcast
‘The Pisces’ is dark tale about mental health, obsession, and, um, lots of mermaid sex
When you think of mermaids, you probably think of The Little Mermaid’s Ariel earnestly yearning to be “a part of your world.” What you probably don’t think of is a merman dragging himself along rocks and sand to a wagon so that he can be carried to …
View More ‘The Pisces’ is dark tale about mental health, obsession, and, um, lots of mermaid sexAlex London puts a queer twist on the fantasy epic with his new book ‘Black Wings Beating’
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Even the most imaginative fantasy novels are frequently inspired by real world eventsGame of Thrones, for instance, draws from the War of the Roses and J.R.R. Tolkein was said to have been influenced by World War I when he created Middle Earth.
But for Alex London’s upcoming novel Black Wings Beating, the inspiration came from the sky: “It started with the killer birds,” London says.
Black Wings Beating, the first book in London’s Skybound fantasy series, stars a pair of twins — Brysen and Kylee — living in the land of Uztar, where “nothing is more revered than the birds of prey and no one more honored than the falconers who call them to their fists.” Kylee possesses ancient gifts for falconry, but wants out of the game. Meanwhile Brysen yearns for the glory that his sister rejects. Read more…
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‘Florida’ is a haunting look at the ‘pestilence and dread’ hiding in the sunshine state
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Lauren Groff knows what you think of when you think of Florida: Disney, Miami, Florida Man.
But in her new book Florida, the writer describes a different tenor to the sunshine state.
“My Florida is different. My Florida is full of pestilence and dread,” Groff told MashReads.
Florida is a collection of short stories set in, well, Florida, as a a series of narrators navigate their lives and the landscape in the southern state.
“This book is about Florida. But it’s not just the state, it’s about the state of dread and premonition, and the desire to push outside the realm of domesticity, and how to raise little boys and make them into good people, and it’s about snakes, and it’s basically everything that you can come up with.” Read more…
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View More ‘Florida’ is a haunting look at the ‘pestilence and dread’ hiding in the sunshine state‘Little Fires Everywhere’ is a beautiful novel that takes you places you’ll never expect to go
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In Celeste Ng’s second novel Little Fires Everywhere, we’re introduced to two families: the Richardsons and the Warrens.
On the surface, the Richardsons are the kind of family you might see in a stock photo framed in Target. They live in Shaker Heights, a Cleveland suburb known for order. But Little Fires Everywhere introduces us to them them in the midst of turmoil: their family home is burning down and the immediate suspect is Izzy, the Richardsons’ rebellious younger daughter.
The story, in a way, takes place backwards. We learn about the series of events that ultimately lead to the fire, but the loss of their home is just one of the many rabbit holes that Ng takes us down. The Warren family, made up of a mysterious single mother named Mia and a her young daughter Pearl, become intertwined with the Richardson family throughout the course of the book. Ng expertly weaves us through the history of each of these characters and many more surprises — including a custody case that divides a community and raises questions regarding morality and motherhood. Read more…
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View More ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ is a beautiful novel that takes you places you’ll never expect to go‘An American Marriage’ is a beautiful love story that’s as heartbreaking as it is complex
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Much has been said about love in literature. True love’s first kiss will cure all. The greatest gift we have is love. Love is the most powerful magic.
But Tayari Jones knows the truth: “How you feel love and understand love are two different things.” Or so she writes in her 2017 novel, An American Marriage.
SEE ALSO: The 10 Most Adventurous Proposals
An American Marriage follows the love story of Celestial and Roy, a recently married couple living in the South. The two seem to have their whole lives ahead of them — Roy is an entrepreneur and Celestial is an artist who is getting more and more attention for the beautiful dolls she designs. But when Roy is falsely accused of rape and convicted to 12 years in prison, the life they thought they’d built for themselves is shattered. While Roy is in prison fighting for his freedom, Celeste has another battle to face as she tries to figure out how to support Roy, all the while living her life and pursuing her dreams. Read more…
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View More ‘An American Marriage’ is a beautiful love story that’s as heartbreaking as it is complex‘The Ensemble’ is an intimate debut novel about love of all kinds
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The Ensemble is more than just a story about a professional string quartet.
Sure, it tails four young musicians that make up the Van Ness Quartet — the formidable Jana on first violin, sweet Brit on second violin, the prodigy Henry on viola, and brooding Daniel on cello — over the course of almost 20 years, but dig into its pages and you’ll realize that the novel is also a sublime character study and complicated unraveling (and rebuilding) of the lives of these musicians during their formative young adult years.
It was a pleasure to sit across from author Aja Gabel and discuss how her debut novel came into the world and the complicated nature of writing about fluctuating and intimate friendships. Read more…
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View More ‘The Ensemble’ is an intimate debut novel about love of all kindsWhy ‘Fahrenheit 451’ does not age well at all
Ray Bradbury’s classic Fahrenheit 451 opens with one of the most iconic opening lines to grace modern literature: “It was a pleasure to burn.”
The novel, fiery from the start, explores a dystopian society where books are illegal. When a book is…
MashReads Podcast: We’re all on board with ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’
If you learn one thing from this week’s episode of the “MashReads Podcast” we hope it’s that you always remember to bring a towel when you travel.
That’s just one of the many important tips that we learned when discussing Douglas Adams’ The Hit…
Daniel Mallory Ortberg’s ‘The Merry Spinster’ puts horrific twists on your favorite fairy tales
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Everyone knows how classic fairytales are supposed to go: they start with “Once upon a time” and end with a “happily ever after.”
But for Daniel Mallory Ortberg’s story collection The Merry Spinster, “happily ever after” comes with a heavy price.
The Merry Spinster is a collection of short stories, each that riff off of the classic fairy tales you read as kids. In Ortberg’s retellings, The Little Mermaid becomes “The Daughter Cells,” a story that seems, at first, ambivalent at best about its protagonist (“Daughters are as good a thing as any to populate a kingdom with — if you’ve got them on hand.”) before descending in incredible violence. Meanwhile, Cinderella is merged with Shakespeare’s King Lear and the Bible‘s book of Psalms to become The Thankless Child. Read more…
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16 book recommendations for when you have absolutely no clue what you want to read
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There’s a funny thing that happens when you tell someone you write about books. Almost always, they immediately ask, “Do you have any book recommendations?”
The short answer is yes, we always have recommendations.
The long answer is *internal panicking* WHERE DO WE EVEN BEGIN?!
SEE ALSO: 21 books you need to read this spring
That’s why we invited a panel of past guests — Mashable deputy science editor Miriam Kramer, social good editor Matt Petronzio, commerce editor Nicole Cammorata, and culture reporter Chloe Bryan — to the latest MashReads Podcast to help us line up a list of really great book recommendations. Read more…
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21 books you need to read this spring
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Spring is here and that can only mean one thing: time to shake yourself out of hibernation and bust out that spring reading.
But with so many great books coming out in 2018, it can be hard to figure out just which ones you should pick up.
SEE ALSO: 9 books to read before seeing the movie
Don’t worry though — The MashReads Podcast has got you covered.
This week on the MashReads Podcast, we are joined by Cristina Arreola, books editor at Bustle, to chat about spring reading. Join us in the episode below as we talk about the books we’ve read recently, the books that’ve been on our spring reading wishlist, the classic books we’ve been revisiting, and the upcoming books you need to know about. Read more…
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