Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.

While some might recognize them as standard office supplies, or remember their school days marking passages to use in your next essay, book tabs have so many uses. You can use them for just about anything when it comes to annotating your books. You can color code, write notes on them, or even just use them as bookmarks. But no matter how many uses they have, sometimes they can be a little ugly....

As a teacher, I hope you don’t forget. I hope you see all the things they do and how it affects you, your kid’s, or your family’s life. I hope you see the impact and honor it. It can be hard voicing your appreciation, but you don’t always have to use words. A thoughtful gift can help you say what you want to say. I put together a list of goodies that can help you do that this holiday season....

Fairly often, there’s a group of friends that are picked off one by one. Oh, and sex kills. Especially in the films from the ’80s, characters having sex pretty much guaranteed their death. The final girl trope is a staple of the genre too. The last one standing, often bloodied and injured, but alive. Laurie Strode from Halloween is one, Sydney Prescott another. Basically, when you think of a slasher, think blood and murder and an almost-inhumanely-unstoppable villain with a mask and their weapon of choice....

A lot of the data is not that helpful. Like, did you know that people apparently associate letters in the beginning of the alphabet with academia/intelligence? I guess that’s why it took my husband (Sean) and I (Tracy) 30+ years to find each other. We were just too damn buried in the alphabet! Other data seems somewhat more helpful. For example, studies have found the ideal ratio of talking about yourself versus talking about your potential mate: 70% you and 30% them....

In the last five years, I’ve reread about 40 books on audio. Sometimes I listen to all the books in a series in preparation for a new installment coming out. Sometimes I reread a book for the comfort of it — recently I’ve taken to listening to beloved romance novels as part of my bedtime reading routine, and yes, it helps me sleep. I also like to reread books that are complicated, difficult, and challenging — sometimes listening to a book shakes up my brain in just the right way and helps me get more out of it....

The Hate U Give Summary Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger....

Every day I ponder life after college. I try to suppress these thoughts, but they sit in my wooden desk chair as I sleep and gawk at me as I wake up in the morning. Neighbors and middle aged adults I know constantly tell me and everyone like me that things will “work themselves out” and that “everything will be fine.” I’m Thinking of Ending Things shows us what happens when those words of affirmation never come to fruition....

Known for his charming stories with surprise endings, including “The Gift of the Magi” and “The Last Leaf,” it should be no surprise that O. Henry’s life had some twists of its own life. When I went off in search of some biographical information, I half-expected to learn something distasteful, such as “he was from money and had no idea what it’s like to not be able to afford a Christmas gift for your beloved spouse!...

The Guardians, never ones to give up on the idea of being the bosses of everyone, decided that the universe would be better off with sentient beings with “free will and strong moral character” as the enforcers and, having discovered they could harness the energies of the Emotional Electromagnetic Spectrum (behold the space burrito), crafted rings capable of harnessing green light, or strength of will, and lantern shaped batteries (alas, no easy-roll charging mats 3....

Literature begs to differ. Mothers, just like any other part of human society, aren’t the embodiment of perfection and it’s high time we read them as they are. Frankenstein Of The New Age And Her Monsters One of the defining themes of Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects is toxic mother-daughter dynamics. Adora, the daughter of an abusive mother herself, had inherited more than just material wealth from her parents. She grew up with less-than-ideal standards of mother-daughter relationships, so following the familial tradition, she too became a poisonous presence in her daughters’ lives....

Twenty years is a long time, and oh, how we wish Speak weren’t still relevant. Maybe Shout will be the one to change the world for good.

The winner was To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. A NYT critic says of the choice, “As an adult, I can perceive why the novel might hold enduring appeal for many and enduring repulsion to perhaps just as many. I cannot fathom the complexities of teaching it to elementary school students in 2021, especially after reading online accounts from teachers on both the ‘pro’ and ‘against’ sides.” The runners up were: 2) The Fellowship of the Ring by J....

Chicago’s South Side has been waiting in eager anticipation for this amazing centre. The Center is more like a campus. This includes a Chicago Public Library branch, a museum, a venue for events and athletic activities, a forum for office space, and additional outdoor space. All of this will be included within a 235-foot stone-sheathed tower. You can learn more about the proposed design on the official Obama Foundation website here....

So naturally, I grabbed everything from the office that I thought could get me through. This included: my laptop, an extra charger, and any and all snacks I had lying around in my desk drawers. I advised the people I worked with to do the same. “We may not be back in the office on Monday,” I said. A similar thing happened at home, as I tried to imagine everything I would need to get me through a long bout of isolation....

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents was the flagship title of Tower Comics, a short-lived company that flamed out in 1969, just four years after their debut. The comic combined two of the most popular genres to come out of the ’60s: superheroes and secret agents. The “superheroes” part won out fairly quickly. Even so, the books were noticeably different from anything else on the market. They were twice as long (68 pages versus 34 pages) and twice as expensive (25 cents versus 12 cents) as the average comic....

Tobey Maguire Era (Earth-96283) This is the movie that restarted the whole franchise. Before this, it was mostly animated TV shows and a live-action TV series in the 1970s starring Nicholas Hammond that we do not talk about. What many younger fans may not realise is how long it took to make the first Spider-Man movie. Development began in the 1980s but was slammed with licensing and finance issues, including Marvel selling the movie rights for Spider-Man to Columbia Pictures (owned by Sony)....

A notable difference in genre categories between this year and last year came up when Goodreads removed the separate Picture Books genre. Instead, picture book nominees, such as Eyes that Kiss in the Corners by Joanna Ho, were merged with the Middle Grade and Children’s books. In regards to diversity amongst the winning books this year, only three authors of color and one Hispanic author were chosen, despite a number of authors of color amongst the nominees in each genre....

The Soul of a Novel Before we answer those pressing questions, we need to figure out exactly what a novel is. As many of our readers are already screaming into their screens, the first written story is very, very old. That’s generally thought to be The Epic of Gilgamesh, which, if you haven’t read it, is a super gay Sumerian political biography complete with embellished accomplishments and also in the public domain....

Hello mystery fans! Two of my favorite reads of the year, that I’d earlier shouted about, are officially out in the world, so definitely pick up Grown by Tiffany D. Jackson (Review) and And Now She’s Gone by Rachel Howzell Hall (Review). Plus, they both have great backlists for plenty of reading. And now for what I have for you this week: my yearly reminder that I absolutely adore Charlotte Holmes with my entire being, and a puzzle mystery with a focus on family drama....