We respect the calendar around here, so we have saved our mid-year checkin for, you know, the actual middle of the year. Check out Book Riot’s best books of 2024 so far. Did your fave make the cut?
Whether you’re a fan of full cast audiobooks, single narrator, escaping into cozy worlds, diving into intense thrillers, or read all your memoir and nonfiction through audiobooks, here are some fun gifts for you, or the audiobook lover(s), in your life. There’s a sweatshirt for skull lovers, a tee for tuning out the world, a cover for your AirPods (that may or may not roar), a tote bag, a mug, an enamel pin, stickers for your planner, a sticker for audiobook and tarot fans, and a tee for fans of “the book was better”! Plus, three great items for audiobook lovers who like to listen to a book while doing something relaxing: a gorgeous jigsaw puzzle, an artist created coloring book for dragon lovers, and a bookish embroidery kit!
I have never been more tired. I have never been more productive. I’ve been writing almost exclusively about being a new parent in various Book Riot-shaped spaces because parenting infants is an all-encompassing thing. It requires many cups of coffee and some newfound superpowers like the ability to get shit done on very little sleep with very little time.
You know what’s great for limited reading time? Short story collections.
What is a thing in your life you would call your passion? Dancing? Reading? Collecting things, like stamps and baseball cards? Perhaps it’s a television show, or a quest to qualify for the Olympics, or a thirst for knowledge. These are things that bring you happiness and perhaps even a career. Now imagine you were consumed with thoughts of these things. Say you have a hobby that you love so much, you will stop at nothing to keep doing it — including committing crimes. Now you don’t have a passion, you have an obsession. That is what drives the stories in nine compelling true crime reads about obsessions listed below. Sometimes the authors are the ones obsessing, and sometimes it’s the subjects they write about. These are people whose lives were taken over with a need for…something. And these tales are wild.
If true crime isn’t your jam, no worries. We’ve got all kinds of new nonfiction for your TBR.
Pride Month may be over, but queer books, comics, and graphic novels are a year-round affair. These great new queer comics and graphic novels are proof of that. They’re all perfect for anytime. My point is this: you don’t need an excuse to read queer stories. Queer stories are just as worthy of being read all year long as any other story. And since comics and graphic novels tend to be short, you don’t really have an excuse not to read these queer graphic novels.
Rounding out today’s variety pack: small-town horror books full of small-town scares and a book about what happens when things get real in West Virginia.