Upon first opening The Art of Jaime Hernandez: The Secrets of Life and Death , do not fret over the chunks of text. You may initially think, “This isn’t the coffee table art book I thought it was going to be,” and then half-heartedly promise yourself that someday you’ll sit down to read the whole thing. Because, yes, there is plenty to look at–pages and pages of fantastic, humbling, inspiring, and affecting artwork–but I... 

We debate long and hard every month to decide what books to call best, but September (and October!) are always the heavyweights. It's all about the fiction this month, and a wide range of it too, with Scarlett Thomas's Our Tragic Universe in the spotlight. Have a look at our Best Books of the Month reviews below (including our favorite read for teens and two picks for kids) and let us know what else is on your reading list for September.  Read More →

First-time novelist Darin Bradley ,  Read More →

[Ed: Since we spoke to him last , Gary Shteyngart has been fully immersing himself in the social media that his novel Super Sad True Love Story makes so horribly and amusingly disturbing, with regular (often dachshund-themed ) Facebook updates about his book tour. He recently sent us a note which we pass on to you below.] OMG, I just got back from the West Coast part of my tour and I’m sad to say: reading isn’t dead. Darn it!! I just wrote... 

I'm a shameless dork about a number of literary things, but perhaps the first of them were the Paris Review interviews. Plenty of other folks might have been doing more interesting things on their study breaks in my college library, but I wore a path in the linoleum between my desk and the shelf in the stacks where they …  Read More →

What makes a Star Wars book stand out? Having a page on Wookieepedia is good. Receiving a glowing book review from Jeff VanderMeer is even better. Having your book unboxed on Techland ? Very cool. And getting everyone from Tommy Lee Edwards to Darth Vader to read your book at Comic-Con? Pretty memorable. Back in July, Daniel Wallace shared his newest book, The Jedi Path…  Read More →

When I interviewed creator, writer, and artist Mike Mignola at the 2009 Emerald City ComiCon , I had to smile and nod when he mentioned his side project, The Amazing Screw-On Head , because I knew next to nothing about it. Afterward, I decided to do some digging, and while I could not find reasonably priced, available copy, I did uncover a few interesting tidbits. In 2002, Mignola wrote and illustrated The Amazing Screw-On Head as a one-shot... 

Like many publications connected to book culture, Publishers Weekly has been changing in response to a changing landscape. A little over three years ago, they turned over the science fiction/fantasy.horror reviews editor job to Rose Fox, and launched PW's Genreville , where Fox regularly blogs about industry news along with her partner Josh Jasper. Fox's energy and progressive approach have given the SF/F/H section of the magazine a definite  Read More →

(Shared Worlds video from year one.) Every year now for the past three years I've gone to Wofford College in South Carolina in the summer to help run Shared Worlds, a teen writing camp for students interested in science fiction and fantasy . The camp is fairly unique, in that the first week the students split off into groups of ten and build their own SF or fantasy world.  Read More →

Who says you can't teach an old media dog new tricks? Over at the Washington Post , fiction critic Ron Charles tries his hand at a video adaptation of his review of Mona Simpson's My Hollywood (which I linked to, the old-fashioned way, in Old Media Monday last night): What do you think? I have to say he did us scribes proud, with his confident line readings and his David Pogue-style willingness to go beyond the mere talkingheaddom of, say,... 

Today's the day: UPS drivers beware–today at long last eager Amazon customers finally get their hands on Mockingjay , the highly anticipated final installment of the Hunger Games trilogy , and they are likely to rush your truck–much like they did for Harry Potter. #Mockingjay is a trending topic on Twitter and while we haven't seen any full reviews yet, here are some early quotes “One word: epic”, “awesome... 

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Nnedi Okorafor is the author of the award-winning young adult novels Zahrah the Windseeker and The Shadow Speaker , the children's book Long Juju Man , and, most recently, the adult novel Who Fears Death . (Visit her Amazon page for more information on all of these titles.) Okorafor was born to Igbo (Nigerian) parents in the United States, and her work draws on Igbo culture as well as American and European styles of fantastic literature, including... 

With so many reviews of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom coming out this week (and so many of them by men named “Sam”) in advance of its publication next Tuesday, and with its general anointedness, from Time to the president , as the Book of the Moment (and even the Book That Might Just Save Literature), I thought we could begin tonight's roundup with special Freedom survey, following last week's Kakutani rave : On Freedom : Sam... 

You Omnivores have likely seen this surprisingly literal mash note to the new nonagenarian, which we'll let other, less family-friendly venues embed. (I am looking forward to the response vid that the poor Kurt Vonnegut fan in the video is no doubt working on.) But we posted another Bradbury video on Amazon recently that I wanted to point to, for Sam Weller's Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews , and featuring Bradbury...