Everybody loves a flowchart!

Sometimes you just don't know what you want to read so we came up with a flowchart to help.

Or do you prefer GIF-advisory?

I want a book that makes me...

Check out Moranifesto by Caitlin Moran to feel like laughing with your bestie, until something embarrassing happens.

I want a book that makes me...

Check out Little Heaven by Nick Cutter (the new king of horror, IMHO). Also, The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood to feel all the mortal terror.

I want a book that makes me...

Check out Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Leger, and Normal by Warren Ellis to think all the thinks.

In which we react to every book President Obama has recommended while in office

...with reaction GIFs, duh!

JUST KIDDING. That is a LOT of great books (86! 5 more GIFs than the law allows).
However you vote, you have to admit that the man is incredibly well read. We'll be reacting to some of the books he recommends, linking to past reviews of some as well. Enjoy this reading list to end all reading lists as we bid farewell to our Bookworm-In-Chief:

*List adapted from a post by Entertainment Weekly. (yeah, we read that too.)

The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston
Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Nora Webster, Colm Toibin

The Laughing Monsters, Denis Johnson
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China, Evan Osnos
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, Dr. Atul Gawande
Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms, Katherine Rundell
The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan
Redwall series, Brian Jacques
Junie B. Jones series, Barbara Park
Nuts To You, Lynn Rae Perkins
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan
H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald
The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins
Seveneves, Neal Stephenson
The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
All That Is, James Salter

The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert
The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri
Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow
All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Song Of Solomon, Toni Morrison
Parting The Waters, Taylor Branch

Gilead, Marylinne Robinson
Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam
The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton
Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois
The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
The Quiet American, Graham Greene

YES! THE CANCER WARD IS AMAZING!

Cancer Ward, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Gandhi’s autobiography
Working, Studs Terkel
Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith
All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren
Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese
To the End of the Land, David Grossman
Purity, Jonathan Franzen
A Bend in the River, V. S. Naipaul
Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff
Lush Life, Richard Price
Netherland, Joseph O’Neill
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, Salman Rushdie
Redeployment, Phil Klay
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Plainsong, Kent Haruf
The Way Home, George Pelecanos

What Is the What, Dave Eggers
Philosophy & Literature, Peter S Thompson
Collected Poems, Derek Walcott
In Dubious Battle, John Steinbeck
Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin
Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Edmund Morris
John Adams, David McCullough
Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, Fred Kaplan
Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, Jonathan Alte
FDR, Jean Edward Smith

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
 Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America, Thomas L Friedman
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, Steve Coll

Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, Larry Bartels
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Robert A. Caro
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Evan Osnos
Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
Moral Man And Immoral Society, Reinhold Niebuhr
A Kind And Just Parent, William Ayers

The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria
Lessons in Disaster, Gordon Goldstein
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari
The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American, Richard S Tedlow
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, Katherine Boo

Phew! That's a tough act to follow, sir. Enjoy your time off to read!

Read it right now: Truevine, and other new nonfiction

This week is all about the brand new stuff that readers and critics are loving.

Truevine
by Beth Macy

In 1899, young albino African American brothers, George and Willie Muse, were taken from the tobacco fields near Roanoke where they worked and made to join the circus as freaks. Convinced their mother was dead they spent decades traveling the world as a popular sideshow attraction: Eko and Iko, the sheep-headed cannibals or Ambassadors from Mars. That, and their mother's fierce fight to get them back, make for an incredible story. Keen and well-researched, Truevine is a fascinating and compelling read.

It looks like Paramount and Leonardo DiCaprio might be trying to acquire the rights to put this story to film. Hmm, I wonder how it will translate to the screen without sensationalizing the Muse brothers' story.

At The Existentialist Cafe
Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
By Sarah Bakewell

Did your New Year's resolution have anything to do with reading more about philosophy? Really? Well, good! You'll love this book then. It's the lively life story of existentialism, starring Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, who was (sort of) inspired by apricot cocktails. Just give it a chance? It's getting rave reviews!

You Can't Touch My Hair
And other things I still have to explain
by Phoebe Robinson

Phoebe Robinson, super funny stand-up comedian, host of the Sooo Many White Guys podcast and co-host of 2 Dope Queens, has written this fantastic collection of essays on race, gender and culture in America.

Did I mention she's super funny?

Me, always.

Born a Crime
by Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah, South African comedian and host of The Daily Show, is seriously insightful and funny. This is one of those laugh and cry, cry and laugh kinds of books. Born to a white Swiss father and black Xhosa mother in apartheid South Africa, he spent much of his childhood hidden away indoors as living proof of their crime. Born a Crime is deeply moving and the audiobook happens to be narrated by none other than Trevor Noah himself--well worth a listen.

...And top it off with a slice of Damn Fine Cherry Pie!

The final episode of Twin Peaks aired 26 years ago but it refuses to go away--and that's just fine by me.

(Ok, I don't know if anyone is raving about this but I'm always looking for any chance to throw in a Log Lady gif.) This unauthorized cookbook has all you need to prepare damn fine pie, damn fine coffee (and FYI, David Lynch has his own line of coffee and it is legit), and host your own (damn) Log Lady tea party. #goals

Mind: Blown. (Or, The top ten GIF reasons you need to check out Dark Matter immediately)

I can't actually tell you anything about this book except to call it a "literally mind-blowing physics-based romance that sci-fi fans and EVERYONE else in the world will love" without giving away a bunch of spoilers because pretty much everything after the first 20 pages is a mind-blowing thrill ride. I mean it--it could do permanent damage. Consider wearing a helmet because this book is a wild trip through space, time, and love.

1. The best use of Schrodinger's Cat in a book ever?

2. EVER

3.Daniela!

4. The string!

5. Jason(s)!

6. That feeling when your ebook expires with, like, 50 pages left and IT IS GETTING REALLY REAL

7. #TFW your reading twin texts to tell you her mind was so LITERALLY BLOWN by this book that she can't even use words anymore and just sends you a bunch of emoji only your hold hasn't come in yet so you still haven't finished it

8. That feeling when you're not at work the day she sneaks you her copy through interdepartmental mail and all you can think about all day is that book sitting in an envelope on your desk but you just moved and have so many boxes left to unpack and then you finally get to read it and can't put it down and then THAT SCENE IN WISCONSIN OMG (you'll see)

9. Best use of Reddit in a book ever?

10. THAT ENDING THOUGH

*Thanks TT

Hot August Reads

I just finished Dave Eggers' latest, Heroes of the Frontier, and I was inspired, both by the book and by the current temperature, to post about other novels featuring fire. That theme swiftly fell apart when I couldn't think of any fiery novels I hadn't already written about (see Bill Clegg's Did You Ever Have a Family, Joe Hill's latest, that one by Evie Wyld, etc), except for Jesse Ball's How to Set a Fire and Why (which is super good so far but I haven't finished it yet). Anyway, I still want to tell you about Heroes of the Frontier, so theme-schmeme. The family at the center of the story is on the run from a lot of things, one of which is a wildfire sweeping across Alaska. Not gonna lie--Eggers is one of my top ten favorite authors and I'll read everything he comes out with, ignoring all reviews to the contrary. Josie and her two children, Paul and Ana, are spending the summer fleeing Josie's life--her dental practice, her failed marriage to loser Carl, bad memories of her parents--by driving all over Alaska in a used RV with her kids. They encounter the sort of oddballs one generally encounters in the Alaska of novels (perhaps Alaska is really an oddball magnet, but I've only experienced the state through books), as Josie runs into, and then quickly away from, mostly self-inflicted trouble and also a raging wildfire.

Josie is the best kind of protagonist--and one that Eggers excels at creating: self-effacing, flawed, honest, and my new literary best friend. I really and truly want to join Josie with a bottle (or three) of wine and hang out for hours. When one meets a new LBF, it's hard to part with them at the end of the book. There was a moment there when I got hung up on the last 4 pages, afraid to finish the book and let go.

I'll miss you Josie, you and your weird, funny kids.

Speaking of weirdness and besties...Don't you just love quirky horror novelist Grady Hendrix? Well, you should. If his cheeky, and unusually scary, Horrorstor, done in the style of an Ikea catalog, didn't ring your bell, then the cheeky yearbook-style 80s teen horror parody, My Best Friend's Exorcism, maybe won't be your thing either. If "cheeky, yearbook-style 80s teen horror parody" makes your mouth water, than you are probably me, and you will enjoy the heck out of it. Especially enjoyable: the Teen Magazine style personality quiz snippets. Also, P.S. for you fans of adult coloring books--there are coloring pages to download over at the Quirk Books site. You're welcome, world.

And speaking of "too much fun"--you need The Regional Office is Under Attack by Manuel Gonzales in your life. Chock full of awesomely witty, tough, fighting female characters who may or may not have robotic arms, and non-stop action, The Regional Office may not be the best book you've ever read, but I promise you won't regret it*.

*I can't promise that.

"U mad, bro?"