Exorcist Author William Peter Blatty Dies at Age 89
Posted by Cybil on January 13, 2017

The Books Martin Luther King Jr. Taught
Posted by Cybil on January 13, 2017

Which A Series of Unfortunate Events Book Is the Most...Unfortunate?
Posted by Hayley Igarashi on January 12, 2017



Since its publication in 1999, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events has greeted new readers with all the cheer of Dante's Gates of Hell.

In fact, this is the opening line of The Bad Beginning, book one of the series: "If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle."

Yet despite the cheeky gloom and doom—or, more likely, because of it—Snicket's 13-book series is beloved around the world. And on Friday, a new take on the series arrives on Netflix: eight episodes all released at once for your binging pleasure.

Will the Netflix adaptation be better than that 2004 movie? Will our favorite Count Olaf disguises be included? These are questions we can't answer yet. But we're readers! We always have opinions on books. So let's decide which one of the "Unfortunate Events" is the best at being the worst.

Poll

Which A Series of Unfortunate Events Book Is Your Favorite?

The Bad Beginning The Reptile Room The Wide Window The Miesrable Mill The Austere Academy The Ersatz Elevator The Vile Village The Hostile Hospital The Carnivorous Carnival The Slipperly Slope The Grim Grotto The Penultimate Peril The End

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Prepare yourself for a night of binging glory (or days of leisurely viewing if you insist on being such an adult about it) with the trailer for Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events, starring Neil Patrick Harris, Alfre Woodard, Patrick Warburton, Aasif Mandvi, and Catherine O'Hara.

Some of 2017's Most Popular Reading Challenge Books...So Far
Posted by Cybil on January 11, 2017

The Buzziest Books of the Season
Posted by Hayley Igarashi on January 10, 2017

The secret to succeeding in your 2017 Reading Challenge is starting off with some great books! That's where we come in. To help you meet your goal, we rounded up beloved new books, each with a 4.0+ rating from Goodreads members. From secrets in the Sistine Chapel to insanity at the end of the world, from the women who would be queen to the man who created a galaxy far, far away, these are the buzzy books that have captured your fellow readers' hearts. What will catch your eye?


FICTION

The Sex Pistols' Steve Jones Recounts his Illiterate Junkie Days
Posted by Cybil on January 09, 2017



If Sid Vicious is best remembered as punk rock's death-obsessed "Pretty Vacant" poster boy and Johnny Rotten as its anarchy-embracing id, then their Sex Pistols bandmate Steve Jones can be understood as the genre's first—and arguably most iconic—guitar hero. The London native's don't-give-a-damn attitude, offstage lawlessness, and chugging riffs helped set the parameters for the countercultural movement.

With his memoir, Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol, however, Jones elucidates the Dickensian childhood that underpins his band's glamorous nihilism as well as the multiple addictions—heroin, alcohol, stealing, and sex—that almost took him to an early grave. Below is an excerpt from that interview which you can read in its entirety here.

Goodreads: In the book you say upfront that your memory isn't very good. And therefore you don't make the most reliable narrator—even for your own life. That must have made writing this hard.

Steve Jones: It was very hard. I had a lot of help from Cookie—[Sex Pistols drummer] Paul Cook—who the ghostwriter spoke to and who has a very good memory. I know there's a lot that I ain't rememberin' that will probably come up later. I just did the best I could. I know that everything in there is the complete truth. There's no exaggeration or fabrication of anything. That's the main thing I want to get across.

Goodreads: Toward the end of the book you describe battling heroin addiction. You say being a junkie "felt like a necessity after the Pistols ended." You acknowledge it's crazy to say your life was saved by that addiction—but that's what happened. How was it a saving grace?

Steve Jones: That two- or three-year whirlwind of the Pistols was pretty wild. Then heroin comes along after that ended, and it was perfect. I think heroin would have come regardless. Whatever the circumstances were, it was the next step for me. I tried alcohol, blow, all the rest of it. For someone like me who's constantly got a hole inside them that I'm trying to fill—hence the name Lonely Boy—there's always this hole I'm trying to fix with whatever. That's where I go to. It's almost like not wanting to deal with reality. Heroin was the perfect antidote to not dealing with reality.

Goodreads: Dangerous thing to fill a hole with.

Steve Jones: Absolutely. But it didn't matter. I never think about doing the right thing. I always thought about the stupid thing. And at that time heroin was the answer. It did help for a while. Until that stopped working. Until I had no money left. I often wonder if I had Keith Richards's money if I would have stopped or if I would have kept on going. I just know if you're lucky enough, you get to a point where you've had enough. A little light goes on in your head and you look at yourself and go, "Holy shit, look at me. I'm homeless. I have no money. I've got a heroin habit." For me it was like, "OK, I'm going to turn this around." You're the only one who knows.

Goodreads: You were functionally illiterate until your thirties. Which books have influenced you? Which ones influenced the writing of your memoir?

Steve Jones: [laughs] I've read one book my whole life: William Burroughs's Junkie. That was 30 years ago when I first got sober. I couldn't tell you one sentence out of that book. I just don't read books—I'd rather listen. I did an audiobook for this one.

Read more of our exclusive author interviews on our Voice page.

Read Up on the Golden Globes' Literary Inspirations
Posted by Cybil on January 05, 2017



The 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards are this Sunday, and as we prepare for our viewing parties and predictions, we also wanted to look back to the great books that inspired the year's best films and television shows. Check out Hollywood's source material and be inspired to add some of these books to your Want to Read list.

Have you seen these shows or read these books? Which of the two would you recommend enjoying first? Share your thoughts in the comments!


Nominated in the Movie Categories:

Roxane Gay Talks About the State of Feminism in 2017
Posted by Cybil on January 04, 2017



Roxane Gay is back this month with a new short story collection called Difficult Women. The author and columnist has developed a following for her essays, particularly the ones collected in 2014's Bad Feminist, but she's also earned glowing reviews for her fiction, including the novel An Untamed State. The versatile writer is a regular contributor to The New York Times and also writes for a Marvel Comics series, Black Panther: World of Wakanda.

We talked with Gay about her new book, her influences, as well as her take on the state of feminism in 2017. Below is an excerpt from that interview which you can read in its entirety here.

Goodreads: Here's a question from a Goodreads reader, Patsy Lynn: "Men and some women have a knee-jerk reaction that associates feminism with hatred of men. How do you work around these stereotypes and prejudices to make a difference and to educate people?"

Roxane Gay: I think the most important thing is that people understand what feminism is. It's silly in this day and age for anyone to labor under the impression that feminism is about hating men. It's not. Feminism is about equity and equality and just making sure that women have equal opportunities, making sure that our bodies are not legislated and we're treated like human beings who can make decisions about their own bodies. That we're being paid equally for equal work. It's not about taking anything from anyone.

The people who think that feminism is about hating men—they've already made up their minds. They're not interested in any sort of engagement or conversation or trying to make progress. So put your energy elsewhere. We don't need to convert these people because they're just not reachable. We need to work around them.

Goodreads: This question comes from Cindy, who teaches at an urban Kansas City high school and sent one from a student, Marley: "What are your thoughts on the future of our country and what feminism will look like in the coming months?"

Roxane Gay: I think we're going to see more and more of a necessity for feminism as we see a retrenchment of reproductive freedom across the country. We're already seeing it in Ohio, with the ridiculous six-week ban [on abortion]. And we're going to see the need for standing up and pushing back. We can't just take these kinds of things quietly.

What I hope we see is a lot more intersectionality in feminism and working with racial justice organizations and LGBTQ organizations because we're all going to have to work together, and women are not just women—we also have multiple identities. We're going to have to continue to recognize that.

Read more of our exclusive author interviews on our Voice page.

Exclusive: Kickstart 2017 with New Notes and Highlights on 'The Power of Habit'
Posted by Cybil on January 04, 2017



We all want to create more good habits and fewer bad habits. Luckily, New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg researched the science of how we form (and can break) these routines in his 2012 bestselling book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.

Now, five years later, Goodreads asked Duhigg to revisit this powerful book which has won rave reviews from Goodreads members to share his updated insights, further learnings, and general reactions to passages throughout The Power of Habit. In these new highlights and notes available exclusively on Goodreads, the author gives us more information on changing our habits and gives a behind-the-scenes look at writing the book.


Goodreads asked Duhigg about returning to The Power of Habit and his best advice for your new year's resolutions:

"This is actually the first time I read it since I wrote it," Duhigg said about adding the new notes and highlights to The Power of Habit.

"It was definitely like rediscovering the book. When I was writing it I didn't know if anyone was going to read it. I just had no clue if it would be popular or not. So, it was fun to re-read it and think about the choices I made writing it."

His Best Advice for Keeping Resolutions:

"My number one piece of advice to achieve your New Year's resolution is to actually define what you want to do," he says.

"One of the things we know about why people have trouble achieving goals is that they don't define their goals with real precision. For instance, saying I want to lose weight is a goal that would make sense. The problem with that is it's not specific or granular enough to develop a plan around that goal," Duhigg says.

"So instead of saying I want to lose weight, you should say I want to lose 10 pounds over the next six months by eating less food or, more specifically, by not snacking outside of mealtime. Now you have a very specific goal. The nice thing about specific goals is that you can measure against the goals on a daily basis. What you're trying to do is set up a system where you can get a feedback loop."

"You'll know if your plan is good if you get feedback on your success once a day or once a week. It probably shouldn't be less than once a week," Duhigg says.

Know Why Your Success is Important to You:

"You need to have an idea—a goal—in your head that tells you why your tactics are important," Duhigg says. "Unless you do the big work of asking yourself why you want to change this way, it's very hard to make that change become real, it won't become self perpetuating. Once you know the 'why' it actually becomes much easier to change."

"I spend a lot more time asking myself what's really important, why it's important to me, and what will I care about most in the future. I use a method of decision making called the 10/10/10 rule. When making a decision, ask yourself, 'How will I feel about this decision in 10 minutes, in 10 weeks, and in 10 years?'"

"Ultimately, finding ways to tell yourself to think more deeply about the choices you're making seems to always pay off."

Read all of Duhigg's new notes and highlights to The Power of Habit. Here's a sampling of his new insights:

"Most people don’t wait until they have cancer or an accident. Rather, they start believing that change is possible, and they work at the change—and fail repeatedly—until they learn enough to make the change become real." Read more of this note.

"Numerous studies have shown that visualizing something with precision—imagining how you hope a meeting will play out, for instance, or visualizing a specific conversation, or pushing yourself to daydream about a task you hope to accomplish—increases the odds that things will turn out pretty well." Read more of this note.

"There’s a small, irrational fear to starting an exercise habit. And so, when you finally overcome that small fear, and start exercising habitually, it causes a shift in self-image: you start thinking of yourself, almost sub-consciously, as the kind of person who exercises. And that kind of person tends to procrastinate less, and avoid frivolous spending." Read more of this note.

You can learn more about our beta project to share Kindle Notes and Highlights with your friends, family, book club, etc., here. And follow author Charles Duhigg for more of his updates and reading. In addition, Duhigg will be debuting a New York Times business column this month.