The Elizabethan World

It’s easy to spot the humpback whales in this photo, but can you see the sea lions, too? 

The waters within Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary are rich with nutrients and food, providing feasting opportunities for all sorts of creatures! 

Kristen Stewart Speaks Up for Below-the-Line Employees Who Are Sexually Harassed

Photo by Jennifer Kerrigan/NPR

Roddy Doyle may be known for his sense of humor, but there are few jokes in Smile, his intense new novel about child sexual abuse – and they aren’t meant to be funny. Still, says critic Michael Schaub, this may be his best book yet.

Find the full review here.

The first thing I did when I landed in Baltimore was buy the red roses.

Staying in the middle of the city in the convention area, I was a little nervous about finding a florist. Thankfully, the luggage claim area had a vending machine that sold flowers so I took care of that part of my mission.

We were on our way to a professional conference for fundraising in Baltimore. For this trip, I was going to visit Edgar Allan Poe’s tomb at Westminster Burial Ground at the Westminster Presbyterian Church. He died on October 7th, 1849, and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Twitter Policy Changes Under Review: Glorification Of Violence, Unwanted Sexual Advances Targeted

Yes, yes, a thousands times yes!

But for real, if you like action, romance, adventure, and epic stakes check out these fantasy favorites!

An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir 

Elias and Laia come from opposite sides of a deadly conflict lasting more than a century. Elias is an elite fighter, a ‘Mask’, of the Martial Empire, but he dreams of living a life without violence and oppression. Laia, a slave, also dreams of freedom, both for her and her brother, as well as the whole Scholar people, long ago made second class citizens by their Martial conquerors. Now, with magic and rebellion in the air, can Laia and Elias change their destinies, and the destinies of their people?

Falling Kingdoms by Morgan Rhodes

Romance and rebellion, magic and murder, this series has EVERYTHING! Follow along with Cleo, Magnus, Jonas, and others in the multi-POV political fantasy thriller. Plus magic. Do we even have to make the Game of Thrones reference? Also, the romance is STRONG with this one!

The Valiant by Lesley Livingston

There’s a kiss on page 10!! But also, The Valiant follows the life of Fallon, a kidnapped celtic princess who is trained to fight as a gladiator in ancient rome. Fallon is smart, quick, and honorable. You’ll love every page of the first book in this thrilling new series. 

The Young Elites by Marie Lu

The X-Men meets sixteenth century Italy in this beautiful (and heartbreaking) tale of Adelina. A girl abused due to her special powers, obtained after a devastating “blood fever”, will Adelina heal from her past, or will she let her wounds fester and turn to revenge? Also, there’s romance!

Turtles All the Way Down

, John Green

If you haven’t picked up Turtles All the Way Down yet, you’re missing out.

There’s a tremendous amount of disagreement out there about what magical realism is, and in many ways, it’s easier to outline what it isn’t. Genres are tricky, fickle beasts, but some things magical realism is not include: urban fantasy, “the presence of magic in a realistic setting,” and fantasy or science fiction that happens to be very literary.

The conflicting definitions of magical realism emerge from the reality that what some scholars call “magical realism” is actually a mash-up of literatures that are difficult to categorize. Magical realism as a genre should be easily defined: a movement of Latin American authors, led by such greats as Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, and Isabel Allende, that seems to mix myth and reality in order to battle back against the staunch realism of Western literature. It is inherently postcolonial.

Other cultures have had similar or influenced movements of magical realism. Authors such as Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, Yaa Gyasi, and Arundhati Roy tell the stories of the oppressed through this mix of reality and non-reality. The Western canon is obsessed with realism, but that’s not how so many live their lives: to so many, fantastic things happen everyday, both horrible things and incredible things, and the magical realist tales they tell may seem fantastic but are, inherently, grounded in what happened.

Mixed in the timeline with those novels are what came out of magical realism. In reality, these novels are usually surrealism or fabulism (for example, I would call Murakami’s novels surrealism), but many people call them magical realism as well, so I usually refer to the phenomenon as the “magical realist mode” to differentiate it from the genre. As the postcolonial tales inflected postmodernism with a questioning of reality, authors all over began to push the boundaries in their novels. If the reader or main character asks, “Did that really just happen within the world of the novel?” and isn’t sure, it’s a moment of magical realism or surrealism.

In this list, I’ve included books out of all of those categories. Some of these books have just a single moment of surrealism and are by Western authors; others are surrealist or fabulist; others are classics of the magical realist genre itself, and their pages live and breathe magical realism. If you want to know why I’ve included a book in my list, or you know one that you’re sure I’ve missed, please feel free to reach out through the comments.

‘Beetlejuice,’ ‘Pee Wee,’ and more get the Key & Peele treatment in these exclusive images from the ‘Keanu’ Cat Calendar