Rioting Through December

I'll have some new content for you soon -- including some (probably a lot of) thoughts on Donna Tartt's masterpiece, The Goldfinch, as well as Elliott Holt's debut novel, You Are One of Them. In the meantime, here are links to a flurry of my bookish activity on Book Riot this month. Enjoy, and happy holidays!

1. In Defense of Liking Books -- As I looked back on the books read in 2013, I realized I'd rated something like 65 percent of them either four or fie stars. Does that make me a less discerning reader? Indeed, does liking more books than not mean you can't think critically about books? Spoiler alert: No.

2. Four Bookish Phrases That Could Use Improvement -- I'd been storing up this post for awhile, and finally couldn't hold my tongue anymore. These bookish phrases are so pervasive...and so meaningless. It's sort of an addendum to the post I did a few years ago titled the Top Five Sins of the Book Reviewer.

3. Five Novels For Environmentalists -- The motivation for this post was twofold. 1) I love smart fiction that raise awareness about an extremely important issue, and 2) I wanted to put Jonathan Miles's Want Not on another bookish list to try to talk more readers into reading it. It's so good -- my favorite of the year.

4. The Seven Funniest Novels of 2013 -- Get a good dose of humor from these seven hilarious novels, all published this year.

5. Jason Segel is the Perfect Choice to Play David Foster Wallace -- Like many, my first reaction to the news that Segel would play David Foster Wallace in a movie set to starting filming next year was "WT everloving F?!" But I thought about it some more, re-read some of the Lipsky book on which the movie is based, and finally talked myself into the idea that Segel is actually perfect. This post explains why.

6. 12 Literary Predictions for 2014 -- Silliness wins in this goofy post about fake literary predictions for 2014.