The Best of NPR Books 12-6

This week, we launch the NPR Book Concierge for all your year-end reading needs, gawk at awkward holiday family photos, celebrate Emily Dickinson's envelopes, and warp impressionable young minds with good sci-fi. Plus, bromance at sea with Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. View this email in your browser update preferences

Monkey See The Top 5 Reasons We're Taking A Break From Lists In the past five years, NPR has brought you 80-plus year-end book lists. This year, we've decided to change it up. Introducing NPR's Book Concierge: our guide to more than 200 of 2013's great reads. Read this story Book Reviews Emily Dickinson's Envelope Writings: 'Gorgeous' Poetry In 3-D A new collection of Dickinson's poems — written on envelopes and found after her death — opens a rare porthole into the enigmatic writer's life and art. Literally and figuratively shaped by their unusual medium, the poems in The Gorgeous Nothings invite endless interpretations. Read this story Books News & Features Warp Your Kid's Mind With Some Great Sci-Fi This Holiday Season Do you have a neophyte nerd or a growing geek in your family? Writer and critic Jason Sheehan recommends some great science-ish fiction for kids of all ages, from The Little Prince to Logan's Run — books to spark a "love of the grand, the sideways and the strange." Read this story You Must Read This A Skeptic Is Swept Away By The Bromance-At-Sea In 'Master' Napoleonic Wars? The Royal Navy? Yawn. Novelist Nicola Griffith had low expectations when she started reading Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander. But soon she was tearing through the 20-volume series, reveling in the deeply rendered friendship between the characters Jack and Stephen. It's a masterpiece, she says: "Jane Austen on a ship of war." Read this story Author Interviews A Holiday Photo Book That Puts Families In An 'Awkward' Position Matching long johns. Kick lines in skis. Peeing on Santa's lap. Every family has these cringe-worthy moments, immortalized on film, that embody the particularly joyous brand of awkward that the holidays bring. And thanks to Mike Bender, co-author of Awkward Family Holiday Photos, the rest of us can rubberneck. Read this story

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