New releases this week!

The Butcher

Tamed

Wayfaring Stranger

Literary Inkling's Notable New Releases

Margarita Wednesdays

Time Flies

The Man From Essence

I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You

Your Perfect Life

Kim Stolz On How Social Media is Ruining Our Relationships: An Interview with TIME

You say in the book that you’re always thinking about text messages when you’re doing something else. If someone doesn’t text us back immediately, we feel like we’re not important enough for them to respond. Why do we connect these insignificant messages so much to our self worth?

I think the rise of social media is definitely correlated with the rise of narcissism in our society. Our self-esteem depends on how many likes we get, how many followers we get, if someone texts us back.

And I think when you see your phone light up from across the room, it’s that ping of dopamine in your system. You get that euphoric, excited feeling, and I think that’s addictive. Now we text people, we Instagram, we Vine, we Tinder just to feel that again. And the more we do it, the more we get it back, so it becomes a very addictive process.

It really is all about narcissism. Some coworkers and I were talking about how when we FaceTime, we just end up looking at ourselves in that little box.

My favorite thing about FaceTime is literally you should just be on the phone with someone looking in a mirror because all I do when I FaceTime is look at myself. I bring the box up so they think I’m looking at them, but I’m not. The art of FaceTiming so that people think you’re looking at them but you’re actually looking at yourself is kind of amazing. I think we all do it, but it is another symptom of that narcissism that’s just become so prevalent today with the rise of social media and smartphones.

So do you think technology often negatively affects relationships?

Yeah, I think a lot of relationships have been ruined by one person’s addiction to social media, whether that addiction leads to a connection with a past love or crush—and that can be detrimental—or sometimes it simply means that you get home at night to spend time with your significant other and you have nothing to talk about because you’ve spoken about everything all day through social media or you’ve looked through each other’s social media feeds.

There’s been an emerging body of research that shows that when you stop having offscreen interaction, you lose empathy. You lose the ability to have genuine reactions to real problems and real things. [In her book Stolz cites a study that found college students are 40% less empathetic than they were 30 years ago, thanks to on-screen interactions that make it easier to say mean things and act before considering the consequences of our actions.

You talk about a breakup that you had that was induced by Twitter, texting and Facebook. Do you think that social media leads to more breakups or just makes them happen faster than maybe they otherwise would?

I think both. Social media has definitely accentuated and accelerated breakups. But I also think that we as humans are an impulsive group of people, and I think social media provides not only an indelibility for relationships in the past—where you just can’t seem to get away from them so you just keep thinking about them—but it also provides a really easy avenue to be impulsive to reconnect and make mistakes.

I’ve seen a lot of relationships ruined not because they weren’t going to work out, but because someone reconnected with an ex innocently, and that led to constant text messaging. And before you know it, they’re meeting up. And if you make a mistake, you get caught because of social media because there is a paper trail for everything. And it’s over.

What are your favorite apps or uses of tech? And what ones have you been turned off by, possibly as a result of writing this book?

I think I’ve been turned off of Facebook. I think that Facebook has become more of a medium for self-promotion. I think a lot of people have moved away from it. And I personally am just so tired of seeing people’s inspirational quotes.

I’m a big fan of Instagram. I like that you kind of follow a specific number of people. I also think that Twitter is a great app because it’s very informational. I use it for news. It actually can enrich you intellectually if you follow the right people.

I think SnapChat is fun. It can be dangerous. I’m not sure how long of a shelf-life it has based on the way I see people using it.

Read more of Kim's thoughts here. 

Read the complete excerpt of Knocking on Heaven's Door, available June 9, in trade paperback. 

After reading this, you'll wish Sally Ride had been your best friend.

Find out more about Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space and read an article on the author, Lynn Sherr.

Tuesday brings new books! Here are some titles released today that we’re excited about. 

We’d say our shelf is looking pretty good.

The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls, available in Trade Paperback on June 3, 2014.

Read a wonderfully honest review here.

*whispers:* tomorrow

From one of America’s most accomplished and acclaimed fiction writers, this spectacularly riveting novel is based on a real-life multiple murder by a con man who preyed on widows. A story that has haunted Jayne Anne Phillips for more than four decades, QUIET DELL is the book she needed to write.

Read Jayne's explanation for writing this haunting novel.

Quiet Dell is available now, wherever books are sold. Get your copy today.

Why we love The Oatmeal: Reason #9834

If you take a photo of yourself with his latest, HILARIOUS book, Why Grizzly Bears Should Wear Underpants, he might just turn it into a cartoon:

what art

what prawns

Buy your copy here!

Honestly, is there anything better than a dog?

Yes. WORKING DOGS :)

Cat Warren's What the Dog Knows is a firsthand exploration of the fascinating world of “working dogs”—who seek out missing persons, sniff for explosives in war zones, and locate long-dead remains—through the experiences of a journalist and her canine companion, an incorrigible pup named Solo.

This wonderfully interesting book is available now, and you can learn more about it here.

Tomorrow! Tomorrow! J.M. Sidorova's epic fantasy novel THE AGE OF ICE releases everywhere tomorrow!

If you're like us though and can't wait to get your hands on a copy, check out io9's article "Your First Look at the Epic Fantasy Novel Everybody's Raving About," featuring an exlusive look at the first dozen pages!