♫Clap along if you feel like #ReadHAPPY is the truth♫
G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
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“I can honestly say that reading it for the first time saved my life.”
*The following books were banned by the user's town, school, or library.
Penguin Random House
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Heart palpitations as far as the eye can see.
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“Because I’m the Dark One.”
A BuzzFeed Books exclusive announcement of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Honorees of 2015… as baseball cards.
BuzzFeed Books is honored to announce the fantastic young writers in the National Book Foundation's 10th annual 5 Under 35. While the selection committee usually consists of past winners and finalists of the National Book Awards, this year the honorees were chosen by previous 5 Under 35 Honorees in honor of the 10th anniversary.
Jarry Lee / BuzzFeed
Neville Longbottom got himself a mo.
Warner Bros. / torie-rph.tumblr.com
What do we say to reports of a “Game of Thrones” movie? Not today.
HBO
Update: The event just sold out :( BuzzFeed is trying to find out if there are more dinners planned…
Warner Brothers
Warner Bros
Barbara Geoghegan for BuzzFeed News
Therapists are trained to help clients with their big, life-upending challenges, but they are also trained to help clients with the tiny, everyday things they can do to keep themselves emotionally and physically healthy. We call those things self-care skills — the little activities, like getting enough sleep or finding a safe space to express negative emotions, that often fall by the wayside when we’re under duress. And a lot of us are under duress every day. As a therapist I can advocate for self-care skills all day long… but as a human being with an aversion to corniness, I always really hated that term.
In my book about approaching your self-improvement as if you were a superhero-in-training, called Super You, I tried to take a different tactic to approaching self-care skills for myself and others by reframing them as a bag of tools. The idea is that the bag’s always strapped to you, like Batman’s tool belt full of bat-themed weapons, so the tools will always be readily available. Some of the tools you can and should use every day, some are only used for checking in on yourself, and some are for emergencies.
Here is a list of a few Super You tools that should be as handy as a batarang. You may find that you’re already using some of them, and if so, give yourself a pat on the back!
Barbara Geoghegan for BuzzFeed News
I tend to really throw myself into relationships with the vigor and enthusiasm of a puppy. I come on strong. You may not knit sweaters out of your own hair for a new partner, but what things are you doing for a new romantic partner that you could be doing for yourself too? Do you delve deep into your partner’s wants and needs? Do you pay attention to your partner’s every inkling of a thought, transfixed and awestruck? Do you provide nice back rubs and bubble baths and genital action? Everything that makes you a good partner can be applied to dating yourself, and pretending as if I was doing nice things for someone else helped me feel less guilty about treating myself.
Barbara Geoghegan for BuzzFeed News
My parents forced me to volunteer when I was young, and though I hated them for it at the time, it absolutely shaped who I became. I have volunteered at hospitals, at science parks, at tutoring centers, at LGBT centers, at women’s shelters, in courthouses, and at animal rescue facilities, and each time I leave with a tiny hint of what it’s like to be someone other than myself. This is great perspective to gain. Once you’re out of school, you mainly interact with the people you choose to interact with, and that can give you a pretty narrow worldview. Volunteering has helped me gain a sense of the world’s hugeness and of my own tiny place in it. You may think that you’re too busy to volunteer, but I promise you that, just like working out or having a creative outlet, devoting your time to someone other than yourself is hugely important in keeping yourself centered. And listen, this is not even slightly the reason why you should volunteer, but imagine how it’ll feel the first time someone at a party asks you, “What have you been up to?” and you respond, “Volunteering at ______! It’s amazing.” It’s a pretty lovely and distinctive feeling.
Barbara Geoghegan for BuzzFeed News
So what is downtime, or “me time”? People may intellectually know what it means, but they don’t know what it means to them. Me time, as I’m defining it, is how you accumulate mental energy — not physical energy, and not social energy, but mental energy. It’s a pleasant way to spend time that is not productive, as cleaning or going to the gym is. It’s just straight-up indulgent stuff that you do for you and you only — and it doesn’t tax your brain. I’m a pretty scheduled girl, so I try to set aside 30 minutes for downtime every day. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it actually works. To figure out things you can do for your downtime, think about what you did when you were a kid in the summer and had whole days stretched out in front of you with nothing to do. Here are a few options that I choose from when it’s downtime…time.
• Eat at a restaurant alone — no book, no phone.
• Make cookies.
• Put on a cocktail dress and heels and dance around my house to loud music.
• Reread my old Sweet Valley High books.
• Walk slowly and aimlessly in pretty surroundings.
Barbara Geoghegan for BuzzFeed News
When you’re a kid, the parameters of your life are set up by other people — and though these parameters can be annoying at times, it can also be somewhat comforting to know what to expect, and what’s expected, in any given situation. When I first became an adult and went to college, free to eat meals as I liked and go to bed whenever, I experienced an immense feeling of joy and wonder at my newfound freedom, followed by a weird emptiness. I felt unmoored. So I started creating rituals in my own little life and with my roommates to help restore some of the parameters that had been so soothing and reliable.
Rituals can involve many types of things: playing Dungeons & Dragons on Sunday, having brunch with friends, craft night, regular chat conversations, Tuesday FaceTime appointments with your parents, date nights. Essentially, they’re a series of actions assigned a special meaning. The important thing for rituals is that you (1) make them clear and simple, (2) communicate them to the person you want to ritual it up with (if it’s not a solo ritual), and (3) enact them regularly.
Barbara Geoghegan for BuzzFeed News
Every few months it’s a good idea to take stock of the friendships you have. How strong are they? Do you have any friendships that are toxic and need some adjusting? Is there anyone in your life you feel yourself growing distant from whom you would like to reconnect with? Every friendship is supposed to bring you something positive. If it doesn’t, why is it still a friendship?
For bonus points, you can also go through your friends individually and parse out the kinds of support they offer you. This may seem a bit creepy, so you can skip this step if you like, but I started realizing how some of my friends want to talk about feelings a lot, and some make me laugh harder than anyone, and so on. This is not to say that you then seek out your friends only for what they can provide you — but it’s good to know that, if I’m pondering life after death and go to Pete to discuss it with him, he may respond by doing a bit and making coffee come out of my nose, which may not be super useful to me at the moment. Don’t expect more from your friends than they have to offer, and don’t set up friendships where you are continually having to overextend yourself socially.
Barbara Geoghegan for BuzzFeed News
Asking for help is one of the toughest things to do. It can make you feel vulnerable, weak, or just plain weird — but it’s also the stuff that close relationships are made of. In my younger days, when I sought attention from a friend, I greatly exaggerated what was happening with me, stirring myself into a faux crisis out of fear that my mundane worries weren’t enough to warrant needing support. In looking back, I see it was my way of protecting myself from seeming dumb in front of a friend — if the issue was huge (albeit fake), I could get the support I needed without feeling stupid about my concerns and fears. But let me tell you this now: if you’re struggling with something, whatever it is, that’s enough to warrant reaching out to a friend. It’s also good to have an idea of what kind of support you are looking for. Here are a few categories.
• Listening
• Listening and empathizing
• Listening and solution-plotting
• Listening and gloom-and-dooming alongside you
• Distracting you from your troubles
• Giving a pep talk
• Showing care and affection
Giving your friend a sense of what you need from this list can be really important. As any human can tell you, for the times when you just want to be heard (listening), but your friend starts telling you how to fix your problems (solution-plotting), you’ll want to punch that well-meaning person in his well-meaning face.
Barbara Geoghegan for BuzzFeed News
When you are overwhelmed or stressed and need relief right now, try this: Inhale for a count of seven, hold your breath for a count of seven, and exhale for a count of seven. Do this several times, and once you feel a bit calmer, it’s time to get some distance. Finding mundane things to occupy your brain is a terrific, simple way to emotionally back out from whatever hole you find yourself in.
I learned a trick a few years ago when feeling panicky: write down all 50 states. This trick takes up brain space but has no emotional weight, so I love it. Another self-distraction option I use is forcing myself to notice tiny details about the environment I’m in. What is the pattern in the floor? Is the tabletop clean or does it have crumbs on it? Take in the room you’re in as if for the first time. Notice and absorb every detail. Ask yourself weird questions about it. When’s the last time the corners of the ceiling were cleaned? How does one even clean the corners of the ceiling? Has anyone died in this room? What’s the name of this color of paint? Bury yourself in details until you feel calmer. Use as necessary.
Adapted from Super You: Release Your Inner Super Hero (October 2015) by Emily V. Gordon, with permission from Seal Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group. © 2015
Lonely Planet’s top travel experts share their favorite spots around the world in Ultimate Travel: Our List of the 500 Best Places to See… Ranked. Here are the ones you can visit without leaving the U.S.
Ranking: 500
This urban park encompasses Independence Hall (called "the birthplace of America," and for good reason: the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence were both signed here), the Liberty Bell, and the Benjamin Franklin Museum.
f11photo / Shutterstock
Ranking: 475
This 13.8-acre Tennessee estate is the former home of Elvis Presley but fans of history and architecture will be just as interested in the perfectly curated mansion as fans of rock and roll.
Malgorzata Litkowska / Shutterstock
Ranking: 466
Griffith Observatory is a sight in itself, for its access to public telescopes, exhibits, and live shows in the planetarium, but the surrounding park — and the hike leading to it — offers panoramic views of the city.
Mark Read / Lonely Planet
Ranking: 442
The Everglades is home to a number of rare and endangered species — including the manatee, American crocodile, and Florida panther — all within lush prairies, pinelands, and swamps.
Kris Davidson / Lonely Planet
How familiar are you with the many portrayals of literature’s greatest detective.
The Matilda Hogwarts AU we’ve always needed. (Though Matilda probably would have gone to an American Wizarding school unless she and Miss Honey moved to the UK.)
TriStar Pictures
TriStar Pictures
386 pages of pure insanity.
Eric Risberq / ASSOCIATED PRESS
Max Nash / AFP / Getty Images
Oh, and the Andy she's talking about is Andy Warhol.
Bruno Vincent / Getty Images
“We’ve been very fortunate, and good fortune should be shared with noble causes,” tweeted Daniel Handler.
Twitter / Via Twitter: @DanielHandler
Charlotte Gomez for BuzzFeed
Speaking at a spacious movie theater in Southern California back in early August, Andy Weir found himself sharing the stage with Ridley Scott, Matt Damon, NASA bigwigs, and even an honest-to-god astronaut.
Weir was promoting the upcoming film The Martian, based on his novel of the same name, to an audience of science journalists. After a glowing introduction, he grabbed the microphone with a wry smile. “So yeah... This is a Cinderella moment for me.”
In 1999, when he was 27 years old, Weir was laid off from his job as a software engineer at AOL and took a three-year writing sabbatical to see if he could make it as a writer. He finished a manuscript, but couldn’t find an agent to represent it. He figured his dreams of becoming a novelist were as far-fetched as an astronaut stranded on Mars returning to Earth alive. Now 16 years later, Weir has managed to write one of the most talked-about science fiction stories in a generation. Not only that, but he’s risen to fame with grace and humility, all while managing a fear of flying and other manifestations of an anxiety disorder.
NASA astronaut Drew Feustel, left, actor Matt Damon, director Ridley Scott, author Andy Weir, and Director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters Jim Green, at a press event for The Martian.
Bill Ingalls / Getty Images
After his disappointing sabbatical, Weir went back to software engineering. But over the next several years, just for fun, he started putting serialized sci-fi stories on his blog, which had built up a small but loyal following. One of those stories was The Martian. “I posted a chapter once in awhile, whenever the hell I felt like it,” Weir told the movie-theater crowd. He had accumulated about 3,000 readers on an old-fashioned email list. But that was about it in terms of exposure.
So when, in 2012, he posted the final chapter of The Martian to his personal website, he figured that it was simply time to move on to a new project. But then he started getting emails from fans.
“They said things like, ‘Hey, I really loved your story … but I hate your website because it's crap,’” Weir said, admitting to the audience that the site truly was crap. His fans wanted a simple e-reader version of the book, so he made one. The book slowly climbed the Amazon best-seller lists.
Unbeknownst to Weir, an agent named Julian Pavia at Crown Publishing, a division of Random House, took notice, and passed it along to his colleague, David Fugate. Weir, whose inability to land an agent had once crippled his writing dreams, eagerly signed with Fugate.
Charlotte Gomez for BuzzFeed
Remarkably, Random House was not the only media corporation interested in Weir’s story. “While David and Julian were negotiating the deal for the book rights, Fox came for the movie rights,” Weir told the crowd. The two deals, each north of six figures, were made four days apart.
The print version of the book was published in February 2014 and ultimately jumped to the top of the New York Times best-seller list. Later, Fox greenlit the movie project after Ridley Scott agreed to direct the film adaptation starring Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain.
This was a crazy deal. Simon Kinberg, the producer who developed The Martian for 20th Century Fox as well as several X-Men films, told BuzzFeed that it is extremely rare for a studio to make a film from a book that, when optioned, hadn’t even been published yet.
“Big movies tend to be based on sort of a well-known underlying material, whether it's comic books, or a remake of another movie,” Kinberg said. “It's rare that something comes from a truly original place, and that's what Andy's book gave us.”
Weir, who said he gets anxious even driving to meet his friends for a meal, was thrust under a jarringly hot spotlight.
The Martian’s protagonist is astronaut Mark Watney, who after an aborted NASA mission to Mars is left wounded and alone on the surface of the cold, dusty, red planet. After regaining consciousness, Watney finds himself with two months of supplies and no way to contact anyone on Earth or his fellow crewmates on their long flight back home.
What follows are a series of problems — problems for Watney, but also the same kind of scientific problems that NASA engineers are paid to solve. Watney, among many other challenges, has to figure out how to maintain oxygen levels, produce water, grow food, contact mission control, and modify rovers for travel — all while maintaining his sanity when the only source of entertainment is a crewmate’s fully stocked library of disco tunes and a collection of '70s television shows.
Each of these problems is meticulously described. Weir, through Watney, shows his work as if he were in a series of graduate seminars dedicated to orbital mechanics, mission planning, chemistry, and biology.
Speaking to BuzzFeed by Skype (with sporadic interruptions by his two cats), Weir said that when he started, he didn’t know anyone at NASA or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the NASA facility behind the unmanned missions to Mars that’s featured prominently in his book. Given the remarkable scientific accuracy and spot-on description of the political environment at NASA, this fact is almost as remarkable as Weir’s precipitous rise to fame.
In fact, at a Comic-Con panel back in July, NASA’s head of planetary research, Dr. Jim Green, described The Martian as “required reading” at NASA. Perhaps because nearly all of the technology in the book is already feasible, the story plays a prominent role in NASA’s efforts to build public support for its plans to get a human on Mars — an effort that, for now, is not much more than some beautiful posters and cool ideas that lack congressional funding.
A NASA poster highlighting their plan to send a human to Mars.
NASA / Via nasa.gov
Green, a veteran of NASA’s Mars program and also the scientific adviser for the film, told BuzzFeed that The Martian’s scientific details provides “a very heightened opportunity for us to talk about Mars and talk about how we're going to get there.”
Many space policy types have suggested that The Martian and its movie adaptation could reinvigorate the space program. But Weir, with his characteristic humility, isn’t comfortable taking credit for that.
“Everyone's just assuming and kind of saying that The Martian is increasing public awareness and interest in space,” he said. “I think they're not considering the other possibility, that maybe The Martian is popular because public awareness and interest in space is increasing on its own.”
Without professional contacts in the space industry, Weir did all of his initial research for The Martian using Google — that, plus his massive bank of knowledge garnered from years of watching pretty much every documentary ever made about human spaceflight. If he needed to write something about physics, he’d run questions by his dad, who had worked as a physicist for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
With a physicist dad and an engineer mom, Weir’s childhood was steeped in science. His dad was also a science fiction buff, and Weir grew up reading his seemingly inexhaustible supply of '50s and '60s sci-fi novels.
Weir always wanted to be a writer, but was skeptical of turning these passions into a career. "I wanted to eat regular meals and not sleep on a park bench," he told BuzzFeed. So he turned his professional interests toward software engineering. And he was good at it — he was first hired, at age 15, as a programmer at Sandia National Laboratory.
Eventually his career led him to AOL at the height of the first Silicon Valley tech boom — and the subsequent bust. In 1999, Weir was laid off and forced to cash in his very lucrative stock options at a time when, unbeknownst to anyone, they were at their peak value. “I had a bunch of money,” Weir said. “I realized I could go about three years without having to work.”
This three-year sabbatical was his first, and largely unsuccessful, attempt at becoming a professional writer. Without any interest from major publishers, he went back to work as a software engineer in 2002.
Charlotte Gomez for BuzzFeed
“I kind of decided, well, what I'm going to do is just write for fun and post stories to my website,” he said, one chapter at a time. This piecemeal approach to writing allowed Weir to stick to the stunning levels of scientific accuracy that characterize The Martian.
By releasing his books to a devoted and informed fan base, he pretty much had every chapter peer-reviewed by engineers, scientists, and other hardcore science enthusiasts. He’d receive friendly emails pointing out that he may have gotten a couple of minor details wrong, and he would change the book accordingly.
Unlike during the sabbatical, when he was focused on getting the attention of an agent, this time he was able to relax and follow his bliss. “I wasn't trying to please anybody but myself,” he said.
In press appearances Weir has often admitted that his protagonist, Watney, is an extension of all his good parts, without any of the bad parts — a sort of aspirational version of himself. Intellect and wit, for example, are shared by both character and creator. “I'm a smart-ass,” he told BuzzFeed, with a sly grin.
But there are striking differences, too. Weir told BuzzFeed that he has struggled with generalized anxiety disorder for most of his life. “[Watney’s] me without the anxiety disorder in a large part,” he said, “He's calm. No matter how bad things get, he doesn't freak out. He can handle what life throws at him, and I can't always.”
For example, Weir is deeply afraid of flying — until April of this year, he hadn’t boarded a plane since 2007. He’s also struggled with more amorphous anxieties, such as ruminating on seemingly inconsequential things. “Things bother me a lot more than they should. When something minor goes wrong, it's very upsetting to me,” he said.
He also has problems with uncertainty and transition, he said, sometimes disrupting his sleep. “I feel really, really insecure when things are in a transitional state,” he told BuzzFeed. “I don't mind being at home, I don't mind being at a restaurant with my friends, but getting from home to the restaurant with my friends I'm worried about everything. It's like, Am I going to hit traffic? Am I going to take a wrong turn? Is there going to be enough parking there? Did I get the time or date wrong? Am I going to end up looking stupid here?”
Anxiety medication, something he turned to only recently, has helped him manage these kinds of daily stresses, he added. “I feel like it's really improved my life. It's not like this big sudden change or anything. It's just stuff that used to bother me a lot doesn't bother me as much.”
Given the way that transitional periods and uncertainty bother Weir, his ascension from hobby writer to best-selling author was, understandably, fraught with a great deal more emotional peril than the strikingly calm, cool, and collected version of himself he presented at the movie theater that August morning.
Weir told BuzzFeed that it was one of the most stressful periods he’s ever experienced. “It was really rough,” he said. Every step of the way was a struggle. There was never any “champagne moment” — just a series of updates that made things seem incrementally, and painfully, more likely. “Talk about anxiety,” he said. “Good Lord.”
Charlotte Gomez for BuzzFeed
He said the movie deal didn’t really feel final until the first day of production on the film, because that was the day he got his first check from Fox since the movie was optioned.
Watney’s character requires constant vigilance and Weir’s storytelling relies on a constant supply of problems that need to be solved, so it would make sense that Weir’s anxiety had helped him compose The Martian. But Weir isn’t so sure. “I don't think it's [helped] in a positive way,” he told BuzzFeed, other than perhaps making him “paranoid enough” to think through all of the ramifications of a plot. But ultimately, he said, “it's just been unpleasant.”
Like Watney, Weir has been thrust into a fairly unimaginable situation, and these new circumstances have forced Weir to set out on uncomfortable journeys, too. He has to fly a lot more now, and notes that he has made great progress on that front. Before a flight, he now takes anti-anxiety medication given to him specifically for his fear of flying.
“What I do,” he said, “is I take it half an hour before boarding so it'll be in full effect when I'm getting on the plane, so I'm not, ‘Oh, God. I'm walking down the tunnel to my death.’"
The juxtaposition between the unflinching Mark Watney and the anxiety-prone Andy Weir can seem jarring. Watney is a fearless astronaut at ease with planning a long and potentially deadly journey over unexplored and uncertain terrain. Weir specifically has problems with uncertainty, with transition, and perhaps most relevant, with travel.
But there’s actually much more of Watney in Weir than the author admits. The character’s authenticity is obvious from the very beginning of the novel, and that’s likely a huge part of why Weir has found such success.
“The tone and the voice, to me, is what felt so unique and exciting,” Kinberg told BuzzFeed. “I felt if we could capture that sort of, I call it intelligent optimism, and real humor and humanity, then it could be a really entertaining film, and different from other science fiction.”
Weir comes off as deeply intelligent but also remarkably playful, self-aware, and self-effacing. He knows exactly who he is and what he stands for — just as he knows what he wanted The Martian to be — a work of fiction created primarily to satisfy his own interests. These are the same traits that make Watney such a fun character to root for.
Andy Weir at the premiere of The Martian at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Kevin Winter / Getty Images
Both Weir and Watney are irreverent, and love speaking truth to power. When NASA personnel were asked at that press event to give their thoughts on the proposed “one-way mission to Mars,” a project known as Mars One, the officials hemmed and hawed. Not Weir. He called the idea “a joke.”
In the face of his rapid success, Weir remains remarkably humble. “It's amazing what you can get used to,” he said. “It's like this has been creeping up for awhile. It never really felt real to me until a couple weeks ago when I saw a cut of the film.” He said that he choked up watching the movie for the first time.
Some things have changed for Weir, though, and he seems just as proud of these more humble achievements as he does his remarkable success. In a 2014 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Weir said that he didn’t date. “I’m terrible with women,” he said. Now, things are different. He’s dating a woman he met at a press event related to The Martian, and he seems palpably excited about the relationship.
“In typical kind of form for me, she asked me out,” he said. “I'm definitely too chickenshit to ask women out.”
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Pharrell Asked A Bunch Of Kids Why They Love Reading And It Was Adorable