made for living book review

Enjoy Prime FREE for 30 days

Here's what Amazon Prime has to offer:

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer – no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera, scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video, download Flash Player

Follow the author

Made for Living: Collected Interiors for All Sorts of Styles Hardcover – Illustrated, Oct. 27 2020

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Print length 288 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Clarkson Potter
• Publication date Oct. 27 2020
• Dimensions 21.03 x 2.97 x 26.09 cm
• ISBN-10 1984823914
• ISBN-13 978-1984823915
• See all details

Frequently bought together

More items to explore

From the Publisher

Product description

About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Clarkson Potter; Illustrated edition (Oct. 27 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1984823914
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1984823915
• Item weight ‏ : ‎ 1.46 kg
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 21.03 x 2.97 x 26.09 cm
• #22 in Home Interior Design Style
• #44 in Architectural Interior Design
• #50 in Decorating

About the author

Amber lewis.

Amber Lewis is a seasoned interior designer and multi-hyphenate in the interiors and décor space. Grounded in a signature West Coast aesthetic that she describes as “laid back” and “understated cool,” Amber is first and foremost the founder of a full-service design firm, Amber Interiors, touting clients across the country.

Amber is also founder of Shoppe Amber Interiors, the brick-and-mortar retail shop that brings the effortless and timeless feeling of her interiors to a shoppable setting. Amber’s eclectic design approach and affinity for found objects is now available to everyone at her four California locations in Calabasas, Pacific Palisades, Newport Beach, Marin, as well as an online Shoppe.

In recent years, she has expanded her business into a successful, multi-year furniture and décor collaboration with Anthropologie, multi-year rug and textiles collaboration with Loloi, multi-year lighting line with Visual Comfort, and most recently published a best-selling interior design book, Made for Living.

Customer reviews

Reviews with images.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from Canada

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon and Our Planet
• Investor Relations
• Press Releases
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Become an Affiliate
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Sell on Amazon Handmade
• Advertise Your Products
• Independently Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• Amazon.ca Rewards Mastercard
• Shop with Points
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Amazon Cash
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns Are Easy
• Manage your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Customer Service
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Interest-Based Ads
• Amazon.com.ca ULC | 40 King Street W 47th Floor, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5H 3Y2 |1-877-586-3230

• Arts and Photography
• Architecture

Amazon International Store

• International products have separate terms, are sold from abroad and may differ from local products, including fit, age ratings, and language of product, labeling or instructions.
• Manufacturer warranty may not apply.
• Learn more about Amazon International Store.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Made for Living: Collected Interiors for All Sorts of Styles Hardcover – Illustrated, 27 October 2020

Purchase options and add-ons.

Known for her eclectic approach that stems from her California cool, Amber Lewis trains your eye in Made for Living, offering friendly advice on everything from nailing that perfect shade of paint to mismatching patterns with wild abandon to choosing a stone finish for new countertops. These pages will help you design a home that's made to be lived in.

• Print length 288 pages
• Language English
• Publication date 27 October 2020
• ISBN-10 1984823914
• ISBN-13 978-1984823915
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Product description

About the author, product details.

• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1984823914
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1984823915
• 29 in Interior Design

Customer reviews

Review this product, reviews with images.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top review from Singapore

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Press Releases
• Amazon Science
• Protect and Build Your Brand
• Advertise Your Products
• Sell on Amazon
• Associates Programme
• Fulfillment by Amazon
• COVID-19 and Amazon
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates and Policies
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Netherlands
• United Arab Emirates
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Interest-Based Ads

• Kindle Store
• Kindle eBooks
• Arts, Film & Photography

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

Buy for others

Buying and sending kindle ebooks to others.

• Select quantity
• Buy and send Kindle eBooks
• Recipients can read on any device

These ebooks can only be redeemed by recipients in the India. Redemption links and eBooks cannot be resold.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer – no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera, scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Made for Living: Collected Interiors for All Sorts of Styles Kindle Edition

• Print length 282 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Clarkson Potter
• Publication date 27 October 2020
• File size 469546 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Not Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

Customers who read this book also read

Product description

About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B083RZ6B86
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Clarkson Potter (27 October 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 469546 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 282 pages
• Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ B0BTJ7WTHD
• #321 in Architecture (Kindle Store)
• #544 in Lifestyle & Personal Style Guides (Kindle Store)
• #1,282 in Lifestyle & Personal Style Guides (Books)

About the author

Amber lewis.

Amber Lewis is a seasoned interior designer and multi-hyphenate in the interiors and décor space. Grounded in a signature West Coast aesthetic that she describes as “laid back” and “understated cool,” Amber is first and foremost the founder of a full-service design firm, Amber Interiors, touting clients across the country.

Amber is also founder of Shoppe Amber Interiors, the brick-and-mortar retail shop that brings the effortless and timeless feeling of her interiors to a shoppable setting. Amber’s eclectic design approach and affinity for found objects is now available to everyone at her four California locations in Calabasas, Pacific Palisades, Newport Beach, Marin, as well as an online Shoppe.

In recent years, she has expanded her business into a successful, multi-year furniture and décor collaboration with Anthropologie, multi-year rug and textiles collaboration with Loloi, multi-year lighting line with Visual Comfort, and most recently published a best-selling interior design book, Made for Living.

Customer reviews

Reviews with images.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from India

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

Report an issue

• Press Releases
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell under Amazon Accelerator
• Protect and Build Your Brand
• Amazon Global Selling
• Become an Affiliate
• Fulfilment by Amazon
• Advertise Your Products
• Amazon Pay on Merchants
• COVID-19 and Amazon
• Your Account
• Returns Centre
• 100% Purchase Protection
• Amazon App Download
• Conditions of Use & Sale
• Privacy Notice
• Interest-Based Ads

PURCHASING AUDIO BOOKS REQUIRES POP-UPS TO BE ENABLED ON YOUR BROWSER Close this alert

Made for Living: Collected Interiors for All Sorts of Styles

Description.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The trendsetting designer known for her effortless style shares the secrets of the art of layering, with more than 250 gorgeous photographs of her signature interiors.   “Livability is my true north. The materials I use time and again all change with age and wear. Not only is that okay, it’s how you achieve more than a re-creation of what you’ve already seen, or what somebody else has done. You can do this, too—I promise.”—from the introduction Designing a room with all the vibes comes down to how you layer your décor. The more you can mix the elements of your room—your pillows, objects, patterns, and lighting—the more finished it’ll feel: not too new, not too old, but just right. Known for her eclectic approach that stems from her California cool, Amber Lewis trains your eye in  Made for Living,  offering friendly advice on everything from nailing that perfect shade of paint to mismatching patterns with wild abandon to choosing a stone finish for new countertops.  These pages will help you design a home that's made to be lived in.

About the Author

Interior designer Amber Lewis is the principal and founder of Amber Interiors, a full-service firm that provides designs for everything from large-scale residences to extensive commercial projects. Amber and her team work with architects and contractors to bring to life the distinct visions seen in her work, on her blog, and in her retail shop. Amber lives with her husband and daughter in Calabasas, California.

Praise for Made for Living: Collected Interiors for All Sorts of Styles

“ Made for Living  invites you into dreamy homes that are light, bright, and—key these days—comfortable.” — Martha Stewart Living “You’ll immediately want to buy this new book of [Amber Lewis’s] signature laid-back interiors for yourself and everyone you know.” — The Zoe Report “Made for Living  unpacks Lewis’s process for those longing to make the look their own.” — Magazine C  

You May Also Like

Interiors for Collectors

The New Design Rules: How to Decorate and Renovate, from Start to Finish: An Interior Design Book

How the French Live: Modern French Style

Shodo: The Quiet Art of Japanese Zen Calligraphy, Learn the Wisdom of Zen Through Traditional Brush Painting

Beach Life: Home, Heart & the Sea

Establishing Home: Creating Space for a Beautiful Life with Family, Faith, and Friends

The Art of Home: A Designer Guide to Creating an Elevated Yet Approachable Home

The Complete Cricut Machine Handbook: A Beginner’s Guide to Creative Crafting with Vinyl, Paper, Infusible Ink and More!

Heidi Caillier: Memories of Home: Interiors

The New Traditional

Cozy White Cottage: 100 Ways to Love the Feeling of Being Home

Arranging Things

How to Draw Manga Part 2: Drawing Manga Figures (How to Draw Anime)

Timeless by Design: Designing Rooms with Comfort, Style, and a Sense of History

Defining Chic: Carrier and Company Interiors

Down to Earth: Laid-back Interiors for Modern Living

At Home on the Water

Pretty Good House

Our Way Home: Reimagining an American Farmhouse

How to Draw Manga Part 1: Drawing Manga Faces (How to Draw Anime)

Jake Arnold: Redefining Comfort

Modern Americana

Habitat: The Field Guide to Decorating

This is Home: The Art of Simple Living

Homebody: A Guide to Creating Spaces You Never Want to Leave

‘Made For Living’ by Amber Lewis

Made For Living: Collected Interiors for All Sorts Of Styles by Amber Lewis

Whether you’re decorating your first home or refreshing your space, Amber Lewis teaches you how to layer the things you own for a cohesive, beautifully designed home. Delivering tips on refreshing a room with new paint (including finding the perfect white), mixing textiles and pillows, and blending neutrals, Amber’s beautiful, California cool will help you transform your home into one that’s elegant and timeless–a look you’ll want to keep for the long run.

Available for sale at the following retailers:

• Shoppe Amber Interiors
• Anthropologie
• Barnes & Noble
• Books A Million
• Hudson Booksellers
• Penguin Random House

• Arts & Photography
• Architecture

Amazon Prime Free Trial

Free Delivery is available to Amazon Prime members. To join, select Yes, I want FREE Delivery on this order with Amazon Prime above the Add to Cart button and confirm your Amazon Prime free trial sign-up during checkout.

• FREE Next-Day Delivery on eligible domestic items
• FREE International Delivery on eligible orders over AED 100 from Amazon Global Store when you shop from amazon.ae
• Award-winning movies & TV shows

Easy and Hassle Free Returns

You can return this item for FREE within the allowed return period for any reason and without any shipping charges. The item must be returned in new and unused condition.

• Go to "Orders" to start the return
• Select you refund method and pickup date
• Keep the item ready for pickup in it's original packaging

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Made for Living Hardcover – Illustrated, 27 October 2020

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Print length 288 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Clarkson Potter
• Publication date 27 October 2020
• Dimensions 21.03 x 2.97 x 26.09 cm
• ISBN-10 1984823914
• ISBN-13 978-1984823915
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Related items viewed by customers

From the Publisher

Product description

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Clarkson Potter; Illustrated edition (27 October 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1984823914
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1984823915
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 21.03 x 2.97 x 26.09 cm
• #15 in Interior Design Architecture
• #27 in Home Improvement & Design
• #1,346 in Textbooks & Study Guides

Customer Reviews

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top review from United Arab Emirates

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• About Amazon
• Amazon Science
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Your Addresses
• Protect and build your brand
• Sell on Amazon
• Fulfillment by Amazon
• Become an Affiliate
• Advertise Your Products
• COVID-19 and Amazon
• Shipping & Delivery
• Returns & Replacements
• Amazon App Download
• Conditions of Use & Sale
• Privacy Notice
• Interest-Based Ads

The Woman Who Made America Take Cookbooks Seriously

Judith Jones edited culinary greats such as Julia Child and Edna Lewis—and identified the pleasure at the core of traditional “women’s work.”

In the summer of 1948, a young American, a Bennington College graduate visiting Paris, lost her purse in the Jardin des Tuileries. Inside it were her passport and ticket home. Many travelers in her situation would panic. She decided it was a sign that she wasn’t meant to leave France. She quit her job at Doubleday, then the biggest publisher in New York, and moved into a friend’s aunt’s apartment, where she launched a clandestine supper club to support herself. Perhaps she’d “open a small restaurant,” she wrote to her horrified parents. In another letter, she reassured her father that although she knew she’d made a risky choice, “one has to take chances and there are many advantages to be had. Anyway, I am an adventurous girl.”

That girl was Judith Jones, one of the most important editors in American history. She pulled The Diary of Anne Frank out of a slush pile during her second stint at Doubleday—in Paris this time, in 1949—a discovery for which her male boss took credit. Eight years later, she moved to Knopf, where she worked until 2013, publishing authors such as John Hersey, Sharon Olds, Sylvia Plath, Anne Tyler, and John Updike. She was an avid cook—that supper club of hers was a hit—and, as an editor, single-handedly elevated the cookbook to its contemporary status, working with all-time greats including Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, Madhur Jaffrey, Edna Lewis, Irene Kuo, Claudia Roden, and many, many more.

According to The Editor , a new biography of Judith Jones by the oral historian Sara B. Franklin, Judith was also an avid worker, a visionary editor devoted to her job. (Franklin, who interviewed her at length, calls her Judith, which creates a compelling sense of intimacy on the page; I’m going to follow suit.) The Editor focuses primarily on Judith’s cookbooks, for which she is best remembered now, but more important, it draws out the connections among the varied projects Judith chose. Many of her authors, such as Plath and Olds, wrote about what Franklin calls “the frictions between women’s private and public lives,” digging into the tensions between who women were supposed to be publicly and who they were . Judith’s own life illuminates these same tensions. The Editor presents her as both a case study and an agent of change in American conceptions of femininity inside and outside the home. But it also reads, more often than not, like a love story: a great, sweeping seven-decade romance between a woman and her work.

I never met Judith, but my interest in her is personal: My step-grandmother, Abby Mandel, was one of her authors. Around the time Julia Child got famous, Abby was a divorced Jewish mother in greater Chicago. She’d been cooking for her family—siblings first, then children—since age 8, and after recruiting Child to star at a fundraiser she was hosting for her alma mater, Smith College, she grew fascinated by the idea of cooking professionally and moved to Paris for culinary school. After training at La Varenne and in kitchens across Belgium, France, and Switzerland, she returned to Chicago and began writing features and food columns for, among other outlets, the Chicago Tribune and Bon Appetit . Soon enough, those columns turned into cookbooks, edited by Child’s editor at Knopf: Judith.

Abby died 16 years ago this August, having not just written six cookbooks—including a series of Cuisinart books that taught home chefs how to use the new gadget and caused James Beard to call her the Queen of Machine Cuisine—but also founded Chicago’s pioneering Green City Market, which Alice Waters once called the “best sustainable market in the country.” Abby had, in every sense, impeccable taste. She was devoted to her projects. She was demanding, charming, generous, diligent, and rigorous about every single thing. I miss her more with every year. I, like Abby, love to work. I feel a true passion for my job, which might seem like a surprising statement in a social moment of work creep: Remote jobs, smartphones, and side hustles mean your work can follow you everywhere you go. Women in straight relationships, meanwhile, still tend to work a “second shift” at home, cleaning and cooking and caring more than their male partners. I don’t want endless labor, and yet I think of the French doors connecting Abby’s office and kitchen, remember her developing recipes with 6-year-old me perched on the counter, and wonder what advice she would have given me about braiding my work into my life.

Judith, by Franklin’s account, was constantly blending the two. She befriended her authors, tested their recipes in her own kitchen, managed their egos with the same strategy of delicate persuasion she used on her husband, Dick Jones, a writer she met while living in Paris. Judith saw no reason not to use her feminine wiles at work.

Like many powerful women of her generation, she did not describe herself as a feminist. She thought the movement encouraged women to “adopt stereotypically masculine traits in a ‘strident or angry way,’” which she considered counterproductive. She also bristled at the critique that Betty Friedan, the author of The Feminine Mystique , leveled at her first star, Julia Child: that cooking is fundamentally grunt work, and that by making it fun, Child was really just helping to keep women at home, working without pay.

Read: The key to Julia Child’s success hid in plain sight

Judith saw things quite differently. In her childhood home, a “woman of standing” was not meant to “dirty her hands” with chores, cooking included. But once she got into the kitchen, she was enamored of the “sensual richness” of even dull or challenging prep tasks; after she and Dick, also a home chef, married, cooking together became “the anchor of their domestic life.” (It also led to  domestic equality: Along with cooking, Dick did more chores than Judith did.) Franklin consistently links the physical pleasures of the kitchen to both adventurousness and adulthood; the word sensual crops up constantly (Olds, a poet famous for her writing about sex, told Franklin she was thrilled to discover, in Judith, an editor who was a “fellow sensualist”). Judith plainly felt that a grown woman should know how to enjoy getting dirty and exerting herself.

Of course, it’s a function of Judith’s whiteness and upper-class background that she got to opt into cooking. Historically, women rarely get to choose their own relationship to domestic labor, a fact Franklin draws out in more ways than one. She describes the Black southern chef Edna Lewis, one of the most talented authors on Judith’s list, fighting to make this point in The Taste of Country Cooking , which juxtaposes recipes with stories of her enslaved grandmother, who had to lay bricks all day while her children waited in their cribs. (Lewis herself, though venerated as a chef, had to hire herself out as a private cook and domestic worker well into her 60s because magazine editors and restaurant owners so habitually underpaid her.) Franklin also writes about the great suppression of women’s labor after World War II, when working women were “ousted en masse from paid jobs” so men who’d been at the front could take those roles back.

Judith came of age precisely at that moment. She had to fight to hang on to jobs in publishing; the fact that she managed to do so suggests the gap between her experience and that of working-class women her age. It also reflects her grit, her talent, and her devotion to her job. She was her household’s primary earner nearly her whole marriage; she pushed through years at Knopf when she got treated like—and referred to as—a secretary, even though she was editing Updike; she not only remained in publishing until her late 80s, but also took on the role of author, writing a handful of books at the end of her career. Franklin describes Judith’s 2009 cookbook, The Pleasures of Cooking for One , as a display of the skills—and the philosophy—Judith learned as a cookbook editor. It was a “manual for living as much as cooking.” At its core was the joy Judith took in food, which she saw as both a way toward a happily physical, unconventional, grounded life and a “worthy purpose in and of itself.”

Judith’s passion for cooking has helped countless Americans cook for fun, exploration, and connection. At the start of her career, this would have seemed highly unlikely. In the 1950s, major manufacturers pushed convenience foods using ads that cast cooking skills as “old-fashioned and obsolete” and promised to wrap everything up so the “‘poor little woman’ wouldn’t soil herself” with dinner prep. Judith decided to use her editorial power to resist—and maybe even counteract—this trend. She wasn’t against practicalities; she did, after all, work with Abby, the Queen of Machine Cuisine. But she hated the thought of cooking getting dismissed as a tired mess or what Franklin calls a “gendered trap.” Although she would not have used this language, she seems to have espoused a different kind of feminism from Friedan’s, one that embraces possibility rather than condemning anything traditionally considered women’s work. An interesting parallel with romantic love is hiding here: Although some feminists have tried to reject men, others have argued that straight relationships can be potential opportunities for radical repair and progress. For Judith, the kitchen was a place where radical progress could happen. She wanted to share her passion for food, which meant getting the American public on board with the idea of cooking as a “gateway to the wider world and a richer, more autonomous life.”

Read: Eight cookbooks worth reading cover to cover

Julia Child was Judith’s first companion in this project, and her most influential one. Gradually, though, Judith created a whole community of kindred spirits in her cookbook authors, nearly all of whom were women—and not “little housewives,” as Judith said to Franklin. They were a group of curious, courageous thinkers who, with Judith’s guidance, turned food into an intellectual project, writing books that, far from denigrating cooking as drudgery, presented it as a daily necessity that also, per Judith, “empowered you, that stimulated you.”

My own romance with food, which began when I was a college student with my first dorm kitchen, owes a lot to Abby—and everything to Judith. I make the biscuits from The Taste of Country Cooking all summer, every summer. My copy of Marcella Hazan’s The Classic Italian Cookbook is held together with painters’ tape. Claudia Roden’s The Book of Jewish Food has gotten me through the holidays I’ve spent away from home. And the rest of my cookbook collection, contemporary titles that cross the country and globe, is clearly in Judith’s lineage: books that teach me cultural history along with culinary technique, that deepen my understanding of the United States and of the many diasporic communities that influence American cooking.

My daily life, too, is in a debt of sorts to Judith, something I saw plainly as I read The Editor . For me, as for Judith, food and books are routes to exploration. I garden because I cook; I walk to the farmer’s market in the D.C. summer heat because I cook; I learn about sustainable agriculture because I cook. In a way, yes, this is work on top of the work I do at my desk all day, but it’s pleasure and education, too. Just like writing, it opens my brain up. It makes me an adventurous girl, and for that, I have Judith Jones to thank.

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

10 rules for reading from someone who does it for a living

Where to read, when to read and why you need a pencil in hand: The Post’s Michael Dirda offers some advice from his years as a critic.

How do you read a book? Like most people, I still decipher the meaning of words printed on sheets of paper bound together, but you may prefer to peer at pixels on a screen or listen through ear buds to a favorite narrator. They are all reading, in my book. Each of us, I think, seeks what the critic Roland Barthes called “the pleasure of the text,” though finding delight in what we read doesn’t necessarily mean a steady diet of romance novels and thrillers. Scholarly works, serious fiction, poetry, a writer’s distinctive prose style — all of these deliver their own kinds of textual pleasure.

As someone who has been lucky enough to earn his living in the rarefied world of book reviewing, I’ve gradually developed reading-related habits as part of my work. Some of them — listed below — may even be similar to yours. At the least, I hope a few of my customary routines and practices will be useful in your own reading life.

Be choosy, but not too choosy

I spend a lot of time, often way too much, dithering about what to read next. A book has to fit my mood or even the season. Spooky stories are for winter, comic novels for spring. What’s more, I like to mix it up, the old with the new, a literary biography this week, a science fiction classic the next. I can adjust my expectations up or down — you don’t read Thomas Mann’s “Doctor Faustus” in the same way you read Ian Fleming ’s “Dr. No.” — but the book must be, on some level, exciting. I try to avoid wasting time on anything that leaves me indifferent. As Jesus memorably told the Laodiceans: “Because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”

Editions matter

In my youth, I could read paperbacks printed in tiny type on pages you could see through. No more. These days, I opt for hardcovers whenever possible, if only because they’re generally easier on aging eyes. For classics, I want a good scholarly edition; for translated works, I try to acquire the best English version. This just makes sense. As a reviewer, I often work with a galley or advance reading copy of a forthcoming title, but these are simply tools of the trade. I generally don’t keep them. I want the finished book.

Check the small stuff

Before turning to Chapter 1, I glance at a book’s cover art, check out the author’s dust jacket biography and photo, and read through the back page endorsements. Unlike many people, I pay close attention to copyright dates, introductions, dedications, acknowledgments and bibliographies. All these provide hints to the kind of book one is dealing with.

When to read

Mine is a simple system: I read from morning till bedtime, with breaks for my job, family, meetings with friends, exercise, household chores and periodic review of my life’s greatest blunders. On the days I don’t read, I write. As I say, it’s a simple system. Many people complain that they have no time for books, yet somehow they manage to spend three or more hours a day watching television or scrolling through social media on their phones. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

Where to read

Even though I know better, I still read more often than not while sprawled in an overstuffed armchair or on an old couch. You probably do something similar. Not only ergonomically bad, these soft options invite dozing. Realistically, the best place to read is at a table or desk with lots of good light. Other good locations include the public library, an outside table at a coffee shop away from background music and other customers, and the quiet car on the train to New York. In truth, though, don’t expect to find an ideal place to read. Trust me: You never will. Instead, as the Nike slogan says, Just Do It.

Don’t read in a vacuum

To read any book well often requires knowledge of its author, context, history. So I surround myself, when possible or appropriate, with collateral texts to help me better appreciate the writer’s artistry or arguments. These can be biographies, volumes of criticism, competing titles on the same subject or, most basically, other books by the same author. For example, if I’m reading E. Nesbit’s “Five Children and It,” I want to have the sequels, “The Phoenix and the Carpet” and “The Story of the Amulet,” close at hand for possible comparison. This is one justification for building a personal library. I also keep within easy reach a notebook, magnifying glass and Chambers 20th Century Dictionary. Other reference books are shelved near where I type these words.

Attention must be paid

As I read, I do all I can to live up to Henry James’s dictum: “Be one on whom nothing is lost.” This vigilance means that I seldom lose myself in the story, which is the devil’s bargain I made by becoming a professional reviewer. As it is, I track the clues in whodunits and the symbolic events or objects in literary fiction. I note oddities of style, repetitions, possible foreshadowings and anomalies that might be meaningful. I frequently flip back to previous pages to check details. In every way, then, I try to make my first reading as intensive and comprehensive as possible, knowing I may not pass this way again.

Be prepared to take notes

I can’t open a book without a pencil either in my hand or nestled conveniently in that space between my right ear and skull. For a long time, my weapon of choice was a No. 2 Ticonderoga pencil, but it now tends to be a Paper Mate disposable mechanical pencil. As a boy, I took to heart the lessons of Mortimer J. Adler’s essay “How to Mark a Book.” I place two or three vertical lines next to key passages, scribble notes to myself in the margins, sometimes make longer comments on the blank end papers. I never underline words or phrases — this seems too much like sophomoric highlighting, plus it just looks ugly. All these practices serve one end: to keep me actively engaged mentally with the words on the page. For the same reason, I scorn bookmarks: If you can’t remember where you stopped reading, you haven’t been paying close enough attention.

Make some noise

I don’t skim or speed read, though I envy people, like the late Harold Bloom, who can zip through a novel in 20 minutes. When I try to pick up my own reading pace, I end up constantly flogging myself not to slow down. Where’s the fun in that? Woody Allen once said that he’d taken a speed-reading course and had finished “War and Peace” in half an hour; he gathered that it was about Russia. As an exceptionally slow reader, I mentally murmur every word on the page, which allows me to savor the author’s style and to remember what he or she has said. Sometimes I also pause to copy a striking passage into my commonplace book. Here’s a fairly recent example from the poet John Ashbery: “I am aware of the pejorative associations of the word ‘escapist,’ but I insist that we need all the escapism we can get and even that isn’t going to be enough.”

Find a shelf

After finishing a book, I tend to keep it. While not a frequent rereader, I do like to refresh my acquaintance with old favorites, if only by opening one up occasionally to enjoy a page or a passage. When I look at my living room’s bookcases, while sleepily sipping coffee in the morning, I see not only my past laid out before me but also my future: Someday I will read David Cecil’s “Melbourne,” a biography of the Victorian prime minister that was said to be John F. Kennedy’s favorite book. Someday, I will get to — hangs head in shame — Willa Cather’s “The Professor’s House.” Other shelves remind me of the books I want to reread: Angela Carter’s “Nights at the Circus,” Dawn Powell’s “The Locusts Have No King,” Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” Frederick Exley’s “A Fan’s Notes.”

Long ago, one of my teachers in high school told me that he didn’t feel right unless he spent at least three hours a day reading. This seemed incredible to me then. Not anymore.

More from Book World

Love everything about books? Make sure to subscribe to our Book Club newsletter , where Ron Charles guides you through the literary news of the week.

Check out our coverage of this year’s Pulitzer winners: Jayne Anne Phillips won the fiction prize for her novel “ Night Watch .” The nonfiction prize went to Nathan Thrall, for “ A Day in the Life of Abed Salama .” Cristina Rivera Garza received the memoir prize for “ Liliana’s Invincible Summer .” And Jonathan Eig received the biography prize for his “ King: A Life .”

Best books of 2023: See our picks for the 10 best books of 2023 or dive into the staff picks that Book World writers and editors treasured in 2023. Check out the complete lists of 50 notable works for fiction and the top 50 nonfiction books of last year.

Find your favorite genre: Three new memoirs tell stories of struggle and resilience, while five recent historical novels offer a window into other times. Audiobooks more your thing? We’ve got you covered there, too . If you’re looking for what’s new, we have a list of our most anticipated books of 2024 . And here are 10 noteworthy new titles that you might want to consider picking up this April.

• Election 2024
• Entertainment
• Newsletters
• Photography
• Personal Finance
• AP Investigations
• AP Buyline Personal Finance
• AP Buyline Shopping
• Press Releases
• Israel-Hamas War
• Russia-Ukraine War
• Global elections
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Election Results
• Delegate Tracker
• AP & Elections
• Auto Racing
• 2024 Paris Olympic Games
• Movie reviews
• Book reviews
• Personal finance
• Financial Markets
• Business Highlights
• Financial wellness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Media

Book Review: A dark secret exposed about a World War II internment camp in ‘First Frost’

This cover image released by Viking shows “First Frost” by Craig Johnson. (Viking via AP)

• Copy Link copied

Walt Longmire and his deputy are poking around in his basement when she spots a relic of his youth, a hundred-pound Bob Simmons-model surfboard.

“You’re too big to surf,” she says.

“I didn’t used to be,” he says.

She notices that the front of the board is heavily dented.

“Tell me about that,” she says.

It’s a long story, he replies. In fact, it’s long enough to form the heart of “First Frost,” Craig Johnson’s 20th crime novel featuring Longmire, the sheriff of fictional Absaroka County, Wyoming.

Flash back to the summer of 1964. Walt and his pal Henry Standing Bear, whose football careers at the University of Southern California recently came to an end, have enlisted in the military with the expectation that they will be sent to Vietnam. Their plan is to drive cross country to their assigned training facilities, but they have barely made it to Arizona when Walt’s truck runs off the road, stranding them in the small desert town of Bone Valley.

The town, they soon find, is as unwelcoming as its name. Get out as soon as you can, they are repeatedly told. Sometimes it’s a warning, sometimes a threat. Clearly something is wrong here, and Walt, already demonstrating the courage and persistence of a future sheriff, can’t let go of the mystery.

Meanwhile, back in the present, Longmire is under investigation for a fatal shooting recounted in “The Longmire Defense,” last year’s installment of the series. The victim was a member of a wealthy and politically powerful family, which is now out for vengeance.

The author moves smoothly between the two time periods, keeping both stories moving at a crisp pace. The old story is the more suspenseful one involving, among other things, murderous drug smugglers, a former judge who runs Bone Valley like a dictator, and a dark secret about the incarceration camps of Japanese Americans during World War II that had once operated nearby.

Johnson’s vivid, tightly written novel may remind readers of “Bad Day at Black Rock,” a 1955 film in which an Army veteran played by Spencer Tracy arrives in a western town to deliver a medal and discovers the populace is harboring a dark secret.

Readers new to the series won’t have difficulty following the action, and longtime Longmire fans are likely to appreciate how the author fleshes out the main character’s backstory.

Bruce DeSilva, winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, is the author of the Mulligan crime novels including “The Dread Line.”

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

• SI SWIMSUIT
• SI SPORTSBOOK

Bill Walton's Unflappable Positivity Made Him One of a Kind

Pat forde | 11 hours ago.

• UCLA Bruins

Among the multitude of Bill Walton’s unique traits, there was this: he rarely used periods in his communication. Not in texts. Not in emails. Really, not even when he talked—the words just kept flowing, of their own volition and in random directions, transmitted from a remarkable brain into the world.

Instead of periods, Walton punctuated his thoughts with commas. An example, from a text he sent me on March 6, 2020, just days before the pandemic shut down the world:

Thank you, for your kindness, and my life,

Shine On, Play On, Carry On,

I look forward to our next celestial encounter,

I’m off for a day of desert solitude, and all that goes with it,

It was as if he were speaking in lyrical form. Or, as I chose to see it, he was engaging in a conversation that would continue in perpetuity. As if the dialog would never end as long as you don’t put a period on anything. To me, those commas said, “to be continued.”

And so this is the saddest thing to me, on this sad day for Planet Earth (not just the sports part of Planet Earth, but the entirety of it): we have put a period on Bill Walton’s incredible life. There are no more commas. No more “to be continued.” No more “Shine On” texts to come.

His death at age 71, succumbing to a cancer battle few even knew he was fighting, is enough to make a man cry.

Walton is easily one of the 50 greatest basketball players in the history of the sport, and certainly one of the three greatest collegians (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Russell would be my other two). In three seasons of varsity eligibility at UCLA, he led the Bruins to two national championships, three Final Fours and a record 88-game winning streak that will never be surpassed. He led the Portland Trail Blazers to their only NBA championship in 1977 before foot injuries robbed him of so much, then came back to play a vital role on the Boston Celtics’ 1986 championship team. He was the greatest low-post passer the game has ever seen.

And yet those Hall of Fame accomplishments are such a small fraction of who he was and why he still resonated nearly 40 years after he stopped playing. After enduring a succession of ankle and back injuries and surgeries, Walton made it a self-appointed mission to be a beacon of positivity, a source of endless joy, a celebrator of the human condition. He treated many, many people very, very kindly.

He became the world’s most famous Deadhead. He became the world’s foremost appreciator of his college coach, John Wooden, despite—or because of—their generation-gap clashes when Walton was questioning everything and Wooden was steeped in basketball dogma. (“Everything he ever said—and I didn’t realize this as a teenager—came true.”) He became the world’s most unconventional TV broadcaster and, at the same time, the world’s biggest booster of the Pac-12 Conference.

I first met the Big Redhead at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. His hair was no longer red and he was clearly hobbled, but Walton radiated happiness. He was working as a broadcaster for NBC from the beach volleyball venue at Bondi Beach, and the vibe was perfect for a San Diego hippie. Gratitude was his prevailing attitude. 

To that point, Walton had worked for a decade on TV, mostly on the NBA. His final role, starting in 2012, was with ESPN and the Pac-12 Network as an analyst covering that league’s games. This was when Walton fully transformed into either your favorite or least favorite color commentator.

Walton resolutely refused to do the job by the book. Instead of a coat and tie, he usually wore a polo shirt. He brought padding for his chair, to alleviate his aching back. His commentary—all commas, no periods—veered everywhere, occasionally touching on the actual game being played in front of him. Rhapsodies and soliloquies, unconstrained. He tested a director’s structure and longtime play-by-play sidekick Dave Pasch’s patience, but the rapport between the two became its own endearing, odd-couple schtick.

The TV Walton could be an unapologetic ham. He was a wild practitioner of hyperbole. He got plenty of facts wrong. That drove some viewers crazy, but they were missing the point of a Walton broadcast.

Every game was a celebration—of basketball, yes, but also of life and art and whatever else traipsed through Walton’s mind. The broadcasts were two hours of free-form fun, an endless Jerry Garcia improvisational jam. Walton knew more about the game than anyone watching at home, but dissecting ball-screen angles was boring. There were so many other things to talk about.

Foremost among the other topics was the paradise of the Pac-12, the “Conference of Champions,” as Walton called it over and over. He served as the P.R. megaphone for a poorly run league that stopped winning big in football and basketball, extolling quality of life when the quality of competition dipped. The Pac-12’s cities and campuses and academics and weather were all unbeatable to Bill .

During one of our conversations, I told Walton that my daughter, Brooke, was a Pac-12 athlete at Stanford. He was delighted, asking a barrage of questions. The last question: can you give me her email address? I did, and Walton sent her a warm, supportive, congratulatory missive. He believed every good thing he said about life in the Pac-12.

The raiding of the league by other conferences was a sore point with Walton. That challenged his relentless positivity, so he largely opted to say little about it. When UCLA joined USC in shockingly fleeing for the Big Ten in 2022, Walton’s voice was the first reaction a lot of people wanted to hear. It was one of the few times he didn’t return my calls and texts.

Months later, Walton wrote a lengthy statement to longtime Oregon columnist John Canzano articulating his displeasure with UCLA’s move. The statement contained dozens of commas, zero periods. There is one thing fitting about the timing of Walton’s passing: he will never have to see the Bruins play in the Big Ten.

The last time I talked to Walton was during the 2023 Final Four. I was writing a column on the 50th anniversary of his most legendary performance , making 21 of 22 shots in the 1973 NCAA tournament championship game against Memphis. We were having trouble connecting, and then suddenly came this response to a last request for a phone interview: 

Always for you, and SI,

I’m slammed,

What’s your deadline,

Walton made time for the interview. Slammed or not, we talked for at least 30 minutes. The more I asked him about his performance, the more he extolled his teammates—Jamaal Wilkes, Larry Farmer, Dave Meyers, Larry Hollyfield, Tommy Curtis, on and on.

“That was a good day for us,” Walton said. “I was the luckiest guy in the world.”

In reality, those who experienced Bill Walton—the player, yes, but more importantly the joyful citizen of the world—were the luckiest people in the world. 

In his honor, we can all do our best to shine on, play on, carry on, and on, and on, 

Pat Forde covers college sports, the Olympics and horse racing for Sports Illustrated. Pat wrote two books and was nominated for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize. In addition to his work at SI, Pat is also the co-host of the College Football Enquirer podcast. He is an analyst for the Big Ten Network and contributes to national radio shows. In a career spanning more than three decades, Pat has worked at Yahoo! Sports, ESPN and the Louisville Courier-Journal. 

Follow ByPatForde

Advertisement

Supported by

An Appraisal

Alice Munro, a Literary Alchemist Who Made Great Fiction From Humble Lives

The Nobel Prize-winning author specialized in exacting short stories that were novelistic in scope, spanning decades with intimacy and precision.

• Share full article

By Gregory Cowles

Gregory Cowles is a senior editor at the Book Review.

The first story in her first book evoked her father’s life. The last story in her last book evoked her mother’s death. In between, across 14 collections and more than 40 years, Alice Munro showed us in one dazzling short story after another that the humble facts of a single person’s experience, subjected to the alchemy of language and imagination and psychological insight, could provide the raw material for great literature.

Listen to this article with reporter commentary

And not just any person, but a girl from the sticks. It mattered that Munro, who died on Monday night at the age of 92, hailed from rural southwestern Ontario, since so many of her stories, set in small towns on or around Lake Huron, were marked by the ambitions of a bright girl eager to leave, upon whom nothing is lost. There was the narrator of “Boys and Girls,” who tells herself bedtime stories about a world “that presented opportunities for courage, boldness and self-sacrifice, as mine never did.” There was Rose, from “The Beggar Maid,” who wins a college scholarship and leaves her working-class family behind. And there was Del Jordan, from “Lives of Girls and Women” — Munro’s second book, and the closest thing she ever wrote to a novel — who casts a jaundiced eye on her town’s provincial customs as she takes the first fateful steps toward becoming a writer.

Does it seem reductive or limiting to derive a kind of artist’s statement from the title of that early book? It shouldn’t. Munro was hardly a doctrinaire feminist, but with implacable authority and command she demonstrated throughout her career that the lives of girls and women were as rich, as tumultuous, as dramatic and as important as the lives of men and boys. Her plots were rife with incident: the threatened suicide in the barn, the actual murder at the lake, the ambivalent sexual encounter, the power dynamics of desire. For a writer whose book titles gestured repeatedly at love (“The Progress of Love,” “The Love of a Good Woman,” “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage”), her narratives recoiled from sentimentality. Tucked into the stately columns of The New Yorker, where she was a steady presence for decades, they were far likelier to depict the disruptions and snowballing consequences of petty grudges, careless cruelties and base impulses: the gossip that mattered.

Munro’s stories traveled not as the crow flies but as the mind does. You got the feeling that, if the GPS ever offered her a shorter route, she would decline. Capable of dizzying swerves in a line or a line break, her stories often spanned decades with intimacy and sweep; that’s partly what critics meant when they wrote of the novelistic scope she brought to short fiction.

Her sentences rarely strutted or flaunted or declared themselves; but they also never clanked or stumbled — she was an exacting and precise stylist rather than a showy one, who wrote with steely control and applied her ambitions not to language but to theme and structure. (This was a conscious choice on her part: “In my earlier days I was prone to a lot of flowery prose,” she told an interviewer when she won the Nobel Prize in 2013. “I gradually learned to take a lot of that out.”) In the middle of her career her stories started to grow roomier and more contemplative, even essayistic; they could feel aimless until you approached the final pages and recognized with a jolt that they had in fact been constructed all along as intricately and deviously as a Sudoku puzzle, every piece falling neatly into place.

There was a signature Munro tone: skeptical, ruminative, given to a crucial and artful ambiguity that could feel particularly Midwestern. Consider “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” which — thanks in part to Sarah Polley’s Oscar-nominated film adaptation, “ Away From Her ” (2006) — may be Munro’s most famous story; it details a woman’s descent into senility and her philandering husband’s attempt to come to terms with her attachment to a male resident at her nursing home. Here the husband is on a visit, confronting the limits of his knowledge and the need to make peace with uncertainty, in a characteristically Munrovian passage:

She treated him with a distracted, social sort of kindness that was successful in holding him back from the most obvious, the most necessary question. He could not demand of her whether she did or did not remember him as her husband of nearly 50 years. He got the impression that she would be embarrassed by such a question — embarrassed not for herself but for him. She would have laughed in a fluttery way and mortified him with her politeness and bewilderment, and somehow she would have ended up not saying either yes or no. Or she would have said either one in a way that gave not the least satisfaction.

Like her contemporary Philip Roth — another realist who was comfortable blurring lines — Munro devised multilayered plots that were explicitly autobiographical and at the same time determined to deflect or undermine that impulse. This tension dovetailed happily with her frequent themes of the unreliability of memory and the gap between art and life. Her stories tracked the details of her lived experience both faithfully and cannily, cagily, so that any attempt at a dispassionate biography (notably, Robert Thacker’s scholarly and substantial “Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives,” from 2005) felt at once invasive and redundant. She had been in front of us all along.

Until, suddenly, she wasn’t. That she went silent after her book “Dear Life” was published in 2012, a year before she won the Nobel, makes her passing now seem all the more startling — a second death, in a way that calls to mind her habit of circling back to recognizable moments and images in her work. At least three times she revisited the death of her mother in fiction, first in “The Peace of Utrecht,” then in “Friend of My Youth” and again in the title story that concludes “Dear Life”: “The person I would really have liked to talk to then was my mother,” the narrator says near the end of that story, in an understated gut punch of an epitaph that now applies equally well to Munro herself, but she “was no longer available.”

Read by Greg Cowles

Audio produced by Sarah Diamond .

Gregory Cowles is the poetry editor of the Book Review and senior editor of the Books desk. More about Gregory Cowles

Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (2024) review: The gaming Chromebook that made me a believer

The Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (2024) brings strong performance and great audio, and plenty of AI features thanks to Google Gemini Advanced.

Key Takeaways

• The Acer Chromebook 516 GE (202
• is a powerful Chromebook with AI features, vibrant display, and great audio in an eye-catching design.
• The laptop's sleek design, potent performance, and Gemini Advanced AI make it a strong contender for one of the best Chromebooks of the year.
• Despite some issues with the keyboard and backlighting, the Acer 516 GE offers a high-quality gaming experience and solid overall performance.

The Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE is the company’s second crack at a gaming Chromebook, a phrase that’s so oxymoronic it makes me chuckle. But just because this is the second 516 GE, the laptop still has a first to its name. Namely, it’s one of the first laptops in Google’s new Chromebook Plus-series notebooks that brings new hardware requirements as well as access to Google Gemini Advanced, the next stage in Google’s AI platform, which comes with a host of helpful utilities to enhance how you work and play. And yeah, I’ll admit it, I had fun gaming on this thing.

But aside from the AI goodness, the Acer 516 GE is a great laptop in its own right. It’s got a slick design, great display and potent audio, and powerful specs. Honestly, I’d like to see a Windows PC version of this laptop. But as it stands, the Chromebook 516 GE (2024) is a strong contender for one of the best Chromebooks of the year despite its somewhat mushy keyboard and weak backlighting.

Either way, the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (2024) is a great ambassador for Google’s Chromebook Plus laptops.

About this review : Acer supplied XDA with a review unit of its Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (2024). It had no input on the content of this article.

Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (2024)

The king of gaming Chromebooks

The Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (2024), one of the first new Chromebook Plus laptops, combines a powerful, mid-tier gaming laptop with a vibrant display and great audio in an eye-catching design accentuated by Gemini Advanced features designed to enhance how you work and play. 

• Sleek, eye-catching design
• Powerful performance
• Compelling AI features
• Great battery life
• Excellent audio
• Mushy keyboard with weak backlighting

Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (2024): Price and availability

I reviewed the base model of the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE. It costs $650 at Best Buy ($700 Acer.com) and has an Intel Core i5 processor 120U with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM, a 25GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD, Intel Graphics, and a 16-inch, 2560x1600 display with a 120Hz refresh rate.

And while I’m loath to suggest that anyone pay over $1,000 for a Chromebook, Acer does have another SKU of the 516 GE. For $1,099, at Best Buy Canada and doubles the storage. The 516 GE goes up to Core i7 processor with up to a 2TB SSD, but pricing and availability have yet to be disclosed.

Design and ports

Interesting aesthetic.

It’s not the Fire Engine Red of the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 , but that doesn’t make the Chromebook 516 GE any less visually interesting. The first thing you’ll notice is the notebook’s two-tone, aluminum lid. The majority of the lid is black brushed aluminum, while the top of the lid is black anodized aluminum. The right corner designates the system as one of the new Chromebook Plus laptops with a glossy Acer emblem embedded in the top-left corner.

But hands down, my favorite aspect of the Chromebook 516 GE’s design is the hinges, or more accurately, the color. It shifts from purple to blue depending on how the light hits it. And now I demand a laptop made entirely from this effect (pretty please, Acer). The hinges are pretty and functional, allowing the lid to lay flat in case you want to share your screen.

But hands down, my favorite aspect of the Chromebook 516 GE’s design is the hinges, or more accurately, the color.

The Acer’s interior takes a more subtle aesthetic –– you get a solid black anodized aluminum keyboard deck. But take a closer look, and you’ll see tiny pearlescent flecks throughout the palm rest. The touchpad has a thin silver strip lining with a holographic effect. The keyboard sits in a recess nestled between a pair of large speaker grilles and just below a grayish-white Acer logo with a DTS emblem stamped on.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 Chromebook review: Surprisingly good and affordable

The laptop’s undercarriage is made of more black aluminum with a pair of vents towards the back, a pair of speaker grills along the sides in the middle, two black rubber feet and 11 black screws.

You get a fair number of ports, including a USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port, a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, a HDMI 2.1 port, and a Kensington lock slot on the right. On the left, there’s another USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, a collapsible RJ-45 port and a headset jack.

The 3.8-pound Chromebook 516 GE has a 14 x 9.8 x 0.84-inch frame that is bigger and thicker than the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 Chromebook (2.9 pounds) and the HP Chromebook Plus x360 (3.3 pounds). But keep in mind, both of these are 14-inch systems compared to the Acer, which is a 16-inch laptop .

Display, webcam, and audio

An excellent audio/visual experience.

There’s nothing worse than a gaming laptop with a bad display and when you’re talking about a sub-$1,000 system, it’s a very real possibility. Thankfully, you’re not making that sacrifice with the Chromebook 516 GE. Unfortunately, I couldn’t measure color gamut with my colorimeter, but I have to say, Ori and the Will of the Wisps and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy looked great. Both titles served up vibrant color with sharp detail, which is really important during the first section of Ori as the initial stages are rather dark with only the light spirit’s luminescence and then a small torch available to light the way. Guardians of the Galaxy was a burst of color from the start with bright pink goo holding together an old space battle.

I was pleasantly surprised by the 516 GE’s integrated 1080p webcam. Capable of capturing video at 60 frames per second, it also takes a great photo. In my test shots, it did an excellent job of capturing the exact color of my orange dress as well as the purple, turquoise and green in my locs. My cheeks and forehead looked like they had the mosaic filter on, but my skin looked great otherwise. And the details were so sharp you can see a white hair among my dark new growth, reminding me that a trip to the salon is imminent.

Let this be a lesson to other laptop OEMs. If your speakers have to be on the bottom, place them in the middle of the undercarriage.

Thick thighs save lives, and typically smother bottom-mounted speakers. But Acer found a cheat code as the Chromebook 516 GE’s speakers suffered no ill effects when I listened to Hiatus Kaiyote’s “Atari” with the laptop in my lap. Instead, I got loud volume with strong highs and good mids. The lows could have been better, but still a great result for bottom-mounted speakers. Let this be a lesson to other laptop OEMs. If your speakers have to be on the bottom, place them in the middle of the undercarriage.

Keyboard and touchpad

Needs some work.

A couple of tweaks here and there, and the 516 GE’s keyboard will be perfect. As it stands, the keys on the Chiclet keyboard are fine, but just a little mushy. Not so much that I couldn’t type the entirety of the review on the keyboard, but just enough to notice that it didn’t have the bounce back that I’ve experienced on other laptops.

For its target audience, Acer put a thick white border around the W,A,S,D keys. Which if you’re in a darkened room, you might need as the keyboard’s RGB backlighting doesn’t really shine that bright. Although I saw the light beneath the key caps, it didn’t illuminate the white lettering on the keys.

The only thing smoother than OceanGlass (recycled plastics found in the ocean) touchpad is its lickety-split response to my movements. Whether I was scrolling through Nvidia’s ever-growing library in GeForce Now or zooming in on an image, the touchpad had no problem keeping pace with my movements.

The power of Gemini Advanced

Since the 516 GE is a Chromebook, it’s a foregone conclusion that it runs on ChromeOS . But Google’s introducing a new wrinkle to the equation with a new category of Chromebooks designated Chromebook Plus. This new line addresses both hardware and software requirements, and it first appeared last year.

I took Gemini Advanced for a spin and while it definitely has room to grow, I’m impressed with what it can do so far.

As far as hardware, a notebook needs to have at least Intel Core i3 or AMD Ryzen 7000 series CPU with 8GB or more of RAM, a minimum 128GB SSD, and at least a 1080p display to be considered Chromebook Plus. The software part of this is all AI as Chromebook Plus notebooks will feature a Google Gemini shortcut in the ChromeOS launcher as well as the Shelf.

For the purposes of this review, Google provided a free trial of Gemini Advanced, a more advanced version running on Gemini Ultra of the company’s basic Gemini AI model. A monthly subscription-based service ($20/month), Gemini Advanced goes beyond the basic chatbot, allowing you to generate HTML code, generate content ideas, analyze trends, and many other tasks. And of course, it works best within the confines of Google.

I took Gemini Advanced for a spin and while it definitely has room to grow, I’m impressed with what it can do so far. As a rabid lover of GIFs and memes, the first thing I did was create my own with the Gif Creator. It’s a fun, goofy thing to do, and I look forward to making a couple more. But I also enjoyed some of the more practical uses. For instance, I used the Optical Character Recognition feature to help me track down a specific receipt in my images. And with Task Integration, I added specific tasks that corresponded to existing events in my Google Calendar.

And on the creative side, I enjoyed creating my own wallpaper, even though Google is keeping a tight rein on the current choices. I managed to create a cute wallpaper of “a painting of a vast ocean in the art nouveau style.” With the advanced Magic Eraser features in Gemini Advanced, removing the photo in the back of my camera test shot was relatively easy, although it left a weird artifact in its wake.

HP Chromebook Plus x360 14-inch review: Another winning ChromeOS 2-in-1 from HP

Performance, introducing chromebook plus.

When people think of Chromebooks, they tend to think of lower-tier systems with specs to match. Google’s turning that notion on its head with the Chromebook Plus designation. Plus, the 516 GE is a gaming laptop, so it has to step it up. To that end, Acer outfitted the Chromebook 516 GE with an Intel Core i5 processor 120U, a mid-tier chip. Using Raptor Lake Refresh U-series architecture, the CPU has 10 cores and 12 threads and is paired with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM, a 25GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD and Intel Graphics.

This configuration was more than enough to handle my usual workload, which entails a minimum 50 Google Chrome tabs with a mix of G-Suite apps, videos, social media and Adobe Photoshop. Of course, due to application restraints on Chromebooks, some of my more taxing apps had to be traded out for alternatives (i.e. Photoshop for Web instead of full Photoshop).

As far as graphics, the 516 GE scored 2,326 on 3DMark Wild Life Extreme.

The 516 GE also did well on synthetic benchmarks. The laptop gave strong results on Geekbench 6 with 1,959 on the single-thread test and 7,217 on the multi-thread benchmark. On Speedometer 2.0, which tests web browser speed, the 516 GE reached 239, which is a great score. The laptop also performed well on both the Kraken Javascript and Octane 2.0 benchmarks, scoring 408.8 milliseconds and 95,895, respectively.

As far as graphics, the 516 GE scored 2,326 on 3DMark Wild Life Extreme. I wish there was a ChromeOS version of 3DMark Fire Strike as the integrated Intel Graphics could definitely handle it. Either way, that’s more than enough to play any games in the Google Play Store. Of course, games like Guardians of the Galaxy ran very smoothly, but that's because they run in the cloud.

Acer estimates the Chromebook 516 GE can last 10 hours on a charge. That, of course, depends on what you’re doing. The laptop lasted 9 hours and 41 minutes, which represented more than six hours of writing the review, taking video calls, perusing social media, and answering emails. The rest of the time was spent streaming music, watching episodes of Hazbin Hotel and playing Ori and the Will of the Wisps .

Should you buy the Acer Chromebook 516 GE?

You should buy the Acer Chromebook 516 GE if:

• You want a powerful Chromebook that can play games
• You want a laptop with good battery life
• You want a laptop with Google’s Advanced AI features
• You want a laptop with a great display and audio
• You want a laptop with a firmer, brighter keyboard

I came into this laptop as a full hater. I typically run away screaming at the mention of a Chromebook and outright derisive laughter at any mention of a gaming Chromebook. But I’m not afraid to admit when I’m wrong, and I was definitely wrong with my preconceived notions. The Acer Chromebook 516 GE served me a heaping helping of humble pie thanks to its slick design, vivid display, loud, warm audio, and impressive performance. Again, I’d love to see this SKU brought over to the Windows PC side.

And speaking of ChromeOS, I definitely like it a lot more with Gemini Advanced enhancing the experience. Paired with my Google account, the AI gave me a glimpse into how the future of AI can look, and I can confidently say that it’s more Wall-E than Skynet (for now). I’m looking forward to spending the next few weeks doing a deep dive into Google Gemini and just what it can do for me going forward. Plus, I’m never going to say no to a gaming laptop that can deliver high frame rates.

My only complaint lies with the keyboard, as it could have better feedback and brighter backlighting. But overall, the 2nd-gen Acer Chromebook 516 SE is an absolute revelation. It’s a powerful laptop in its own right, with or without AI. But with the technology, the Acer Chromebook 516 GE (2024) is a great example of what we can expect from AI in the future and has my vote for one of the best laptops of 2024.