Picture books can be magical for readers of all ages, even adults. But when it comes to reading aloud to young kids, I've learned not to ignore chapter books and novels. It may seem daunting to open up a hundred-plus-page tome when your audience has an attention span the length of a Peppa Pig episode, but the experience of making it through the story can be deeply rewarding.

Every week, our friends at Booktopia highlight an exclusive book deal for Lifehacker readers. This week: The Nowhere Child by Christian White. For a limited time you can save 26% on the RRP (and also get a signature from the author!)

This week I read a book over the phone with a stranger, and it was shockingly not awkward. Now, I have some experience reading aloud, as my wife and I read to each other every night. But you’ll pick it up quickly, if you try Audrey, a service that matches pairs of readers and gives them chapters of a book, specially formatted to read over the phone 10 minutes at a time.

Reading with your kids is important. We all know this. If you're like me, you dive into book after book with abandon.

During my first year at uni, my friend started a book club. We picked Ulysses. We met up once and I've still never read Ulysses. Book clubs are hard! They're so hard that blogs list things to talk about when no one in the book club read the book. ("Read reviews of the book out loud and talk about those.") If your book club is really just an excuse to hang out, that's fine! But if you actually want to read and discuss some literature, try a short story club.

Want to spook yourself silly when you're meant to be sleeping tonight? Welcome to the world of creepypasta - first person horror stories that live on the internet and are just realistic enough to scare the crap out of you. As with all forms of horror the quality of creepypasta varies wildly, but we've collected ten of the best right here.

Think about a book you read last year. How much of it do you remember? Could you list 10 things you learned from it? Can you even remember what books you read last year?

Despite my constant claims that I'm going to move to an all-digital library, I still buy a ton of books. I've started to embrace the fact that I like having physical copies of things. Besides just loving act of holding a book while I'm reading it, it also makes things a ton easier to share with friends.

You know when you come across a piece of expert advice and it’s something you already do out of convenience or laziness, and then you feel smug and think: Oh yes, I knew what I was doing all along? That’s what happened when I came across a tip in in Sarah Mackenzie’s wonderful book The Read-Aloud Family: Making Meaningful and Lasting Connections with Your Kids.

It’s winter, which makes it the perfect time to curl up with a book. Pick a book for by the fire, heater, or bundled up in bed with this collection of 20 reading lists from major publications, compiled by Metafilter user Fizz.

Winter: A time to curl up by the fire or in bed with your favourite warm drink in hand, and to get some reading done. And between true crime thrillers, sci-fi adventures and some timeless classics, there's a lot to get through.

Bookchoice is a monthly subscription service that gives you to access a range of different e-books and audiobooks each month. It's being billed as 'Netflix for bookworms' - and we have a free, one-month trial available for Lifehacker readers!

Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt the dogs. Electric Literature's Riane Konc rewrote famous stories where the dog dies, so this time the dog doesn't die. It's cathartic for gentle souls and for fans of literary rewrites such as Texts From Jane Eyre or How It Should Have Ended.

Billionaire Bill Gates has said he reads about a book a week. Our friends at Business Insider sifted through years of Gates' book recommendations to find 12 that made especially strong impressions on him and then collated them into this handy infographic. We've also included links so you can snap them up yourself.

It's time to put the little one to bed. What do you do? Put on an audiobook, read them a bedtime story with fun pictures, or turn on some cartoons? A new study suggests the old standby of an illustrated bedtime story is best for developing your children's brain.

Speed reading is a skill that can be hard to master. There are a ton of books, talks, and articles dedicated to teaching people the "right" way to learn the skill. This week, Fast Company spoke to one of those experts who wrote a book on topic to get some quick and dirty tips on how to learn. One of her suggestions: use an index card.

Sidekicks. Always there to lend a helping hand, or sword, or wand, as the case may be. A hero is nothing without his or her sidekick, but these companions rarely get the recognition they deserve. A few second bananas may get the spotlight on occasion -- your Robins, your Chewbaccas, your Igors -- but they all originated in comics, films, or on TV. This list is for the truly forgotten, the most overlooked of the overlooked. Here is a ranking of the top 10 best science fiction and fantasy sidekicks that originated in books.

Recommendmeabook.com shows you the first page of a random popular book, stripped of identifying info. If you like it, reveal the cover; if you don't, click "next book".

"The important thing to know about spelling is that it's not just rote memorization," says Ananya Vinay, champion of the 2017 Scripps US National Spelling Bee, who will ceremonially open this year's bee next week. While Vinay uses flashcards to study specific words, she says the real trick is learning where different words come from.