Some stories hit too close to home.
A library in West Bend, Wisconsin, less than an hour’s drive from my home, is being harassed by the Milwaukee branch of the Christian Civil Liberties Union for displaying Baby Be-Bop, by Francesca Lia Block, a book in her “Weetzie Bat” YA series. Baby Be-Bop is the coming-of-age story [...]
Salon.com has a nice collection of summer reading recommendations from authors who appeared at Book Expo America earlier this month. Above is Neil Gaiman, but if you follow the link, you’ll find video from authors ranging from Sarah Dunant to Dave Barry. Salon also has an article on recommended memoirs to read at the beach, [...]
Earlier this week, I linked to several summer reading lists, and today, at the beginning of the Memorial Day weekend, I’ve got some more for you.
First up, Sara Nelson’s “13 Hottest Summer Reads” from the Daily Beast. Her list includes several books mentioned in previous lists, including the latest from Pat Conroy and Stieg Larsson. [...]
USA Today’s summer reading list includes South of Broad, the first new novel by Pat Conroy in 14 years. If you enjoy this pick, try his memoir, My Losing Season. And if the second book is anything like the first, I’d skip Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire. The first book featuring this [...]
I’ll use just about any excuse for new books, and Mother’s Day was no exception. So after a nice dinner out on Saturday night, my husband turned me loose in the bookstore. I did my best to keep the total reasonable, and still managed to walk away with four books:
Since I only pull my Riverside [...]
The New York Times reports on the finalists for this year’s Orange Prize, which include American books Home, by Marilyn Robinson, Scotsboro, by Ellen Feldman, and The Invention of Everything Else, by Samantha Hunt.
The Pulitzer Prizes were awarded this week. The Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout (Random House); for [...]
Meghan O’Rourke’s essay series on bereavement at Slate.com, The Long Goodbye, continues with a piece on watching someone you love accept death. There aren’t adequate adjectives with which to praise these essays, but quiet, unflinching, mournful and exquisite come to mind.
In The Daily Beast’s Book Beast, Peter Osnos writes about the ascent of the Kindle [...]
I’ve run across several wonderful videos at YouTube from the Authors@Google series. Apparently, Google hosts author visits on a regular basis. These visits are recorded and available online. Each one is about 45 to 60 minutes long, including a reading followed by a question-and-answer period.
I especially love the one above, with author Paul Auster. I [...]
I’m a huge Dickens fan, and enjoyed Matthew Pearl’s article at Slate magazine on whether the author had a stalker during his 1867 speaking tour of the U.S. Also at Slate this week, more of Meghan O’Rourke’s elegantly written series on grieving, The Long Goodbye. This week’s essay discusses dreaming of the dead, and the [...]
Slate Magazine has some excellent book coverage this week, including Katha Pollitt’s review of Elaine Schowalter’s new book, A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to to Annie Proulx (Knopf Publishing Group), and Nathan Heller’s take on the new John Cheever biography, Cheever: A Life (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group), by Blake [...]