books of the times

A Passage From India

The novelist Amitav Ghosh reimagines the lives of Indian peasants on the eve of the Opium Wars. (click here)

SEA OF POPPIES by Amitav Ghosh

Gunsmoke

A fictionalized account of the short life and squalid death of Henry McCarty, a k a Billy the Kid. (click here)

LUCKY BILLY by John Vernon

jessica stockton bagnulo - what she read this year

-taken from a post that appeared on 11/28 - The Written Nerd

All the books I read in 2008:

Ah, the Friday after Thanksgiving… lucky for me I have the day off, and no shopping to do (all my Christmas gifts come from the bookstore), and can bask in the indolence of it all. It’s a good day to catch up a little and think ahead a little, and some of the best-of lists have made me want to take a look at my own reading for the year.

The New York Times has done a clever thing: in addition to their usual “official” lists of the Top 100 and the Top 10 Books of 2008, they ‘ve had their regular book reviewers pick their favorite books of the year. Michiko Kakutani and Janet Maslin both list their own personal top 10 here — the only thing I wish is that they’d talk about why they loved these, rather than just including clips from their Times review.

I recently took a look at various lists of my own reading (our store staff picks, my little notebook, my Goodreads page, etc.) and compiled them, and somehow I seem to have read over 75 books so far this year. And I think this might have missed some that I forgot to write down.* (This counts trade editions of comics, though not individual issues — so if you feel strongly that comics aren’t books, for you the list is shorter.) They’re not all newly published, though most are.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to talk about my reading, in a way that would be fun for me and useful for recommendations. Reviews of every book? Just the top 10? How could I possibly choose?

So I’m compromising. I’m listing all of the books I’ve read this year below. And then I’m copying a page from the Times, so to speak, and giving you my own list of favorites from this year. I couldn’t manage to narrow it down to 10 — I’ve got two dozen. And I couldn’t even say these are the best books I read — I can only tell you what I love about them. (I’ve also limited my favorites of the year to books that are currently available — I read some galleys of books that aren’t out yet, but that does you no good if you’re thinking of buying them for Christmas, and I’ll have time to write about them when they come out.)

But 24 makes for a nice Advent calendar sort of number — one book per day, every day in December through Christmas Eve. So each day this coming month I’ll post a short yearbook-style review of a book I loved this year. Hope it will spark your interest, give you some good gift ideas, and keep you entertained in one of the busiest bookstore seasons (because I can write them in advance and schedule them, ha!)

So to start out, here’s the list of my reading for this year — in alphabetical order, not reading order. (The Favorites are highlighted, just for a sneak peak — if the numbers don’t seem like they work out, don’t worry, all will be explained.) Enjoy, and happy reading!

The 13 Clocks by James Thurber
The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Aya of Yop City by Marguerite Abouet
The Best of the Spirit by Will Eisner (introduction by Neil Gaiman)
The Book of Other People edited by Zadie Smith
Brooklyn Was Mine edited by Valerie Steiker and Chris Knutsen
The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles edited by Jeff Martin
The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
The Escapists by Brian K. Vaughan with various artists
The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Allison Bechdel
Fables: The Good Prince by by Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham
Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
Flight Explorer Vol. 1 edited by Kazu Kibuishi
Freddie and Me by Mike Dawson
Free-Range Chickens by Simon Rich
A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam
Goldengrove by Francine Prose
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Gus and His Gang by Chris Blain
Hellboy: Darkness Calling by Mike Mignola
Heroes Vol. 1 by Tim Sale & various artists
Heroes Vol. 2 by Tim Sale & various artists
Home by Marilynne Robinson
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley
In Odd We Trust by Dean Koontz
Incognegro by Mat Johnson
The Kingdom of Ordinary Time by Marie Howe
Laika by Nick Abadzis
Life Sucks by Jessica Abel and Warren Pleece
The Lost Colony Vol. 3 by Grady Klein
Manga Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Richard Appignanesi and Emma Vieceli
Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon
Marvels by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross
Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel
Monsieur Leotard by Eddie Campbell
Mudbound by Hilary Jordan
A Murder Is Announced by Agatha Christie
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
The Night Of Your Life by Jesse Reklaw
No One Can Rescue Me by Elizabeth Daly
Personal Days by Ed Park
Poetry & Commitment by Adrienne Rich
Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
The Rabbi’s Cat 2 by Joann Sfar
Rock ‘n’ Roll by Tom Stoppard
Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead (April 2009 publication; I’ll definitely write about this later)
Scott Pilgrim vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Scott Pilgrim vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Scott Pilgrim vol. 3: Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Scott Pilgrim vol. 4: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream by Jennifer Ackerman
Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow (HarperCollins)
The Size of the World by Joan Silber
Sloth by Gilbert Hernandez
So Brave, Young and Handsome by Leif Enger
Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman
Stagger Lee by Derek McCulloch and Shepherd Hendrix
Starman Omnibus Vol. 1 by James Robinson and Tony Harris
The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
Take This Bread by Sara Miles
Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan
The End of the Jews by Adam Mansbach
Three Shadows by Cyril Pedrosa
Time and Again by Jack Finney
Tinkers by Paul Harding (January publication — I’ll write about this next year)
Too Cool To Be Forgotten by Alex Robinson
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
Who Can Save Us Now? edited by Owen King & John McNally
Y: The Last Man vol. 1: Unmanned by Brian K. Vaughan & Pia Guerra
Y: The Last Man vol. 2: Cycles by Brian K. Vaughan & Pia Guerra
Y: The Last Man vol. 3: One Small Step by Brian K. Vaughan & Pia Guerra
Y: The Last Man vol. 4: Safeword by Brian K. Vaughan & Pia Guerra
You Don’t Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem
Zot!: The Complete Black and White Collection by Scott McCloud.

granta interviews daniel alarcon

Things went well for Daniel Alarcón last year. His debut novel, Lost City Radio, was named a best book of 2007 by the Washington Post and the LA Times, and he was recognized as one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists.

Born in Lima in 1977, Alarcón was raised in Birmingham, Alabama. After teaching posts at a public school in New York and then in Peru, Alarcón attended the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and completed a collection of short stories, War by Candlelight, which was published in 2005. He is also an associate editor of the Lima-based magazine Etiqueta Negra, which he describes as ‘Harper’s but written in Spanish, obsessed with culture instead of politics and with much better design’.

When we spoke, Alarcón was at home in Oakland, California, packing for a trip to Buenos Aires to meet the Peruvian artist Sheila Alvarado with whom he’s collaborating on a new project - City of Clowns - a Spanish-language graphic novel.

A new short story by Daniel Alarcón, ‘The Bridge’, appears in Granta 103.

HG: I was wondering what drew you to the idea of a graphic novel? As a writer it’s a form that’s new to you…

DA: I didn’t grow up reading comic books but at some point I came across the work of Joe Sacco and I’m a big fan of his stuff now. The literary graphic novel is an interesting way of telling a story and the form is largely unknown in Latin America so I wanted to expand the readership.

Do you have a particular audience in mind?

Originally I was going to work with an independent publisher. We were going to do a nice version to sell in Peru for the equivalent of ten dollars and then a very cheap version on newsprint to give away in schools. But the thing about the independent was that they couldn’t get things together and so instead I showed the proposal to my regular Spanish publishers, Alfaguara. They’ll publish it for, you know, ten dollars, and at that price in Peru it will be for college students, high school students, middle class people.

Because books are luxury, or at least middle class, items in Peru?

They are and that also means that there’s a huge pirating industry. Last year I went to give a talk at a prison, for instance, and everyone had copies of my book even though it hadn’t actually been published at that point. Piracy is the equivalent of the bestseller list in Peru: if a book is well-publicized and well-received and makes any kind of splash then the people who pirate books will take notice…

So in some sense it must be flattering to find that your books are being pirated?

Yes, I do see it like that but then I also have the luxury of not needing to get upset about the pirating because I don’t actually make money from Peru. I’ve never been paid for my work at Etiqueta Negra and the book advances one gets are minimal – certainly not enough to live on in the United States. I think that when Peru’s a middle class country we’ll have to re-evaluate the industry but the way things are now it’s natural that these luxury products are going to be copied. And of course it’s not just books that are pirated and it’s not just Peru. I remember walking round a market place in Ghana about ten or eleven years ago and getting totally lost and stumbling across a bunch of men stamping logos on to T-shirts using Nike swooshes that they’d carved out of wood… Just flabbergasting really.

With ‘The Bridge’, your short story in Granta 103, you return to the capital city of the unnamed Latin American country that provides the setting for Lost City Radio…

Yes, and that city is also where the novel I’m currently working on is set. In fact both ‘The Bridge’ and ‘The Idiot President’, a story that appeared in The New Yorker earlier this year, first started off life as parts of the new novel but then changed to take on this independent existence.

And in previous interviews you’ve said that this city is based on Lima, the action based on the civil war in Peru in the 1980s, so I wondered why you have been reluctant to actually name the place, to situate the events specifically in Peru?

My city is very much Lima but by not tying the fictional city to any specific place I could have more fun playing around, creating new details. When I was writing Lost City Radio I had a map of Lima in front of me that I drew all over, renaming the districts, marking on bus routes, making the environment more alarming, more vivid… Having said that, the strangest parts of a story are not necessarily the fictional elements. I mean the anecdote that forms the basis of the Granta story – the blind couple walking off a broken bridge – that’s completely true. One of my friends was the reporter who covered the story in Lima and he spoke to the blind couple who, in the real event, survived the fall. The whole thing sounds unbelievable and bizarre but the very basic kernel of the story did actually come from reality – I just built something else around it.

So having freed yourself from the restrictions of geography and history, were you able to draw usefully on the experiences of other nations and other conflicts? To create, perhaps, a more widely inclusive story about the nature of war?

Yes, I think that’s true, and I think that when you start studying conflicts in the developing world you discover a lot of overlaps. I certainly found Joe Sacco’s books on Bosnia and Palestine very helpful when I was writing the novel, and I read an amazing collection of Anna Politkovskaya’s work, A Small Corner of Hell. Chechnya and Grozny, from her descriptions, seem like Eighties Lima – but Eighties Lima on methamphetamine. Then, as another example, there’s something in the novel called tadek, which is described as a primitive form of justice carried out in jungle villages after, say, a theft…

This is where the village elders choose a young boy, stupefy him with an intoxicating tea, and let him wander the village until he picks out a culprit?

Yes, and then the ‘culprit’ has his or her hands cut off. This practice actually comes from a Kapuscinski book on Ethiopia (The Emperor) but I just thought that it fitted perfectly and allowed me to make a point about government justice in the novel actually working in a very similar way to that of tadek. At the time I was thinking also about Guantánamo and about racial profiling in the United States… Interestingly, when I was in Lima I found that people had just assumed that tadek was something I’d discovered during my research into the Peruvian jungle.

As someone who’s published both this novel and a collection of short stories, is there a literary form that you’re more drawn to?

I prefer to read novels. There’s something about the big canvas and the possibilities it allows that’s really exciting.

So do you see your short-story collection as a sort of apprenticeship?

It’s hard for me now to read those stories and not think that…they seem incomplete in certain ways. But then I don’t think that one is necessarily the best judge of one’s own work. I do think that those stories had to be stories and that every set of characters you encounter just seem to decide their own form.

And how do you actually start writing? I mean the physical process of getting the words on to the page?

I type everything directly on to a laptop and I take a lot of notes. Right now I’ve just finished the first section of my next novel so I’m taking a lot more notes as I gear up to write the second part.

Thinking about these ‘notes’, would you say that there’s quite a strong journalistic element to the way you work? In the acknowledgments at the end of Lost City Radio, for example, you talk about the ‘many people who have shared their stories of the war years with me’…

Absolutely. In terms of my fiction, I think it’s partly a reticence to write about my own life – not out of any kind of shyness but because I just find other people’s lives more interesting. Journalism is a form I’m definitely drawn to because it allows you to talk to other people and ask them questions that might otherwise sound stupid.

You’ve mentioned the work of Kapuscinski, Sacco and Politkovskaya in connection to your novel, but I wondered more generally which writers have influenced you?

Early on it was the Russians – Dostoyevsky specifically – and then when I was living in New York after college I was reading a lot of contemporary English language writers. That was when Zadie Smith came out, Arundhati Roy, Jonathan Safran Foer… And in Peru I read Latin American writers – Borges, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa – and a lot of Peruvian stuff. Then later, at school in Iowa, I was introduced to all these American writers - people that I really just hadn’t come across before. I never liked Carver all that much but I found John Cheever to be an absolute revelation, mostly because he talked about people I don’t really care about but then made me care. I don’t, politically can’t, worry too much about the problems of white, upper middle-class suburban professionals, but the way Cheever writes about them they just become life and death…

And what are you reading at the moment?

Right now I’m helping to put together a Zoetrope issue of Latin American writers so I’m reading a lot for that. There’s a great collection of short stories by this Cuban writer Ronaldo Menendez, for instance. I don’t think the book’s been translated yet though.

Are you frustrated by the lack of translated fiction that’s available in Britain and United States?

Yes, definitely, but it’s also something that I think I’m in a particular position to help change and I take that position seriously and with a great deal of humility.

And finally, why a graphic novel about clowns? They seem to be something of a recurring motif in your work – I’m thinking now of your short story ‘City of Clowns’ that appeared in The New Yorker debut fiction issue back in 2003…

Clowns have just had such historical, literary significance and symbolism over the years – Pagliacci and the sad clown, that sort of thing… When I was living in Lima where the graphic novel is set, one of the things I found most impressive (and I mean this in the real sense of the word in that it made an impression) was the cacophony, the visual spectacle, the dress up of the city compared to most places in North America. There was a lot of gathering in the plaza to see religious charlatans, sex gurus, magicians, amateur comedians, comic transvestites and, of course, clowns – there just really are a lot of clowns in Lima. I wrote very little while I was there because I was always out in the streets. And every time I’m not writing I feel just awful but now, looking back, that was exactly what I needed to do. I needed to see the clowns.

npr / becoming american

Author’s First Thanksgiving Dinner Not Memorable

Author Joseph O’Neill was born in Ireland and raised in the Netherlands. As part of the series about becoming an American, O’Neill tells Steve Inskeep that his Thanksgivings have been anything but typical American Thanksgivings. In fact, he can’t even remember his first Thanksgiving in the United States. (CLICK HERE)

Author Junot Diaz Shares Thanksgiving Memories

Writer Junot Diaz was born in the Dominican Republic, spent his early childhood there, then his family immigrated to the United States. He spoke to Steve Inskeep as part of the Thanksgiving series on immigration and identity. Diaz remembers some of his early Thanksgiving celebrations when he was a kid. (CLICK HERE)

Publishers Weekly, 11/25/2008

Borders Results Decline; Company Sale Off

– Publishers Weekly, 11/25/2008 4:19:00 PM

Borders continued to struggle with its top line performance in the third quarter, although the retailer did manage to cut expenses and lower its debt and inventory compared to one year ago. Total sales at the chain fell 10%, to $693.4 million, and the company posting a net loss of $172.2 million for the period. The loss includes a series of one-time charges totaling $133.2 million, and excluding those charges the loss was about even with last year’s third quarter. Comp sales fell 12.8% at its superstores and 7.7% in the Waldenbooks specialty group. Music sales were especially weak in the quarter and excluding music same store sales were still off 10.6%. The comp declines were higher than those reported by Barnes & Noble (7.4%) and Books-A-Million (9.9%), and sales came in below analysts’ expectations.

Borders also announced that it is no longer for sale. Company CEO George Jones said that after completing a thorough review of its options, the company determined it was best “to remain as we are,” adding that he was “quite pleased” that the review is over and that Borders will remain an independent, publicly-traded company. The company still has the option to sell its Paperchase division to Pershing Square Capital, Borders’s largest shareholder, for $65 million. That option expires Jan. 15. The company said it is talking to Pershing about different financing arrangements.

Similar to its competitors, Borders blamed a lack of customer traffic for the decline in sales, noting that the drop was most significant in September and October. Jones said the higher decline in comp stores compared to its competitors was due in part to its aggressive inventory reduction program which he acknowledged cost some sales. Jones said the decision to prune slow moving titles from Borders’s store shelves was the right one, although he acknowledged the program “was not perfect.” The company is starting to “fine tune” its inventory program and may return some books to stores, Jones said. According to Jones Borders is “well stocked” for the holidays. “It’s a tough retail environment, but we feel we’ll get our share of sales,” Jones said.

The bad economy also contributed to a shortfall in sales expected for Borders.com which hit $11.3 million in the quarter; because of the weaker than expected sales, Borders no longer expects its e-commerce arm to breakeven for the year.

The company did improve its balance sheet in the quarter with debt down to $525.4 million compared to $798.5 million at the end of last year’s third quarter. Inventory was reduced by almost $300 million. Jones said the company has committed to opening one concept store in 2009 and several airport outlets.

books of the times

These are the New York Times’ favorite books of 2008 — the titles that they enjoyed enough to buy for friends. In that spirit we recommend them to you. (click here)

NYT 100 Notable Books of 2008 (click here)

Best Sellers - 24 November, 2008

BookCourt Best Sellers

November 24, 2008 20% off list price

Hardcover Fiction

MERCY. Toni Morrison. Random House. $23.95. Our Price $19.16.
GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. Steif Larsson. Random House. $24.95. Our Price $19.96.
SEA OF POPPIES. Amitav Ghosh. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26. Our Price $20.80.
2666. Roberto Bolano. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $30. Our Price $24.
UNACCUSTOMED EARTH. Jhumpa Lahiri. Random House. $25. Our Price $20
PAINTER FROM SHANGHAI. Jennifer Cody Epstein. Norton. $24.95. Our Price $19.96.
MOST WANTED MAN. John LeCarre. Simon & Schuster. $28. Our Price $22.40.
NETHERLAND. Joseph O’Neil. Random House. $23.95. Our Price $19.16.
THE ALCOHOLIC. Jonathan Ames & Dean Haspiel. DC Comics. $19.99. Our Price $15.99.
GIVEN DAY. Dennis Lehane. HarperCollins. $27.95. Our Price $22.36.

Hardcover Nonfiction

OUTLIERS. Malcolm Gladwell. Little, Brown. $27.99. Our Price $22.40.
HOT FLAT & CROWDED. Thomas Friedman. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $27.95. Our Price $22.36.
ART OF SIMPLE FOOD. Alice Waters. Random House. $35. Our Price $28.
WHEN YOU ARE ENGULFED IN FLAMES. David Sedaris. Little, Brown $25.99. Our Price $20.79.
STATE BY STATE. Matt Weiland & Sean Wilsey. HarperCollins. $29.95. Our Price $23.96.
HOW TO COOK EVERYTHING (10^th Anniversary Edition). Mark Bittman. Wiley. $35. Our Price $28.
RETURN OF DEPRESSION ECONOMICS & THE CRISIS OF 2008. Paul Krugman. Norton. $24.95. Our Price $19.96.
WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING. Haruki Murakami. Random House. $21. Our Price $16.80.
EAT ME. Kenny Shopsin. Random House. $24.95. Our Price $19.96.
HOLIDAYS ON ICE. David Sedaris. Little, Brown. $16.99. Our Price $13.59.

Paperback Fiction

BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO. Junot Diaz. Riverhead. $14. Our Price $11.20.
WHAT IS THE WHAT. Dave Eggers. Random House. $15.95. Our Price $12.76.
2666. Roberto Bolano. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $30. Our Price $24.
DIARY OF A BAD YEAR. J. Coetzee. Penguin. $14. Our Price $11.20.
THE ROAD. Cormac McCarthy. Random House. $14.95. Our Price $11.96.
WHITE TIGER. Aravind Adiga. Simon & Schuster. $14. Our Price $11.20.
ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG. Muriel Barbery. Europa. $15. Our Price $12.
BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN. David Foster Wallace. Little, Brown. $14. Our Price $11.20.
BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2008. Salman Rushdie (editor). Houghton Mifflin. $14. Our Price $11.20.
YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION. Michael Chabon. HarperCollins. $15.95. Our Price $12.76.

Paperback Nonfiction

DREAMS FROM MY FATHER. Barack Obama. Random House. $14.95. Our Price $11.96.
LITTLE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. Ernst Gombrich. Columbia University Press. $12.95. Our Price $10.36.
OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA. Michael Pollan. Penguin. $16. Our Price $12.80.
CONSIDER THE LOBSTER. David Foster Wallace. Little, Brown. $14.99. Our Price $11.99.
ZAGAT NEW YORK CITY RESTAURANTS 2009. Zagat Survey. $15.95. Our Price $11.76.
MUSICOPHILIA. Oliver Sacks. Random House. $14.95. Our Price $11.96
AUDACITY OF HOPE. Barack Obama. Random House. $14.95. Our Price $11.96.
BEST AMERICAN NON-REQUIRED READING 2008. Dave Eggers (editor). Houghton Mifflin. $14. Our Price $11.20.
BLINK. Malcolm Gladwell. Little, Brown. $15.99.Our Price $12.79.
NFT GUIDE TO BROOKLYN 2009. Not For Tourists. $14.95. Our Price $11.96.

Children’s Hardcover & Paperback

TWILIGHT. Stephanie Meyer. Little, Brown. $10.99. Our Price $8.79.
NEW MOON. Stephanie Meyer. Little, Brown. $10.99. Our Price $8.79.
BREAKING DAWN. Stephanie Meyer. Little, Brown. $22.99. Our Price $18.39.
BARACK OBAMA: Son of Promise, Child of Hope. Nikki Grimes. Simon & Schuster. $16.99. Our Price $13.59.
DIARY OF A WIMPY KID DO-IT-YOURSELF BOOK. Jeff Kinney. Abrams. $10.95. Our Price $8.76.
RUNAWAY DINNER. Allen Ahlberg. Candlewick. $6.99. Our Price $5.59.
TEN LITTLE FINGERS & TEN LITTLE TOES. Mem Fox. Harcourt. $16. Our Price $12.80.
KNUFFLE BUNNY. Mo Willems. Hyperion. $15.99. Our Price $12.79.
NUTSHELL LIBRARY. Maurice Sendak. HarperCollins. $16.95. Our Price $13.56.
TITAN’S CURSE. Rick Riordan. Hyperion. $7.99. Our Price $6.39.

ZACK’S DECEMBER 2008 STAFF SELECTIONS

Atlas of Human Anatomy and Surgery: The Complete Coloured Plates of 1831-1854

51Liaq6K4+L._SL500_AA240_.jpg

How to Stay Alive in the Woods: A Complete Guide to Food, Shelter, and Self-Preservation That Makes Starvation in the Wilderness Next to Impossible

by Bradford Angier

“Here is your ultimate survival manual! Take it to the woods and test it out. You’ll see that it will keep you alive, indeed. It also makes for an awesome coffee table sort of book.”

I’m Coming to Get You!

by Tony Ross 51OqMrS9AVL._SS400_.jpg

“The best kids book to come out this year.”

books of the times

In P. D. James’s latest exercise in impeccable detection, a muckraking London journalist worms her way into a private clinic on a country estate — and ends up the victim of a ghastly murder. (click here)

“The World Is What It Is” is one of the sprightliest, most gripping, most intellectually curious and, well, funniest biographies of a living writer to come along in years. (click here)

NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS ANNOUNCED

Peter Matthiessen
Shadow Country

Shadow Country is an epic of American rise and descent—poetic, mythic, devastating. From his Everglades trilogy Peter Matthiessen has coaxed a masterpiece, a wrenching story of familial, racial and environmental degradation stretching from the Civil War to the Great Depression. His E.J. Watson emerges through a dazzling array of voices as a singular figure in our national literature, the looming personification of manifest destiny within the dark reaches of our history.

Annette Gordon-Reed
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

In the mesmerizing narrative of Annette Gordon-Reed’s American family saga, one feels the steady accretion of convincing argument: Her book is at once a painstaking history of slavery, an unflinching gaze at the ways it has defined us, and a humane exploration of lives—grand and humble—that “our peculiar institution” conjoined. This is more than the story of Thomas Jefferson and his house slave Sally Hemings; it is a deeply moral and keenly intelligent probe of the harsh yet all-too-human world they inhabited and the bloodline they share.

Mark Doty
Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems

Elegant, plain-spoken, and unflinching, Mark Doty’s poems in Fire to Fire gently invite us to share their ferocious compassion. With their praise for the world and their fierce accusation, their defiance and applause, they combine grief and glory in a music of crazy excelsis. In this generous retrospective volume a gifted young poet has become a master.

Judy Blundell
What I Saw and How I Lied

A soldier with a hidden past, a mysterious death at an empty hotel, a femme fatale manipulating a man for her own purposes—this novel has all the hallmarks of a classic noir, but Judy Blundell shifts these tropes into the equally elusive and shady realm of adolescence. A young girl moves from innocence to desire, from prejudice to justice and from the tumultuous bonds of family into a sad, enduring wisdom.

… National Book Foundation (click here)

…

annie leibovitz at work

Annie Leibovitz: The View From Behind The Lens

NPR - Read here

NPR - Listen here
     in stock at 10% off list price

books of the times 11/18

In “Gone Tomorrow,” a sharply observed yet tender novel of academic life and its many sand traps, P. F. Kluge describes the dangers that a writer-teacher faces. (click here)

So just which book “about F.D.R.’s first 100 days” was President-elect Barack Obama talking about when he appeared on “60 Minutes” on Sunday?   (click here)

Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book employs the same recipe as his previous two best sellers, but does so in such a clumsy manner that it italicizes the weaknesses of his methodology.   (click here)

the brooklyn paper

One for the books! BookCourt expansion complete

By Mike McLaughlin for The Brooklyn Paper

SE THE ARTICLE: The Brooklyn Paper (click here)

paperback dreams