Today's Book News
| Biographies |
Tony Blair: I didn't see Iraq nightmare coming
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
In an emotional chapter in his memoirs on the Iraq war, the former prime minister insists that military action was justified Tony Blair admits that Britain and the US failed to anticipate, after the invasion of Iraq, "the nightmare that unfolded" as al-Qaida and Iran destabilised the country after the. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003...
www.guardian.co.uk
| How will Tony Blair's Journey begin?
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
The memoirs of the former prime minister go before an apparently eager public tomorrow. Rather than shelling out for them, why not just guess what he'll say? Let's get one thing clear: we're not comparing Tony Blair to Lord Voldemort. No, really we're not. But it struck the books desk today that a competition. we ran at the time of the...
www.guardian.co.uk
| Tony Blair's book: God and peace, public services reform and being a liberal | A Journey
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Preview of the contents of Tony Blair's memoir A Journey, in which he describes meetings with Ian Paisley 'I was sure God would want peace' Tony Blair advised Ian Paisley to "let God guide him" in the final stages of the Northern Ireland peace negotiations which led to the historic power-sharing agreement. between the Democratic...
www.guardian.co.uk
| 'The Sound Of A Snail': A Patient's Greatest Comfort
Sat, 28 Aug 2010
Struggling with an illness that left her bedridden, Elisabeth Tova Bailey was surprised when her friend brought her a gift: a pot of flowers that also contained a wild snail. In a new memoir, Bailey describes how that nearly motionless mollusk became an unlikely companion.
www.npr.org
| Blair memoir excites booksellers, riles critics (AP)
Wed, 01 Sep 2010
AP - It's a political memoir with celebrity trappings — secrecy, security, a multimillion-dollar deal and, crucially, controversy.
us.rd.yahoo.com
| Tony Blair's memoirs: A Journey
Fri, 27 Aug 2010
Anthony Seldon hopes that 'A Journey' will reveal why more was not achieved, especially given the exceptional benefits enjoyed by Tony Blair.
www.telegraph.co.uk
| I Get Around
Fri, 27 Aug 2010
An absorbing biography of a man who was an academic, a writer, a tattoo artist and an avid sexual adventurer in pre-Stonewall gay America.
feeds.nytimes.com
| Letters: Dear Jack, Dear Allen
Thu, 26 Aug 2010
Letters in response to Blake Bailey’s review of “Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters.”
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| Hangover in a Strange Land
Fri, 27 Aug 2010
This memoir of traveling Europe is not shy about reporting on sex, drinking marathons or personal humiliation.
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| Letters: For All Ages
Thu, 26 Aug 2010
Letter in response to Pamela Paul’s essay “The Kids’ Books Are All Right.”
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| Letters: ‘Churchill’s Empire’
Thu, 26 Aug 2010
Letters in response to Johann Hari’s review of “Churchill’s Empire.”
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| Where It Hurts
Fri, 27 Aug 2010
An expansive mix of medical reportage, history and memoir explores our relationship to pain.
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| Children's |
Catholics, Muslims, and the Mosque Controversy
Fri, 27 Aug 2010
"The American River Ganges," Thomas Nast's 1875 cartoon showing Catholic priests as crocodiles attacking the United States to devour the nation's school children As historians of American Catholicism, and Catholics, we are concerned to see the revival of a strain of nativism in the current. controversy over the establishment...
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| Libraries: Open books | Editorial
Mon, 30 Aug 2010
People who know how borrowing books helped to transform their own lives now need to hold their councils to account Naturally, those who most loved libraries as children are now their most articulate supporters. Some were dismayed by Margaret Hodge's report on public libraries earlier this year, which. praised the network as "a triumph...
www.guardian.co.uk
| JK Rowling gives £10m to set up multiple sclerosis research clinic
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Harry Potter author funds Edinburgh university research centre named after her mother, who was killed by the disease The author JK Rowling has donated £10m to set up a clinic to research treatments for multiple sclerosis, the degenerative disease that killed her mother at the age of 45, it was. announced today. The Anne Rowling...
www.guardian.co.uk
| Book Review: The Bug That Plagued the Entire Third Grade by Lori Calabrese
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:25 GMT
Would you like to take a trip down memory lane? Do you remember being in the third grade? I do not recall my own experience, but I remember quite well when my three children attended third grade. I will never forget the many times they scared me half to death by bringing home snakes and many other creatures. .
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| Children's Books
Thu, 26 Aug 2010
Top 5 at a Glance 1. LEGO STAR WARS, by Simon Beecroft 2. STAR WARS, written and illustrated by Rufus Butler Seder 3. IT’S A BOOK, written and illustrated by Lane Smith 4. HOW ROCKET LEARNED TO READ, written and illustrated by Tad Hills 5. LADYBUG GIRL AT THE BEACH, by David Soman and Jacky Davis.
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| Book Review: The Big Red Bike by E.J. Tims
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:12 GMT
Let’s go to an alien place…one where mothers are home-baking cookies, fathers build go-carts in the garage, children are obedient though sometimes mischievous, the streets are safe for kids even after dark, there is no TV, no internet, and the best place to be all summer long is outside. .
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| Sebastian Faulks: blight of the BlackBerry
Sat, 28 Aug 2010
The 'Birdsong' author tells Roya Nikkhah about the book transferring to the London stage, his worries about information overload - and why he has given trying to protect his children from the charge of technology
www.telegraph.co.uk
| Former African child soldier helps Americans get fit (Reuters)
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Reuters - For most of his life, Tchicaya Missamou's warrior training made him into a killing machine. Now, he is using his skills to help Americans get fit.
us.rd.yahoo.com
| | |
| Comics |
Dragons' Pen rampages at Edinburgh
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Last week I became a dragon, for an event called Dragons' Pen, a literary version of Dragons' Den. Ideas pitched to my fellow dragons (Francis Bickmore, senior editor at Canongate publishers, and the literary agent Lucy Luck) and me included a gothic graphic novel set in Edinburgh, its heroine the wonderfully. named Penny Dreadful, and a...
www.guardian.co.uk
| Heart of Darkness the graphic novel
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Artist Catherine Anyango tells how her richly-detailed drawings reflect the dense style of Joseph Conrad's savage colonial story In the 108 years since it was published, Joseph Conrad's colonial fable Heart of Darkness has infected TS Eliot, been excoriated for racism by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. and transplanted to Vietnam by...
www.guardian.co.uk
| Graphic Novel Review: Northlanders Book 3: Blood In The Snow by Brian Wood
Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:52 GMT
For the most part, I consider Northlanders to be a highly unique comic series; it’s a grim, realistic historical drama, about the clash of Norsemen and Saxons, back in the much legendary Viking era. I’m not sure everyone is likely to enjoy it (due to its grimness and lack of superheroes. .
www.seattlepi.com
| Comic Book Review: After Dark #1 by Fuqua, Snipes, Milligan and Nentrup
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 08:53 GMT
With its plot credited to director Antoine Fuqua and actor Wesley Snipes, it’s clear that the three-part mini-series After Dark (Radical Comics) fits under the comics line’s overarching umbrella of producing movie-ready comics. A harsh post-Apocalyptic quest, Dark takes a small crew of military. .
www.seattlepi.com
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| Current Events |
Istanbul diary: Golden Horn's oligarchs return Turkey to crossroads of culture
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
A quiet war is under way among Turkey's richest families to assemble the best and most expensive art collections A tank revs up, its cannon jolting from side to side on Istanbul's equivalent of Oxford Street or Fifth Avenue. Two women in Kurdish headscarves stand before it, drawing their grandchildren. to them as a crowd pushes up behind...
www.guardian.co.uk
| Berlin 'bombed' with poetry
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Helicopter drops 100,000 poetry bookmarks over city as protest against war Poetry rained from the skies on Saturday night in Berlin as 100,000 bookmarks printed with poems by 80 poets from Germany and Chile were dropped on the city from a helicopter. Lasting for half an hour, the initiative was intended. as a protest against war and a...
www.guardian.co.uk
| Whatever The Weather, 'Turbulence' Shines
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Sometimes, lightning does strike twice: The latest novel by Giles Foden -- author of The Last King of Scotland -- is an absorbing, elegant and thoughtful read. Turbulence , which dramatizes the Allied effort to use meteorology for military gain during World War II, follows a young meteorologist who. must convince a brilliant pacifist...
www.npr.org
| Book Review: From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Front-Line Dispatches from the Advertising War by Jerry.................. Della Femina, Edited by Charles Sopkin
Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:48 GMT
Likely due in great part to the success of AMC's Mad Men, Jerry Della Femina's 1970 best-selling book about Madison Avenue has been reprinted by Simon & Schuster and the publishing company is playing up the connection. There's a quote from creator/executive producer Matthew Weiner on the back cover .
www.seattlepi.com
| These Roller Skating Women Get 'Down And Derby'
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Alex Cohen may be a public radio reporter by day, but by night she goes by her roller derby name -- Axles of Evil. Cohen has joined forces with fellow L.A. Derby Doll Jennifer "Kasey Bomber" Barbee to write Down and Derby, an insider's guide to a rough-and-tumble sport.
www.npr.org
| Peace and War
Wed, 01 Sep 2010
Like Jonathan Franzen’s previous novel, “The Corrections,” this is a masterly portrait of a nuclear family in turmoil, with a majestic sweep that gathers every sociocultural morsel of our shared millennial life.
feeds.nytimes.com
| Britain carried out Cold War assassinations: Le Carre (AFP)
Sun, 29 Aug 2010
AFP - Britain carried out assassinations during the Cold War, novelist and former secret agent John le Carre told The Sunday Telegraph newspaper.
us.rd.yahoo.com
| Books of The Times: Young Man Seeks Poetry in World War II’s Ruins
Wed, 01 Sep 2010
A British author links his grandfather’s World War II bombing missions to the war poetry of the time.
feeds.nytimes.com
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| Fiction |
Feminist 'Franzenfreude' Over Raves For 'Freedom'
Mon, 30 Aug 2010
Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom, doesn't come out until Tuesday but The New York Times has already declared it a "masterpiece" and Time magazine has dubbed Franzen a "Great American Novelist." The book has gotten so much attention in the media that it's led to accusations of both gender and. genre bias among the literary elite...
www.npr.org
| Stephen Wall obituary
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Literary historian, academic and longstanding editor of Essays in Criticism The achievements of Stephen Wall, who has died after a lung infection aged 79, were exceptional for their humane generosity. As a literary historian and a critic of the Victorian novel, pre-eminently of Trollope and Dickens.; as a reviewer – at once welcoming...
www.guardian.co.uk
| Michel Houellebecq novel draws bitter critical fire
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
New book comes under attack from Goncourt prize judge for 'affected writing style' and 'lack of imagination' La carte et le territoire is being described as the novel that could finally win French novelist Michel Houellebecq France's top literary prize, the Goncourt – but not if one of the award's. judges has anything to do with it...
www.guardian.co.uk
| What you ought to be reading
Sun, 29 Aug 2010
Tana French has written three extraordinary novels. The most recent, "Faithful Place" (Viking), is about a Dublin police officer named Frank Mackey and his colorful, feuding, infuriating family, from which he's done his best to escape. The Mackeys dwell in a crumbling Dublin slum whose name gives the. novel its title.
feeds.chicagotribune.com
| A Look At Sloppy Firsts: A Jessica Darling Novel by Megan McCafferty
Fri, 27 Aug 2010 19:17 GMT
Sloppy Firsts: A Jessica Darling Novel ( 2001) is the story of Jessica Darling’s battle with loneliness after her best friend Hope moves away from their small town in New Jersey. She despises her so-called friends and can’t relate to her family at all. The story is told from. .
www.seattlepi.com
| Book Review: The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing: The 16-Step Blueprint by Evan Marshall
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:55 GMT
Evan Marshall is well-known for his 2001 16-step plan to help writers finish a novel. This 2010 ebook version of The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing: The 16-Step Blueprint to Take You From Idea to Completed Manuscript in 30 Days or Less will jump-start your stalled writing projects, if you have. .
www.seattlepi.com
| Book Review: A Scattered Life by Karen McQuestion
Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:39 GMT
In real life truth is often stranger than fiction, and so it is in the case where Skyla Medley first meets Thomas Plinka in Karen McQuestion's novel A Scattered Life. Two different people and opposing personalities brought together by fate, Thomas was raised in a close-knit family with an .
www.seattlepi.com
| Paretsky's PI Uncovers Murder In Chicago
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Sara Paretsky's latest novel, Body Work, takes her heroine into the world of cutting-edge performance art, PTSD and the mob. It's the 14th installment of Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski crime thriller series, which she started writing more than 20 years ago.
www.npr.org
| 'You Lost Me There' pieces together lost marriage (AP)
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
AP - "You Lost Me There" (Riverhead Books, $25.95), by Rosecrans Baldwin: There's a saying that there are three sides to every story: Yours, mine and the truth. Rosecrans Baldwin's new novel could be an illustration of that idea.
us.rd.yahoo.com
| Paperback Mass-Market Fiction
Thu, 26 Aug 2010
Top 5 at a Glance 1. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, by Stieg Larsson 2. THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, by Stieg Larsson 3. FORD COUNTY, by John Grisham 4. CHARLIE ST. CLOUD, by Ben Sherwood 5. THE 8TH CONFESSION, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
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| Hardcover Fiction
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Top 5 at a Glance 1. THE POSTCARD KILLERS, by James Patterson and Liza Marklund 2. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST, by Stieg Larsson 3. THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett 4. THE COBRA, by Frederick Forsyth 5. STAR ISLAND, by Carl Hiaasen
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| `Exile' is story of a love that transcends time (AP)
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
AP - "The Exile of Sara Stevenson" (Ballantine Books, $15), by Darci Hannah: A pregnant and unwed Sara Stevenson is whisked off to Cape Wrath, a desolate area off the coast of Scotland, in Darci Hannah's debut novel.
us.rd.yahoo.com
| Paperback Trade Fiction
Thu, 26 Aug 2010
Top 5 at a Glance 1. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, by Stieg Larsson 2. THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, by Stieg Larsson 3. LITTLE BEE, by Chris Cleave 4. CUTTING FOR STONE, by Abraham Verghese 5. FORD COUNTY, by John Grisham
feeds.nytimes.com
| 'Bezellia Grove': Love Across The Color Line
Fri, 27 Aug 2010
Alan Cheuse reviews The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove, a coming-of age-novel by Susan Gregg Gilmore set in Nashville. Cheuse teaches writing at George Mason University in Virginia.
www.npr.org
| Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom' rings true
Wed, 01 Sep 2010
The author's hugely ambitious new novel arrives today with the kind of great expectations most authors can only dream about.
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| TBR: Inside the List
Fri, 27 Aug 2010
“The Postcard Killers,” a collaboration between James Patterson and the Swedish crime writer Liza Marklund, hits the fiction list at No. 1.
feeds.nytimes.com
| Archive: Book Review Podcast
Fri, 27 Aug 2010
Featuring a conversation about Jonathan Franzen’s novel “Freedom”; and Suzanne Collins on her “Hunger Games” trilogy.
feeds.nytimes.com
| An Interview with Laura Lippman, Author of I'd Know You Anywhere: A Novel
Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:59 GMT
Laura Lippman is one of my five favorite crime writers and one of my two favorite female writers — the other being Lisa Lutz.
www.seattlepi.com
| Cloak and Swagger
Fri, 27 Aug 2010
The hero of Alan Furst’s novel is devoted to ouzo, women and saving people from the Nazis — until they invade Greece.
feeds.nytimes.com
| Pictures of Lily by Matthew Yorke: review
Fri, 27 Aug 2010
A novel about a teenager's drug-fuelled search for her mother is surprisingly ingenious and sensitive, finds Toby Clements
www.telegraph.co.uk
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| Interviews |
James May interview and exclusive book extract
Fri, 27 Aug 2010
James May, Telegraph columnist and unreconstructed bloke, tells Bryony Gordon why men are not useless - and, in an exclusive extract from his new book, he reveals how to land an A330 airbus.
www.telegraph.co.uk
| Book based on interviews with pope due out this year (Reuters)
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Reuters - Pope Benedict has granted a series of interviews to a German journalist who will publish it late this year as a book in German and Italian editions, the Vatican announced on Tuesday.
us.rd.yahoo.com
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| Non-Fiction |
Paperback Nonfiction
Thu, 26 Aug 2010
Top 5 at a Glance 1. EAT, PRAY, LOVE, by Elizabeth Gilbert 2. THREE CUPS OF TEA, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin 3. WHERE MEN WIN GLORY, by Jon Krakauer 4. MY HORIZONTAL LIFE, by Chelsea Handler 5. THE GLASS CASTLE, by Jeannette Walls
feeds.nytimes.com
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| Poetry |
Guardian first book award longlist ranges around the world
Fri, 27 Aug 2010
Ten titles contend for £10,000 award, with subjects covered including everything from the itinerant experience of the Somali community to Churchill's 'black dog' The past vies with the future and poetry with prose on the longlist of the 2010 Guardian first book award, which was announced today. The. 10 debut titles in the running for...
www.guardian.co.uk
| Jackie Kay for Scotland's national poet!
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
After the death of the great Edwin Morgan, who will be the next Scots makar? The appointment of the next national poet of Scotland will be, according to a Scottish government spokeswoman, "considered in due course", but she remained silent on how, when and by whom. Most of the likely candidates were. in fact reading at the Edinburgh...
www.guardian.co.uk
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| Prizes |
Terms and conditions for Not the Booker prize
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
These are the rules. Don't argue 1. To nominate a book for the "Not the Booker prize" competition (the "Competition") please submit your nomination in the comments section on the associated blogpost with the word "nomination" included in the comment. Please. 2. By nominating a book in the Competition. you are accepting this excuse for...
www.guardian.co.uk
| The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief by VS Naipaul
Sat, 28 Aug 2010
VS Naipaul is often blinkered but he still sees things in Africa that others miss, says Aminatta Forna In 2001, when the Swedish Academy awarded Sir Vidia Naipaul the Nobel prize in literature, it described him as the heir to Joseph Conrad: "The annalist of the destinies of empires in the moral sense.: what they do to human beings… the...
www.guardian.co.uk
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| Reviews |
TV review: Agatha Christie's Marple, I Am Slave and Panda Week With Nigel Marven
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
I had very little idea what was going on but you can't beat a bank-holiday Miss Marple It's the end of August bank holiday. You're tired, after carnival, or golf, or whatever it is you do. A quiet night in is the answer, in front of a nice TV drama. There's a choice. Either a), a chocolate-box whodunnit. set in a spooky Tudor inn and...
www.guardian.co.uk
| Book Review: Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:20 GMT
The first thing that struck me while reading Jasper Jones was the authenticity of the dialogue. Charlie and his friend Jeffery speak in a way that is so redolent of my own 13-year old son’s conversations with his friends that it was almost shocking. I don’t think I’ve seen that insulting. .
www.seattlepi.com
| Book Review: Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto by Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:28 GMT
Subtitled an arguably inaccurate “A Tea Party Manifesto” Give Us Liberty is Dick Armey and the advocacy organization FreedomWorks’ DC-based view of the Tea Party movement so far. It’s a book that never fails to retell FreedomWorks’ role in almost everything that ever happened. .
www.seattlepi.com
| Book Review: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Book For Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby
Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:39 GMT
Since the release of the first edition of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book For Digital Photographers, it has been the number one book on Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and, with this latest version, author Scott Kelby is updating this one to encompass all of the improvements that have been added to enhance. .
www.seattlepi.com
| Book Review: Man Gave Names to All the Animals by Bob Dylan, illustrated by Jim Arnosky
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:36 GMT
On August 20, 1979, Bob Dylan dropped Slow Train Coming on which there was a song, “Man Gave Names to All the Animals.” The song was not an allegory; it had no deep, hidden meaning. It simply told of man walking along, observing animals, and naming them. It’s not the only simple. .
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| Book Review: Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 01:46 GMT
There are eight short stories, a novella, and two pieces masquerading as one-act plays in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1922 collection, Tales of the Jazz Age. Some of them are quite good; all of them are at worst interesting and narrated with style. None of them measures up to The Great Gatsby, but then how. .
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| Book Review: Reason & Tolerance by Davis Jones IV
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:16 GMT
In the past couple of years, since the beginning of the Tea Party movement, the U.S.A. has seen many books that seek to influence it. Dozens of authors vie to be proclaimed the “Thomas Paine” for a new generation of patriots, although most seem to have forgotten that Tom Paine was a rather. .
www.seattlepi.com
| Book Review: Black Swan Rising by Lee Carroll
Sun, 29 Aug 2010 14:41 GMT
Chicago has wizard-for-hire Harry Dresden. Denver has Kitty Norville, alpha wolf in a pack of werewolves. And now New York City has jewelry designer Garet James. One of these things is not like the others. A jewelry designer? How does that work? It's no secret that I am extremely enthusiastic about .
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| Book Review: Winter's Passage by Julie Kagawa
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:55 GMT
Never make a contract with a Faery. Meghan Chase knows this, but it could not be helped. You do what you have to do to survive or in this case to save her brother Ethan, kidnapped by the Iron fey. Since Meghan has discovered her identity she has also learned to never swim in quiet ponds and to .
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| Sorry, One More Post About Franzen
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Back in 2004, Jonathan Franzen reviewed Alice Munro's "Runaway" in the Book Review. Some of the thoughts provoked in him by that book sound an awful lot like some of the thoughts in his latest book, "Freedom."
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| Book Review: Red and Me: My Coach, My Lifelong Friend by Bill Russell with Alan Steinberg
Sun, 29 Aug 2010 19:14 GMT
“I need all the friends I can get.” said Charlie Brown, the lovable yet hapless protagonist of Peanuts.
www.seattlepi.com
| Journal Scales Back After Suicide
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
The future of The Virginia Quarterly Review, a highly regarded literary journal, is in doubt after an editor's suicide.
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| My Father's Fortune: a Life by Michael Frayn: review
Fri, 27 Aug 2010
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst learns how a playwright's deaf father taught him a love of words
www.telegraph.co.uk
| The Perfect Nazi by Martin Davidson: review
Fri, 27 Aug 2010
Dominic Sandbrook finds out what happens when you discover your grandfather was a Nazi
www.telegraph.co.uk
| "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen: a review roundup
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
"Freedom" has got everybody talking about Jonathan Franzen.
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| The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember by Nicholas Carr: review
Fri, 27 Aug 2010
Robert Colvile asks whether the internet is making us stupid
www.telegraph.co.uk
| The Romantic Revolution by Tim Banning: review
Fri, 27 Aug 2010
Peter Swaab reads a lively account of the Romantics
www.telegraph.co.uk
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| General |
Tony Blair: quotes from A Journey
Wed, 01 Sep 2010
From banking to foxhunting, the former prime minister gives his views on his choices when in power On the banks crisis 'The biggest danger was a view that people would want the state to come back into fashion – I didn't think that' On the third way 'I'm still a third way advocate … not in favour. of either the big state or the...
www.guardian.co.uk
| Online dictionaries: which is best?
Mon, 30 Aug 2010
The new edition of the Oxford English Dictionary will be online-only. Many of its rivals – Collins, Chambers et al - have already launched free web versions. But which one is the wordsmith's best friend? Sad news for those of us with fond memories of long minutes lost in the more arcane histories. of English words: the third edition of...
www.guardian.co.uk
| Scott Pilgrim loses control in the gaming world
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Edgar Wright's intriguing attempt to align film-making with more fidgety media suggests that the task is hopeless Cinema is very much a "sit-back" medium. It insists on entrapping you in a darkened space, force-feeding you a pre-assembled product and monopolising your attention for up to a couple of. hours. Once, that would have been no...
www.guardian.co.uk
| Americans Pay The Price Of Getting Things 'Cheap'
Sun, 29 Aug 2010
In the days since the Industrial Revolution, Americans have put a premium on convenience and low prices. But this obsession with low prices has its consequences. At times, durability, craftsmanship and even social responsibility are sacrificed. Host Liane Hansen talks with Ellen Ruppel Shell, author. of the book, Cheap: The High Cost of...
www.npr.org
| Edinburgh international book festival sees dip in ticket sales
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Organisers blame recession for 3% decrease at the first event to be run by new director, Nick Barley The first Edinburgh international book festival run by its new director Nick Barley saw a small dip in ticket sales, bucking a trend of increasing audiences in previous years. This year's festival, which closed last night with a tribute...
www.guardian.co.uk
| A weekend away with my manuscript
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
I had longed to spend some quality time alone with my work-in-progress, but we didn't get on quite as well as I had hoped Ah, it was bound to go pear-shaped, Best Beloveds – all major obstacles to our sweaty union had been tumbled away, all chaperones had been dodged, misdirected, or anaesthetised. – finally, it was just me and the...
www.guardian.co.uk
| New volume of Baldwin writings shows timelessness (AP)
Thu, 26 Aug 2010
AP - "The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings" (Pantheon Books, $26.95), by James Baldwin, edited by Randall Kenan: James Baldwin's passionate hope for a better America, a United States that he can believe in and that believes in a brilliant black person, comes through in each. piece of this disparate collection...
us.rd.yahoo.com
| Why need read many books at once?
Sun, 29 Aug 2010
The chair in which I do most of my reading is a battered plaid behemoth with coffee-stained arms and overworked cushions that long ago gave up any aspirations to an actual shape. When you sit in this chair, you're apt to sink a bit. Before you quite realize it, your kneecaps have risen and your hips. have sharply descended, creating an...
feeds.chicagotribune.com
| Reading Agency defends libraries' impact on literacy
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
As government cuts threaten libraries, the Reading Agency comes to their defence with a success story – the Summer Reading Challenge With the government looking in every direction to wield its cost-cutting axe, the Reading Agency last week put out a plea that libraries should "not be a soft target. for cuts". The declaration came in...
www.guardian.co.uk
| The digested read
Mon, 30 Aug 2010
Gibson, £14.99 If there is a country in the entire world in which childhood is a more wretched experience then I do not know it. Though I seldom travel by public carriage, I see this at bus stops everywhere, with youths swearing and chewing gum. This poison all stems from a romantic, socialist view. of education (which doesn't really...
www.guardian.co.uk
| Nadine Gordimer goes back into battle
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Twenty years after helping defeat apartheid, the eminent writer is fighting government plans to muzzle South Africa's media 'Where do you get your energy from?," I ask Nadine Gordimer, Nobel laureate and lifelong fighter for freedom. This is probably a naff, ageist question, and I wonder how the 86.-year-old, who has a reputation for...
www.guardian.co.uk
| Bundesbank executive provokes race outcry with book
Mon, 30 Aug 2010
Merkel leads calls for Thilo Sarrazin to be sacked over remarks about migrants being 'unfit or unwilling to integrated' into society The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has called for the dismissal from the central bank of a prominent board member who has repeatedly said that Muslim immigrants in. Germany are unfit and unwilling to...
www.guardian.co.uk
| The secret of 'The Secret' | Mark Vernon
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Can you really improve your life, and perhaps the world too, by your own inner effort? The Power – Rhonda Byrne's sequel to the self-help megaseller The Secret – has shot straight to the top of the hardback book charts. According to Nielsen BookScan, The Secret sits comfortably alongside too., at number two. Worse still, The...
www.guardian.co.uk
| HMV under fire from investors over Waterstone performance
Sun, 29 Aug 2010
• Waterstone's now Britain's top bookseller with 300 outlets • 9% drop in Waterstone's Christmas sales alarmed investors Rebel shareholders have opened fire on music shops chain HMV over its management of Waterstone's, Britain's largest books retailer. Investors want HMV chief executive Simon Fox. to sell the book business if a...
www.guardian.co.uk
| Tony Judt: An Intellectual Journey
Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Rene Burri/Magnum Photo Train arriving to Paris from Switzerland near Near Gare de l'Est, 1950 When I met Tony Judt twenty years ago, he was on his way to catch a train. But he lingered instead in Providence to lunch with a couple of Brown University undergraduates. He gently gave career advice. to two young men hesitating...
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| Bjørn Lomborg: the dissenting climate change voice who changed his tune
Mon, 30 Aug 2010
With his new book, Danish scientist Bjørn Lomborg has become an unlikely advocate for huge investment in fighting global warming. But his answers are unlikely to satisfy all climate change campaigners Few statisticians can have inspired more passion than Bjørn Lomborg, the Danish academic who became. famous as the author of the...
www.guardian.co.uk
| One Man's Junk is Another Man's Treasure
Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:19 GMT
Ebay has made sellers out of millions of people worldwide who have never uttered terms like sales strategy or marketing advantage in their lives. Yet these amateurs have learned a lot about sales techniques by osmosis. Chief among these methods of eBay selling is finding new markets for their wares.
www.seattlepi.com
| Books of The Times: Preppily Perplexed? A New Guidebook
Wed, 01 Sep 2010
“True Prep,” Lisa Birnbach’s successor to “The Official Preppy Handbook,” addresses the adult world of funerals and second marriages and the post-1980 world of cellphones, the Internet and synthetic fleece.
feeds.nytimes.com
| 'A People's History' Of The March On Washington
Sat, 28 Aug 2010
The landmark 1963 civil rights march was more than just "I have a dream," says historian Charles Euchner. His new book, Nobody Turn Me Around: A People's History of the 1963 March on Washington, relies on participants and attendees to tell the story of that fateful day.
www.npr.org
| Archaeology: Not As Dry And Dusty As You Think
Sun, 29 Aug 2010
Real archaeologists are nothing like Indiana Jones, but that doesn't mean their world isn't dramatic and dangerous. Author Craig Childs sheds a light on pot hunters and relic diggers in his new book, Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession .
www.npr.org
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