Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

Last month some writers and editors got together at Madison Square Park to give tribute to American author William Maxwell (1908-2000).  Dan Menaker, Edward Hirsch and Stewart O’Nan were among those in attendance.  You can view many of the speakers at this event from the link above, as well as a video of William Maxwell [...]

  I stopped reading The Book of Murder seventeen pages from the end.
Finishing it doesn’t really matter. I’ve stopped believing. All I can do is seriously ponder what would drive such a smart author toward the worst ending in recent memory. Guillermo Martinez is a stiff, formal writer with a Borges-like drollery and restraint, and [...]

The short list for the Man Booker Prize has been announced.
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (The favorite to win.)
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz
Now I can get started on my [...]

Guillermo Martinez, the Argentinean writer whose literary mystery, The Oxford Murders, became an international sensation in 2005, has written a new novel pursuing the same obsession as his first novel: the very nature of believing someone has been killed, and the nagging doubts of imperceptible murders.
  He’s got a unique spin going on mystery writing, [...]

I was musing the other day — as I am often prone to do — about authors whose books we book group people are presently reading and discussing, and I began to wonder if we would still be reading these authors and discussing their works, say, 10 years from now.  Of course, that could depend on [...]

Another thing that I discovered in preparing for this week’s discussion of Dave Eggers’ What is the What.  Philadelphia chose it for its 2008 One Book program.  They created an excellent resource guide with a timeline for Sudan and suggested further reading lists for children, teens and adults and a list of recommended movies. I found some links to [...]

Take eight steps, and you’ve crossed my kitchen. Turn around when you get to the microwave, and eight paces back. Seven paces if the suspense starts building. Okay, sometimes six if it gets really intense. Six paces, going faster and faster.
  I’m reading the last 50 pages of Jean-Claude Izzo’s Total Chaos, and I can’t [...]

I think I’ve found next year’s sleeper title for book clubs.  The Ladies’ Lending Library by Janice Kulyk Keefer.
Novels that use book groups or other novels as part of the story are always especially appealing to me. I like to see how fictional characters deal with their reading and reading habits and then judge the [...]

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith (Grand Central, 2008)
As a life long mystery reader, I am often asked to defend reading mysteries when “they are all the same.”  It is true that there is a comfortable format to many mysteries that I read and that is why I like to read them.
However, to make a [...]

Young Marcus Yallow and three teen friends are in the wrong place at the wrong time, playing a game on the streets of San Francisco when a bomb destroys the Bay Bridge. Before they know what has happened, they’ve been detained by Homeland Security and accused of terrorism. Three of the four are eventually released [...]

This week my book group discussed Dave Eggers’ novel What is the What.  Eggers’ book is more than a novel, it is the fictionalized autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, a Lost Boy of Sudan.
Valentino and Eggers decided to make the book a novel due to the fact that Deng was so young when the war [...]

Those heavy, gray clouds outside my window promise rain any minute. That’s fine with me. I can deal with a wet Labor Day. It just means I’ll be peacefully reading alone, which is exactly what I want. Yesterday I helped a friend paint his room. Saturday I hosted a friend from out of town. I’ve [...]

The doyennes of clutter-and-stress free living have found a way for over-committed readers to participate in a book group on their own time. It’s an idea that libraries have been supporting for years, but the editors of Real Simple are doing it with a little more panache, which should come as no surprise since they [...]