Booklist Online: More than 130,000 book reviews for librarians, book groups, and book lovers - from the trusted experts at the American Library Association

I have read all three of Kate Morton’s spellbinding Gothic novels now, and just read her first, The House at Riverton, last. Morton knows how to write parallel stories that draw you in. She tells a good story well and entices with atmosphere, period detail and suspense. But when I finished The House at Riverton, [...]

Full disclosure:  I am a picker.  Can’t help myself, can’t stop myself.  However, I am not a hoarder because I actually use my precious stuff in found object mixed media assemblages.  Please ignore the fact that in my basement I have more crap stuff then I could possible make into art if I started today [...]

Last week I had the opportunity to facilitate my colleague’s book group’s discussion of Mary Karr’s third memoir, Lit. My book group had discussed Lit earlier in the year. I was especially interested in how the reception of the book might differ between groups. And differ it did. Karr’s no-holds-barred memoir dives into her alcoholic [...]

The book world is a whirl right now, full of new developments and unsure futures for the familiar components of its culture. On bad days it can induce insomnia and terror in a book lover, especially those of us who have tied our careers to books. But as we celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States, [...]

Like many readers, I encountered Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery” in high school and loved it. Sadly, like most of those other students, and I’m betting many of you, I didn’t follow up and never read anything else by Jackson. She’s one of those authors I always knew I’d like, but somehow she never made [...]

After starting out our genre study with Murder in Mesopotamia (see my posting from November 18th), the group spent the back half of the discussion talking about the novel Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris.  What is the magic that occurs when a book so invigorates a discussion group that the moderator can actually sit out [...]

Did you know that Nancy Pearl has a show on the Seattle Channel called “Book Lust” where she has been interviewing a variety of authors for years? Well, now you know and your life will be better for it. And these interviews are all spectacularly noteworthy. I can’t think of very many other places, other [...]

I’ve begun my annual task of collecting all of the best-of-the-year lists and awards into one sortable spreadsheet. This is my fourth year compiling this massive labor of love-hate, and I almost chose to let it go this year, but once the lists started to come out, I just couldn’t resist. The analytical side of me loves [...]

This round of my Crime and Mystery Book Discussion group at my library (in its continuing efforts to spend this year doing a genre study) focused on the Golden Age Puzzle Novel.  The novel I selected for our benchmark golden age puzzler was Murder in Mesopotamia, the fourteenth Hercule Poirot novel written by Agatha Christie.  [...]

I’ve tried in book groups and in print to describe the pleasures of Jasper Fforde’s latest series starter, Shades of Grey, and on every occasion the task has defeated me. It will probably thwart me again. I could get lost in the delightfully quirky details of the dystopian future world that Fforde sketches–a world in which [...]

I’ve just enjoyed a fine essay on the pleasures and perils of re-reading at The Millions and I’m thinking about how re-reading applies to book groups. Personally, I know that if the group selects a book that I have read previously for discussion, I’ll often take it as a free pass, using my time to [...]

Last month, I had the pleasure of introducing Jeffrey Eugenides at an event in Seattle and the podcast recently became available of his talk. Eugenides read from his new novel, The Marriage Plot, and answered questions from the audience. It was a packed crowd and Eugenides was warm, funny, intelligent and thoughtful in his responses. [...]

While casting about for topics for Book Group Buzz today, it occurred to me that I’ve never written here about the author who is perhaps my favorite contemporary American writer, Richard Russo. Now seven novels and one book of stories into his career, Russo has yet to produce a book that isn’t worthy of book [...]

The October selection for my library book group was Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann.  This 2009 novel has won a number of prizes, including the National Book Award.  Set in New York City, it takes as its central motif the famous 1974 tightrope walk of Philippe Petit between the World Trade Center [...]

Third time lucky. Or not.  I read Extemely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer and reported back on March 21, 2010 and then again on October 8th this year after our local book discussion.  Now, it was onto the Wisconsin Library Association. The Readers Section of WLA is devoted to story.  Besides a [...]

In Silas House’s debut novel, the quilt that the title character is piecing together is his own life. The incident that dominates Clay’s life happened when he was only four years old: his mother, Anneth, was killed on an icy Appalachian mountain. Despite their limited time together, Clay has grown up much like Anneth: spiritual but [...]

What would you do if a loved one came to you and calmly declared that she was going to commit suicide later in the evening? It’s a horrifying scenario, and the simple premise for Marsha Norman’s 1983 play ‘Night, Mother. The pair in question are a mother and daughter who live on a quiet country [...]