Summer Books Season

USA Today posts its lengthy interactive list of summer fiction and non-fiction. You can sort by title, author or release date, and look at all the books at once or only fiction or non-. Excerpts available for some. [22 May]
Politics and Prose Bookstore’s Summer Favorites 2008, with separate lists for hardcover fiction, paperback fiction, pb […]

Booklists: War, and Procrastination

Both tips from RAO:
In Slate, “Procrastination Lit: Great novels about wasting time,” a “small and unnerving category of literature that is not only about procrastination but that, in form and style, enacts the frenetic paralysis of irrational delay,” compiled by Jessica Winter. Books included are three by Thomas Bernhard (In The Lime Works, The Loser […]

The Bad Seed: Evil Children in Fiction

Shelf Talk at Seattle PL offers an annotated list of about 20 books and movies featuring very bad children. More in the comments.

More Spring Books

The National Book Critics Circle announced its Spring 2008 Good Reads List this weekend, comprised of 10 fiction, 5 non-fiction, and 5 poetry titles. (More Spring Book recommendations here.)

New Detective Fiction Database

Gumshoes, Sleuths & Snoopers, at the University of Buffalo Libraries, is a database that offers “an in-depth look at 185 detective and mystery novels originally published during the period 1930-1960.” Included is cover art and extremely detailed information about plot, motives, setting, characters, weaponry, violence level, ethnicity, sexuality, gender roles, etc. They’re looking for volunteers […]

Personal Library

If you’re starting from scratch and don’t want to spend a lot of time thinking about it, you might really appreciate this list of 110 books that constitute the ‘perfect library’: “From classics and sci-fi to poetry, biographies and books that changed the world … we present the ultimate reading list.” Originally in the Telegraph. […]

Christian Books (Mostly) Don’t Sell Sex

In Publisher’s Weekly this week: “Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder: Christian sex books sell, even when no one is having sex” by Jana Riess: “It’s a truism in publishing that sex sells. What’s unusual in Christian publishing is not that sex sells, but that even books telling people not to have sex sell.”
The article […]

Around the U.S. in Literature

The Columbia Spectator started a series on Thursday that will feature one book that “captures the essence” of each of the 50 United States. The first state is Alabama, and the book is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Check back each Thursday for a new state, new book.
Lots more lists of fiction set […]

Best Books 2007

Fimoculous is collecting the ‘best of’ lists, including best books. More than 20 lists linked so far. Some of the latest are Best Music Books, Best Biographies, Best Gardening Books, all from the Times of London; Top 10 Books from the NYT and Best Illustrated Children’s Books from the same source; Best Foreign Policy Books […]

The Greying of American Books

From an article in the LAT today, title Shades of Gray in Fiction, by Maria La Ganga:
“Since America’s 78 million baby boomers started turning 60 last year, dozens of novels with graying protagonists and late-life themes have hit the nation’s bookstores, adding a few new wrinkles to the face of contemporary fiction and underscoring a […]