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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Camille DelVecchio compiles an annotated list of comfortable books, ones that evoke childhood, with ‘languid’ pacing, familiar situations, some predictability, and nothing ‘boring, sappy, or patronizing.’ Her list of 15 books includes Good Poems for Hard Times, Calvin & Hobbes cartoons, and books by Philip Gulley, Anne Tyler, Peter Mayle, Carrie Brown, Bill Richardson, [...]
Sarah Statz Cords at The Reader’s Advisor Online Blog focuses on mysteries featuring paranormal detectives: “These mysteries … ‘blend the detective story with elements of speculative fiction; particularly science fiction or horror. The detectives often have supernatural powers, or may be witches or vampires.’” She recommends a few titles; more are listed here.
The Guardian Arts blog takes on the sport of boxing in literature: “Literature and boxing shouldn’t go together. One is concerned with refining our consciousness; the other with trying to clobber someone into unconsciousness as artfully and as swiftly as possible. Yet of all sports writing it is boxing that seems to have inspired some [...]
Salon surveys the books written by all the 2008 candidates for U.S. President. Apparently all but one candidate (Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.?) has written and published a book.
Among the titles are A Prayer for America by Dennis Kucinich (”Have you texted Peace 73223? Do you advocate the abolition of all nuclear weapons? Are you [...]
Mary at 52 Books has posted a list (author, title) of about 20 classic fiction and non-fiction dog stories, from Greyfriars Bobby by Eleanor Atkinson to Lad, a Dog by Albert Payson Terhune.
A few that aren’t on the list:
The Shaman Bulldog: A Love Story (1996) by Renaldo Fisher. One of my favourites, a book [...]