George MacDonald Fraser, author of the Flashman adventure series, published from 1969 to 2005, died of cancer today in England. More from the AP, Guardian, and The Independent.
“According to the Associated Press, Oprah Winfrey has chosen Ken Follett’s 1989 novel The Pillars of the Earth for her next bookclub pick. Follett’s newest book, World Without End, is a sequel. The Pillars of the Earth is a love story set in 12th-century England. Unlike Follett’s other books, this one is a big historical [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
Per Book Standard today, “Oprah Winfrey has chosen Love In The Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as the next choice for her book club. … Love In The Time of Cholera, which is published by Vintage, a Random House imprint, was originally published in the U.S. in 1988 and is about a love [...]
The Guardian is touring Spain via its fiction, drama, and poetry, and soliciting recommendations for the best authors and titles. I posted something about it on my other blog, here.
I feel like I’m pushing the season but since I just received my LL Bean catalog in the mail today, with a big balsam wreath plastered on both front and back covers, talking about Halloween doesn’t seem so unseemly …
Fiction Addiction offers title and author for 15 Halloween Reads. I’ve got links to lots of [...]
Good idea! The Bensenville Community Public Library (IL) is using its blog to post new booklists each week (author and title only), as well as entries for ‘author of the week,’ ‘book of the week,’ and some discussion of books.
Recent booklist topics: urban fantasy; apocalyptic stories; fiction about knitting, quilting and embroidery; mysteries that [...]
If Jane’s your girl, check out Bette-Lee Fox’s article in Library Journal this week. She suggests three re-writes (two of Pride & Prejudice, one of Emma), a sequel and series of sequels to P&P, two epistolary collections connected with P&P, two novels about Jane Austen herself, a mystery series featuring Jane the detective, five [...]