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 [...]
“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, [...]
From the Reference Desk (Nashua Public Library, NH) offers lists (with webcat links) of feature films released during WWII, to coincide with Ken Burns’ latest video project (with Lynn Novick), The War, chronicling “the American experience of World War II through the eyes of those who endured it.” They also list some propaganda films, [...]
Richard and Judy are launching a children’s bookclub on their channel 4 show, hoping to inspire a love of reading in young children: “School pupils helped producers select eight books for readers aged five and above, to feature on the TV show.”
The books are:
Aliens Love Underpants by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort
Poppy and Max and [...]
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 [...]
Congrats to English writer (born in Persia/Iran) Doris Lessing, who at almost age 88 is the oldest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, which “usually goes to authors in their 50s and 60s.” Not only is she old, but she’s female, and only 11 women have won the prize since its inception in 1901. [...]
Three pieces recently about Christian publishing:
>> Halo to Christian profits in the Telegraph (24 Sept.): Although sales in the UK of Christian books have almost doubled in 10 years, from £60m [$122 million] 10 years ago to £110m [$224 million] now, chain bookstores, like Waterstone’s, “don’t take the category seriously or stock a wide [...]