“Never begin the book when you feel you want to begin it, but hold off a while longer.”

-Rose Tremain

.

.

.

The New Republic looks at Bertrand Taithe’s, THE KILLER TRAIL: A COLONIAL SCANDAL IN THE HEART OF AFRICA.

LONELY HEARTS: THE SCREWBALL WORLD OF NATHANAEL WEST AND EILEEN MCKENNEY, by Marion Meade, gets the nod at The LA Times.

ANGELOLOGY, by Danielle Trussoni, is hailed ‘exquisite’.

Roger Rosenblatt gives us, MAKING TOAST: A FAMILY STORY, to good result.

“Live life and write about life. Of the making of many books there is ­indeed no end, but there are more than enough books about books.”

-Will Self

.

.

.

The New York Times is reported to have its famous Book Review section in development to splinter off as an eBook subscription.  Being a Nook owner myself, I could very possibly get into that.

GOOGLED: THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT, by Ken Auletta, traces the history and projects the future trajectory of the internet giant, Google.

Jonathan Maberry’s THE DRAGON FACTORY is a countdown-to-destruction thriller that The California Literary Review recommends just the sheer fun of it.

And Kelly Corrigan pulls all the right heartstrings in her parenting memoir/commentary, LIFT.

Just got word that Christina Meldrum’s excellent debut YA novel, MADAPPLE, was released today in paperback.  I interviewed Christina back in the summer of 2008 for the hardcover release and was so impressed that I hunted her down for our ‘5 Minutes Alone’ segment last March.

MADAPPLE keeps rolling, and well it should.  Congratulations, Ms. Meldrum.  Looking forward to more from you, for certain.

“The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.”

-Jonathan Franzen

.

.

.

The Washington Post mostly endorses Chang-rae Lee’s fourth novel, emotionally wringing as it may be, THE SURRENDERED.

Harry Markopolos claims to have tried to wave the warning over Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme in NO ONE WOULD LISTEN.  The Wall Street Journal seems to find Mr. Markopolos a bit more interesting perhaps(and not for flattering reasons) than his intended target.

Environmental viral video goes inevitably to print: THE STORY OF STUFF: HOW OUR OBSESSION WITH STUFF IS TRASHING THE PLANET, OUR COMMUNITIES, AND OUR HEALTH - AND A VISION FOR CHANGE.

The Trades praises DC Comic’s release of a primer - DC ORIGINS UNIVERSE.

“For too long, the act of printing something in and of itself has been placed on too high a pedestal. The true value of an object lies in what it says, not its mere existence.”

-Craig Mod

.

.

.

Seth Godin’s LINCHPIN: ARE YOU INDISPENSIBLE? gets a thorough workup by The Christian Science Monitor’s, The Simple Dollar column.

March madness, anyone?  College ball fan and journalist, Kathy Orton, revs it up with OUTSIDE THE LIMELIGHT: BASKETBALL IN THE IVY LEAGUE.

Have a look at some new nonfiction, courtesy of Publishers Weekly.

Author, Ron Rash, impresses Janet Maslin at The New York Times with his latest: a collection of shorts called, BURNING BRIGHT.

“Graham Greene famously wrote 500 words a day. Jean Plaidy managed 5,000 before lunch, then spent the afternoon answering fan mail. My minimum is 1,000 words a day – which is sometimes easy to achieve, and is sometimes, frankly, like shitting a brick, but I will make myself stay at my desk until I’ve got there, because I know that by doing that I am inching the book forward.”

-Sarah Waters

.

This might actually be a really good time for such a book, to take our minds off our current automotive woes.  Jason Vuic gives us THE YUGO: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE WORST CAR IN HISTORY.

THE RUSSIAN DREAMBOOK OF COLOR AND FLIGHT, by Gina Ochsner, spins magical realism into commentary on life in Russia.

Katharine McMahon scores compliments for her new historical novel, THE CRIMSON ROOMS.

And The Trades signs off on an endorsement of Dia Reeves’ BLEEDING VIOLET.

“Make a habit of putting your observations into words and gradually this will become instinct. This is the most important rule of all…”

-Geoff Dyer

.

.

.

Jimmy McDonough makes snappy work of the mundane details to keep captive his audience, and hers, in TAMMY WYNETTE: TRAGIC COUNTRY QUEEN.

AS IT WAS WRITTEN, debut novel of Sujatha Hampton, doesn’t fare well at The Washington Post.

Publishers Weekly kicks the March lion in with a full page of web-exclusive reviews.

And here’s a fun coffeetable book of famous photos full of striking, and sometimes amusingly, congruent composition.  Jim Marshall and Timothy White dig up and lay out MATCH PRINTS.

However carved up
or pared down we get,
we keep on making
the best of it as though
it doesn’t matter that
our acre’s down to
a square foot. As
though our garden
could be one bean
and we’d rejoice if
………………………………it flourishes, as
………………………………though one bean
………………………………could nourish us.

-Kay Ryan

Poet Kay Ryan mostly dazzles with well-landed blows in her latest collection, THE BEST OF TIMES: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS.

MY LIFE WITH THE TALIBAN, by Abdul Salam Zaeef, translated from Pashto and edited by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, is ripped pretty well by Pakistan’s The Daily Times.

George Bishop writes what he does not know and, apparently, does it to at least this Huntington News reviewer’s satisfaction - LETTER TO MY DAUGHTER.

The Oxfam charity benefits from word donations from a collection of prominent British and Irish authors compiled in OX-TALES.

Honestly, my Latin isn’t what it could be, so I don’t even know for certain that I’ve gotten it right, or right enough, but for author Nujood Ali, even a near-miss at an ancient proclamation of freedom through a book seems somehow fitting.  The book, I AM NUJOOD, AGED 10 AND DIVORCED, is her autobiography.

Hailed as “one of the greatest women” Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has ever seen, and honored in Glamour Magazine as one of 2008’s Women of the Year, Nujood diverted the course of her life, and perhaps the lives of more of her Yemeni sisters, in a covert dash to the local courthouse to demand a divorce from her abusive, molesting husband.  Husband.  Nujood was 10.

The book has gone on to translation in 18 languages, but it is the release of her story in her native Arabic that Nujood anticipates the most; the hope of where it could shake loose the most benefit.

It’s an honor to have simply run across the story of her bravery, with a nod to Patti Wiggington for drawing my attention that way.

Nicholas D. Kristof elaborates in The New York Times‘ op-ed section from this past Wednesday’s edition.

“Write whatever way you like. Fiction is made of words on a page; reality is made of something else. It doesn’t matter how “real” your story is, or how “made up”: what matters is its necessity.”

-Anne Enright

.

.

Adam Haslett impresses with his prescient debut (much was written before the current bank crisis hit the fan), UNION ATLANTIC.

HOCUS BOGUS by Romain Gary writing as Émile Ajar (translated from the French by David Bellos) fares very well at The Washington Post.

The California Literary Review takes a switch to Monika Fagerholm’s ‘high literary’ style in THE AMERICAN GIRL.

And Library Journal hosts a sweep of Spring spirituals.

Debut novelist Helen Simonson strikes golden-years gold in MAJOR PETTIGREW’S LAST STAND.

USA Today proclaims HOUSE RULES as one of Jodi Picoult’s best.

Drive alongside the Great Wall with journalist Peter Hessler in COUNTRY DRIVING: A JOURNEY THROUGH CHINA FROM FARM TO FACTORY.

Professor Sheena Iyengar diagrams THE ART OF CHOOSING and sheds insight on why we do what we do.

“A lot of people I know can identify with a character who has at least a medium dose of self-loathing.  I prefer to write about characters who are very conflicted and filled with a strangely undefined sense of shame and inadequacy that puts them into troubling positions when they have to inflict themselves upon the world.”

-Sam Lipsyte

.

.