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  PROPAGANDA
Aleksandar Hemon Wins the Chicago Tribune's 2008 Heartland Prize for Fiction The Chicago Tribune awarded Aleksandar Hemon the 2008 Heartland Prize for fiction for his novel, The Lazarus Project, "a bleak, pain-filled, yet darkly beautiful novel that plumbs the depths of the oppression of immigrants a century ago in Chicago, the horror of pogroms and the Holocaust in Europe, and the mindless violence of the Bosnian war." Junot Díaz is a Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize The Dayton Literary Peace Prize has announced the finalists for its third round of awards and Junot Díaz is among them for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The prize: $10,000 each to two books, one fiction and nonfiction, that promote peace, leading readers to a better understanding of other cultures, peoples, religions and political points of view. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants opens Friday! Riverhead author Ann Brashares has a second film based on her Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series opening Friday, 8/8/08. The Chicago Sun-Times writes, "The lively foursome reunite in 'The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2,' based on the best-selling novels by Ann Brashares. The sequel finds Tibby, Carmen, Bridget and Lena trying to wrestle with life, love and a key summer vacation that changes everything." Khaled Hosseini, Author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, Receives Over a Thousand Questions! Khaled Hosseini was asked over a thousand questions in his book group discussion—watch his video responses to a wide range of questions on his website. Ask Khaled Hosseini, Author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, Questions in His Book Group Discussion A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner have brought the lives of the Afghan people to millions of readers around the world and inspired passionate dialogue among fans of the books. Now you have the chance to continue the discussion by asking Khaled Hosseini questions on his website. Riverhead Authors at Chicago's Printers Row Book Fair In the Chicago area? So are Riverhead authors Sloane Crosley, Aleksandar Hemon, and Dana Vachon. Read about the Midwest's largest literary event and see the full schedule of events. Junot Díaz Wins the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Moshin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist have won this year's Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which recognizes recent books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and our appreciation of the rich diversity of human culture. Junot Díaz humbly commented: "It's a privilege to share it with a book I admire tremendously—one I recommend in public and in private. I couldn't share the literary ride with a better writer." Junot Díaz Wins the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Riverhead author Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao has won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The 92nd annual Pulitzer Prize awards were officially announced on Monday, April 7th, at Columbia University. Riverhead Authors at the PEN World Voices Festival Riverhead authors Nuruddin Farah, Aleksandar Hemon, and Dinaw Mengestu will be participating in the fourth annual PEN World Voices New York Festival of International Literature. The festival begins April 29th and runs through May 4th and this year's theme is Public Lives/Private Lives. Read more about the events and the participants here. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao wins National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction At a ceremony on March 6th the National Book Critics Circle announced the winners of the 2007 awards. Riverhead author Junot Díaz took home the fiction award for his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Check out the other nominees and winners here. Two Riverhead authors nominated for the 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears was nominated for the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was nominated in the fiction category for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. The Book Prizes will be awarded Friday evening, April 25, 2008, at UCLA's Royce Hall. See the complete list of nominees here. Riverhead Audio Books Nominated for 2008 Audies Don't Make A Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings by Tyler Perry, narrated by Tyler Perry, and Slam by Nick Hornby, narrated by Nicholas Hoult were nominated for 2008 Audies. The winners will be announced at a gala event in Los Angeles on May 30th. The Audies gala is the only awards program in the United States devoted entirely to honoring spoken word entertainment, and brings together performers, authors, producers, publishers, and media. Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction On January 12th the National Book Critics Circle announced their awards finalists, which included widely-acclaimed Riverhead author Junot Díaz for his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The National Book Critics Circle, founded in 1974, is a "non-profit organization consisting of nearly 700 active book reviewers who are interested in honoring quality writing and communicating with one another about common concerns." The 2007 winners will be announced on March 6, 2008, at the annual NBCC Awards Ceremony in New York City. See the other nominees here. Three Riverhead authors nominated for the 39th NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Literary Work Three Riverhead authors have been nominated for the 39th NAACP Image Awards. Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Nuruddin Farah's Knots are among the nominees for the Outstanding Literary Work in Fiction category. Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is up for the Outstanding Literary Work—Debut Author award. The NAACP Image Awards "honors projects and individuals that promote diversity in the arts in television, recording, literature, and motion pictures." The awards will air live on Thursday, February 14 (8:00 - 10:00 PM ET/PT Tape-Delayed) on FOX. Learn more about the awards and see the other nominees here. Díaz, Saunders on Entertainment Weekly's Best Books of 2007 list Entertainment Weekly featured two Riverhead books on their Best Books of 2007 list—George Saunders' The Braindead Megaphone in nonfiction and Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in fiction. Riverhead authors among finalists for the Essence Literary Awards Knots by Nuruddin Farah and The Bond by Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, and Rameck Hunt are among the finalists for the inaugural Essence Literary Awards. The nominees were recommended by Essence readers and Book Club members selected by the editors of Essence for how they "illuminate the African-American experience throughout the Diaspora while provoking discussion about the human condition" and "demonstrate excellence and originality in concept, content and execution." The winners will be announced at a ceremony in New York City on February 7. See the other finalists here. Kirkus Reviews names three Riverhead books in their Best of 2007 According to Kirkus Reviews, three Riverhead books are "notable titles that deserve your attention." Among their picks for the Best of 2007 are (in nonfiction) The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam: An Illustrated Memoir by Ann Marie Fleming, The Braindead Megaphone by George Saunders and (in fiction) The Office of Desire by Martha Moody. See the complete list here. The Kite Runner opens to rave reviews The Kite Runner film is in select theaters, and opened to terrific reviews. The Washington Post calls it "a film of exhilarating, redemptive humanity" while Roger Ebert gives it 4 stars and in his review, writes, "Magnificent... The film works so deeply on us because we have been so absorbed by its story, by its destinies, by the way these individuals become so important." New York Magazine names Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Best Novel of the Year The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao claimed the title of best novel of 2007 in New York Magazine. It has also appeared on numerous other Best Books of the Year lists nationwide including Time (#1 fiction book), The New York Times Notables, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice, Amazon.com (#2 overall), and the National Book Critic Circle Best Recommended List (#1 fiction book). See New York Magazine's list here. Riverhead Books lands #1 and #3 spots on Time magazine's 10 Best Fiction Books of the Year Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was chosen as the #1 fiction book of the year, with Khaled Hossieni's A Thousand Splendid Suns right behind at #3. See the list here. The Kite Runner hits Theatres The Kite Runner movie premieres on 12/14 in select cities and rave reviews and accolades are already arriving. The National Board of Review has listed it as one of the top 10 movies of the year and Vanity Fair has hailed the film as "transcendant," "haunting," "beautiful and horrific," "brave." Shalom Auslander named "New Radical" by Radar Shalom Auslander was listed as one of Radar Magazine's New Radicals, this year's most notable rogues, renegades, and rule-breakers. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears wins The Guardian First Book Award Dinaw Mengestu's debut novel The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (called Children of the Revolution in the UK) was announced as the winner at a ceremony in central London on December 5th. Unique among literary prizes, The Guardian First Book Award is open to all debut works, regardless of genre. Read more about Dinaw's win here. Riverhead Books in the New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2007 Four Riverhead books made their way onto the New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2007. Those featured were Shalom Auslander's memoir, Foreskin's Lament, Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Nuruddin Farah's Knots, and Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears. See the full list here. Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao voted #1 by the National Book Critics Circle in their new monthly Best Recommended List The National Book Critics Circle recently created a new literary blog, "Critical Mass," and on November 28th they introduced the NBCC's Best Recommended List. Nearly 500 voters, including John Updike, Robert Hass, and Cynthia Ozick gave their recommendations, and in their inaugural list, Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao received the most votes for fiction. See the other winners and read more about "Critical Mass" here. Dinaw Mengestu Wins Lannan Fellowship Dinaw Mengestu has been awarded a 2007 Lannan Literary Writing Fellowship. The Lannan Literary Awards and Fellowships were established in 1989 to honor both established and emerging writers whose work is of exceptional quality. The Fellowships recognize writers of distinctive literary merit who demonstrate potential for continued outstanding work. You can read more about the Lannan Foundation and the Literary Awards and Fellowships here. Riverhead authors at the 2007 Miami Book Fair International, 11/4-11/11 If you're in the Miami area, stop by to see Riverhead authors Shalom Auslander, Daina Chaviano, and Ellis Avery at the Miami Book Fair. Riverhead Books has #1 and #2 titles on Amazon.com's Top 100 Books of the Year Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns grabbed the #1 spot on the list with Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao at #2. Riverhead also had numerous other titles highlighted by Amazon for their Top 100, including Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears (#14 overall, and #7 in Literature & Fiction), George Saunders' The Braindead Megaphone (#89 overall, and #2 in Pop Culture), and in the Food Lit category, Jenni Ferrari-Adler's Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant. Read more here. Junot Diaz wins the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize
Ira Glass and The New Kings of Nonfiction Live On-stage Ira Glass is joined by Malcom Gladwell, Susan Orlean, and Chuck Klosterman at Town Hall in NYC in a conversation to celebrate the publication of The New Kings of Nonfiction. The anthology, edited by Glass, benefits 826CHI, a reading and tutoring center in Chicago. Read more here. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears Wins the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu has won France's prestigious Prix du Premier Roman Etranger—he award for the best first foreign (to the French) novel published this year in France (where the book is known as Les belles choses que porte le ciel, translated by Anne Wicke and published by Albin Michel). There is more information on the prize here. Two Riverhead Books Chosen Among Best Books of 2007 by Hudson Booksellers, Including Book of the Year A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini was chosen as Book of the Year by Hudson Booksellers, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz was named one of the Top 10 Fiction Books of 2007. The books were chosen for their "innovation, readability, thematic impact, popular appeal and cultural relevance" by a panel made up of the Hudson's bookselling professionals and Airport General Managers (Hudson sells books in both full-service bookstores and Hudson News newsstands in airports and transportation terminals across North America.) Read more, including the rest of the Best Books of 2007, here. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Shortlisted for the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize Junot Diaz's bestselling Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is on the 2007 shortlist for the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize. The prize was established by The Mercantile Library Center for Fiction in 2006 to help "to promote the art of the fiction in the United States;" last year's winner was Marisa Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics. The winner of this year's prize will be announced at an Awards Dinner on October 29, 2007. Read more, and see the complete shortlist of seven titles, here. Dinaw Mengestu named one of the 5 under 35 by National Book Foundation Dinaw Mengestu, author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, has been named one of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 for 2007. The award honors writers who have been selected by a previous National Book Award Finalist or Winner as someone whose work is particularly promising and exciting and is among the best of a new generation of writers. Read more about Dinaw and the 5 Under 35 Award here. Riverhead authors take on the New Yorker Festival
Riverhead authors Junot Díaz, George Saunders, and Khaled Hosseini will be featured at this year's New Yorker Festival:
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears Longlisted for The Guardian First Book Award. Dinaw Mengestu's debut novel The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (titled CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION in its UK edition from Jonathan Cape) is one of ten debut books of 2007 across all categories selected for The Guardian First Book Award's 2007 longlist. Earlier in the year, The Guardian hailed the novel as "a quietly accomplished debut" and "astonishingly tender." Look for the shortlist results the first week in November here. Nick Hornby at ALA
More than 20,000 school, public, and academic librarians attended the American Library Association convention in Washington, D.C. Nick Hornby was in attendance to announce the publication of his first Young Adult title, Slam (G. P. Putnam's Sons, October 16). Over 200 people attended his reading, 500 people attended his author panel program, and another 300 librarians waited in line for an autographed galley of Slam. #1 Bestseller! Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns debuted at #1 on the June 10, 2007 New York Times Hardcover Fiction Bestseller List and continues to hold on the top spot. On the paperback side, Kite Runner rose to claim #2 on the June 17 Paperback Fiction Bestseller List. See Khaled Hosseini on Tour Khaled Hosseini kicks off a seven week tour, starting on May 22nd. For more information on where you can see Hosseini reading from his new book, A Thousand Splendid Suns. more... May 22 Kicks Off "The Year of Hosseini" On May 22, 2007, Riverhead releases Khaled Hosseini's second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, which has already earned rapturous acclaim from advance reviewers and booksellers. That, along with the fall release of the film version of Hosseini's first novel – the runaway #1 bestseller, The Kite Runner – caused Amazon.com fiction editor, Brad Parsons, to dub 2007 the "year of Hosseini" in Publishers Weekly. more... Nick Hornby to Publish His First Young Adult Novel Nick Hornby, New York Times-bestselling author of such internationally acclaimed books as High Fidelity, About a Boy, How To Be Good and A Long Way Down, will publish his first novel for young adults with Penguin Young Readers Group, it was announced today by Geoffrey Kloske, Publisher of Riverhead Books, and Doug Whiteman, President of Penguin Young Readers Group. more... Suze Orman lands at #1 on New York Times Bestseller List The paperback edition of Suze Orman's Young, Fabulous, and Broke debuted at #1 on the April 15, 2007 New York Times Bestseller List. Also, on the April 15 List, in its second week, Anne Lamott's Grace, Eventually held the #2 spot on the Hardcover Nonfiction List. And in its eighth week, Tyler Perry's Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings, was #14. John Hodgman Nominated for an Audie John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise, narrated by John Hodgman with musical accompaniment my Jonathan Coulton, has been nominated for an 2007 Audie Award in the humor category. The Audies are annual awards honoring excellence in audio publishing sponsored by the Audio Publishers Association. City of Tiny Lights a Double-Finalist Patrick Neate's City of Tiny Lights has been named a finalist in both the Los Angeles Times Book Awards, in the mystery/thriller category, and in the Edgar Awards, sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America, in the paperback original category . Patrick Neate's previous book, Where You're At: notes from the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet, won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2004. A Year of Awards for George Saunders George Saunders's short story collection In Persuasion Nation is a finalist for the 2006 Story Prize, along with Mary Gordon's Collected Stories of Mary Gordon and Rick Bass's The Lives of Rocks. The Story Prize is an annual book award honoring the author of an outstanding collection of short fiction with a $20,000 cash award. Each of two runners-up will receive $5,000. |
  A/V CLUB
Junot Díaz on The Colbert Report
Spike Lee's adaptation of James McBride's Miracle at St. Anna trailer
Lewis Black, Author of Me of Little Faith, on Writing a Book
Nathaniel Rich reads from The Mayor's Tongue
Lewis Black on Christmas (and his new book, Me of Little Faith)
Aleksandar Hemon on Titlepage.tv
Junot Díaz on Barnes & Noble "Tagged"
Lewis Black on prayer (and his new book, Me of Little Faith)
Anne Lamott on The Colbert Report
The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon with Velibor Bozovic
Me of Little Faith by Lewis Black—Coming June 2008
I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley
The Island of Eternal Love by Daína Chaviano
Sloane Crosley and Julie Klam on Titlepage.tv
The Kept Man by Jami Attenberg
Gorillaz Rise of the Ogre Book Trailer
PBSesque "Hobo Matters" Documentary from John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise
George Saunders on The Colbert Report
The Ghost Map: An Animated Introduction
The Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander
George Saunders and his new book, The Braindead Megaphone, on Letterman
Braindead Megaphone: The Movie.
The Kite Runner will be a movie in November 2007. View the trailer for the film here.
Join The Kite Runner movie club here Khaled Hosseini on A Thousand Splendid Suns
Ann Brashares' Official MySpace page
Khaled Hosseini's Official Website
Tony Danza reads George Saunders John Hodgman on The Areas of My Expertise
Steven Johnson on The Ghost Map
Nick Hornby's Official Website
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  PIXELS & PRINT
Bookpage on Beatrice Colin's The Glimmer Palace "Captivating...Beatrice Colin's irresistible novel, The Glimmer Palace, follows the eventful life of a Berlin orphan who becomes a rising star in the brand-new medium of the cinema. Early 20th-century Berlin is just like Colin's main character: anything it wants to be and full of promise to be more... . The Glimmer Palace is haunting." more... The New York Times on Doug Dorst's Alive in Necropolis "[A] daring and bighearted first novel...The left brain of this novel, the plotty, structured part, is a fine, familiar branch of California noir. Like Dashiell Hammett, Dorst conveys a hard-bitten love of the physical San Francisco, the fog-swallowed town, the sun after rain, the mineshaft drops in temperature. Scenes are rooted in surroundings and the weather. The fiction seems to possess, and be possessed by, its beloved Bay...Awareness is the high prize of the novel." more... Entertainment Weekly on Adam Davies' Mine all Mine "Mine All Mine boasts plenty of quirk...and laugh-out-loud moments, particularly a scene involving an apartment break-in, a priceless African mask, and a certain sex toy...[you'll] predict by page 1 how much you'll enjoy this unabashedly fun book." more... James Wood for The New Yorker on Aleksandar Hemon "When he arrived here, at the age of twenty-eight, Hemon had what his publisher calls only a 'basic command' of English. Eight years later, The Question of Bruno appeared, stories written in an English remarkable for its polish, lustre, and sardonic control of register. This conversion is often described as 'Nabokovian,' and, indeed, Hemon’s writing sometimes reminds one of Nabokov's. (Hemon has said that he learned English by reading Nabokov and underlining the words he didn’t recognize.) Yet the feat of his reinvention exceeds the Russian's. Nabokov grew up reading English, and had been educated at Cambridge. When his American career began, in 1940, he was almost middle-aged, and had long experience in at least three languages. Hemon, by contrast, tore through his development in the new language with hyperthyroidal speed." more... San Francisco Chronicle on Doug Dorst's Alive in Necropolis "Doug Dorst's smart and accessibly unconventional first novel, Alive in Necropolis,...is not quite a horror story, nor exactly a mystery, nor just a hard-boiled police procedural, but an adult coming-of-age saga that pulls with energy and imagination from these various genres...[Dorst] us[es] a limited third-person narrative shot through with streaks of black humor to vivid, insightful effect." more... Los Angeles Times on Jennifer Traig's Well Enough Alone "[Traig] makes illness seem funny. Her joie de vivre is delicious, even devilish (see her hypochondria haiku). It becomes clear that finding the ability to laugh is the point." more... USA Today on Daniel H. Pink's Johnny Bunko "Pink tackles serious issues in a humorous, hybrid fiction/non-fiction format, telling the story of the career journey of a young office worker everyman, Johnny Bunko." more... Los Angeles Times on David Lida's First Stop in the New World "Streetwise and up-to-date...a charmingly idiosyncratic, yet remarkably comprehensive portrait of one of the planet's most misinterpreted urban spaces." more... San Francisco Chronicle on Jennifer Traig's Well Enough Alone "Painfully frank and very funny...Traig's brutally honest and wickedly funny voice carries the story." more... "800-CEO-Read" on David Lida's First Stop in the New World "According to David Lida, Mexico City is such a place that may be a viable place for business of the future to take a stronghold in. He has worked in the city for many years and his book reads like a sharp-witted, David Sedaris type memoir, making it accessible to just about everyone." more... The New York Times on Nikolai Grozni's Turtle Feet "In this memoir of a musical prodigy’s avatar as a Buddhist monk, Nikolai Grozni, the author of three novels published in his native Bulgaria, dwells on the 'overriding, blissfully benumbing feeling of resignation to the moment' that keeps him in the Indian town of Dharamsala." more... "The American Scene" on David Goldblatt’s The Ball is Round "It's an astonishing achievement, and I'm using that adjective with care. Goldblatt has written an incredibly ambitious (and nearly one-thousand-page) social history of the most popular game in the world...Beautiful stuff." more... The Wall Street Journal on David Lida's First Stop in the New World "In a brisk, engaging fashion, Mr. Lida, who is fluent in Spanish, chronicles many of the city's major neighborhoods, its food, its nightlife, and its art scene." more... Los Angeles Times on Nathaniel Rich's The Mayor's Tongue "In Morphology of the Folktale, the Russian scholar Vladimir Propp wrote that not all fairy tale plots begin in response to an act of villainy; sometimes a hero is spurred to action when faced with an 'inefficiency or lack.' In Nathaniel Rich's imaginatively folkloric first novel, The Mayor's Tongue, that 'lack' is the problem of language, and the two protagonists must travel great distances to resolve it." more... The Washington Post on Steven Galloway's The Cellist of Sarajevo "In this elegiac novel inspired by an actual event during the siege of Sarajevo in 1992, Steven Galloway explores the brutality of war and the redemptive power of music. Crafted with unforgettable imagery and heartbreaking simplicity, his small book speaks forcefully to the triumph of the spirit in the face of overwhelming despair." more... The New York Times on Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project "[Aleksandar Hemon's] new novel, The Lazarus Project, is a remarkable, and remarkably entertaining, chronicle of loss and hopelessness and cruelty propelled by an eloquent, irritable existential unease. It is, against all odds, full of humor and full of jokes. It is, at the same time, inexpressibly sad." more... The Kansas City Star on Lewis Black's Me of Little Faith "The book is actually quite thoughtful, exploring issues of mortality and the supernatural even as it... but true comic that he is, Black emphasizes the humor." more... Blogcritics Magazine on Nathaniel Rich's The Mayor's Tongue "The Mayor's Tongue is a spare masterpiece of postmodernism, an incisive fable whose myriad threads of plot and thought take the inhibitions of our era to task and make Rich's first novel a New York Trilogy for the new millennium." more... feministing.com on Sloane Crosley's I Was Told There'd Be Cake "You sort of want to hate Sloane Crosley, but when you open up her little paperback original (beautifully designed, of course), ready for the hate to calcify, instead it just melts away. She's just too funny, just too honest, just too original. You'd hate her if you could, but you can't, so instead you love her." more... The New York Times on Julie Klam's Please Excuse My Daughter "To review a memoir is always in some sense to review the life and sensibility of the person writing it, and to Julie Klam, daughter, niece, wife, mother, friend, sister, one is inclined to award a dozen stars." more... Los Angeles Times on Steven Galloway's The Cellist of Sarajevo "This unforgettable novel weaves these four lives together with that of a besieged city." more... boingboing on Daniel H. Pink's Johnny Bunko "Bunko is a quick, funny, and extremely, inspiringly sensible book on career-planning that throws out all the traditional bullshit about getting a straight job to fall back on if your creative gig fails on you. Instead, Bunko makes a convincing case for pursuing your dreams, working to your strengths, throwing out the idea of planning, and persevering rather than relying on talent to make it." more... Chicago Tribune on Sloane Crosley's I Was Told There'd Be Cake "Crosley has mastered the art of the world's most powerful disarmer: self-deprecation. And so I read and read. It was great fun. I was happy, and not because I am thinking of cakes and bakeries. (Although one essay relates an incident involving cookies, Crosley's horrible boss and the time she decorated a cookie in the likeness of her horrible boss). No, I was happy because I felt I'd found a rare and kindred spirit." more... "Yeah And So Now What" on George Saunder's The Braindead Megaphone "It's been a long time since a book made my brain-goo jiggle like this one has." more... Chicago Tribune on Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project "But as always with good fiction, it's the prose—the skill, the flair with detail, the wit—that counts. The writing in "The Lazarus Project" is clean, sharp and wide, with a smell of turbid city water that kind of wakes up a reader. You feel a mastery that doesn't need to show itself off." "Maitresse" on Sloane Crosley's I Was Told There'd Be Cake "What I like—really like—is that Crosley's writing goes a step beyond hipster referentiality. She's admirably self-aware. She knows the pony thing is a weird, un-funny tick, and she spends some time thinking about why she does it and how to move on from it." more... The Washington Post on Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project "The Lazarus Project, the masterful new novel from the Bosnian-American writer Aleksandar Hemon, opens with a passage that recalls the invocations of epic poetry: 'The time and place,' Hemon tells us, 'are the only things I am certain of: March 2, 1908, Chicago'...The structure of The Lazarus Project is ingenious. Alternating chapters give us the story of Lazarus's killing (the story Brik is writing) and the story of Brik's own journey in search of Lazarus. Then, as the novel progresses, these narratives begin, eerily, to merge." more... The New York Times on Meg Wolitzer's The Ten-Year Nap "With 'The Ten-Year Nap,' [Meg] Wolitzer decided that women who weren't necessarily leading lives of bold action could still be the subject of muscular fiction. 'What if you wrote what you'd seen, the way people write about war?' she said. 'What if you wrote about what you were seeing about women and children, even though maybe it was hopelessly uncool and wasn't the big male world?'" more... Associated Press on David Goldblatt's The Ball is Round "The comprehensive effort of English sports writer David Goldblatt is a masterful reminder of what makes the game so gripping for those who partake, and what a grip the game has taken on the world...Some of Goldblatts finest moments come when the author luxuriates in the bright glow of soccer's simple, radiant beauty. Scattered throughout The Ball Is Round are precious vignettes from key moments in the games history. These are a showcase of what the game is all about and a showcase for Goldblatts formidable crispness...Its most passionate supporters would tell you that there are many moments in soccer that lend themselves to such artful and suspenseful prose. It is to their benefit—if not yet the American masses—that Goldblatt has taken up the task." more... The New York Times on James McBride's Song Yet Sung "McBride is excellent on the unusual social nuances of the backwater that was the antebellum Eastern Shore...[A] well-designed, gripping plot. One often risks turning the pages so fast as to miss some of the richness and subtlety of the writing. McBride has a good ear for period black dialect and a deft touch with all sorts of dialogue...In Song Yet Sung, McBride has captured a version of [Edward P.] Jones's dispassionate tone, which can deliver the cauterizing power of anger without the corrosive power of bitterness. That's a radically new way of telling this old story, and it just might turn out to be balm for a wound that has so far stubbornly refused to heal." more... Blogcritics.org on Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map "Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good For You and writer for Wired and Discover, skillfully treats the accounts of these 'very different men'—Dr. John Snow and Reverend Henry Whitehead—first as they respond independently to the cholera outbreak to seek the source, and then as their paths are increasingly interwoven and single-stranded to a single purpose in walking the streets and mapping the disease to determine who was dying, who was surviving—and where—to solve the mystery of how the cholera spread." more... USA Today on James McBride's Song Yet Song "Set in 1850, it deals with slavery—not just its brutality, but its moral complexities as a business, which is how McBride came to see it. His novel calls slavery 'the Trade,' as in 'the trading of souls.'" more... The New York Times on Brooklyn Was Mine "The jealous ownership implied by the word 'mine' suggests that (à la Walt Whitman) to live in Brooklyn is both to claim possession of a milieu and to be possessed by it. The contributors make the place more sought after and, by a handy symbiosis, the place makes them cool." more... San Francisco Chronicle on Sylvia Sellers-García's When the Ground Turns in Its Sleep "The lesson When the Ground Turns in Its Sleep gleans from these Guatemalan folk narratives is, interestingly, what makes it work as a distinctly American novel." more... Nylon on Brooklyn Was Mine "The bridge, Coney Island, Prospect Park, the pizza, oh my God, the pizza...the attributes run on, not to mention that Brooklyn is currently, and arguably, New York's most literary borough...a nostalgic, elegant, funny, and wonderfully diverse collection to read—especially while riding the F and L trains." more... Slate on Shalom Auslander's Foreskin's Lament Shalom Auslander's losing-his-religion memoir, Foreskin's Lament, is unorthodox in every sense of the word... The Los Angeles Times on Amir Aczel's The Jesuit and the Skull Aczel, who has written on key figures in mathematics and science, is gifted at explaining complex concepts and introducing the men and women who first articulated them in fast-paced, story-driven accounts. For example, he makes good use of the mysterious disappearance of the Peking Man during the chaotic first days of World War II, an episode reminiscent of "The Da Vinci Code." more... The New York Times on Shalom Auslander's Foreskin's Lament "Mr. Auslander is no longer observant, but he is still a believer, and he believes in a wrathful, vengeful God who takes things personally and is not at all pleased when someone leaves the fold and writes an angry and very funny book about it." more... Entertainment Weekly on George Saunders' The Braindead Megaphone "Some novelists seem to make great reporters. Two of the best journalists of the last 50 years are Norman Mailer and David Foster Wallace; their literary nonfiction is jaw-droppingly good, the equal of their fiction. Maybe it's time to add noted short-story writer George Saunders to this short list." more... The New York Times on Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao "Funny, street-smart and keenly observed...An extraordinarily vibrant book that's fueled by adrenaline-powered prose...A book that decisively establishes [Diaz] as one of contemporary fiction's most distinctive and irresistible new voices." more... Time Magazine on Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao "In 1996 a young Dominican-American writer named Junot Díaz published a slender book of short stories called Drown. It was tender and tough and heartbreaking and all a first book of short stories is supposed to be, and he was hailed as the next great hope of American literature. Then Díaz more or less disappeared for 11 years, long enough for most readers to assume that, like most next great hopes of American literature, he wasn't coming back.
SF Gate on Martha Moody's The Office of Desire "Families are not always the people whose bloodline you share. Sometimes they are the random strangers you meet in life." more... The Los Angeles Times on Jenni Ferrari-Adler's Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant "What makes this book so arresting is... the clever way it arrives at the issue of how people deal with being alone." more... The Boston Globe on Fiona Neill's Slummy Mummy "[A] deftly executed domestic comedy. [Neill's] writing burbles along effortlessly. Her comic timing is excellent." more... The New York Times on Maxine Swann's Flower Children "Writing in lucid, crystalline prose that shifts back and forth from the first person to the third, [Maxine] Swann has expanded a short story... and turned it into a small gem of a novel, a novel that showcases her eye for detail, her psychological acuity, her ability to conjure up a particular place and time. She captures the incongruities of the 1970s counterculture as seen from the point of view of a young child, the shifting attitudes the narrator and her three siblings take toward the adult world as they slip-slide from childhood into adolescence, and the incalculable ways in which the passage of time colorizes the past." more... USA Today on The Last Summer of You (and Me) by Ann Brashares Ann Brashares, author of the popular Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series for young adults, matures as a writer and looks toward an older audience with The Last Summer (of You & Me). more... The New Yorker on The Verneys by Adrian Tinniswood The letters of the Verney family survive as the largest and most continuous collection of personal correspondence from seventeenth-century Britain, and Tinniswood draws on them to produce a lively, almost novelistic account of an aristocratic family. more... The Washington Post on Khaled Hosseini For Hosseini, life doesn't go forward so much as backward, as he continues to explore the psyche of the country he left as a little boy, avoiding three decades of war and mayhem by being the "nauseatingly fortunate" son of a diplomat who was already posted to Paris when the turmoil began. He did not escape Afghanistan so much as abandon it, and he returns there again in "A Thousand Splendid Suns" to reconcile his childhood's watercolor memories with reality's bloody tableau. more... Shaken & Stirred on Always by Nicola Griffith So, the official word is out that I nominated Nicola Griffith's Always for the summer round of the LitBlog Co-Op, and I'm going to do my best to try and convince you to read it NOW so you can hop over and participate in the discussion later on. more... San Francisco Chronicle on A Thousand Splendid Suns "With the publication of his second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini revisits Afghanistan for a compelling story that gives voice to the agonies and hopes of another group of innocents caught up in a war. The Kite Runner is a father-son story written from a male point of view, but this time around Hosseini tells of the experiences of the thousands of silent burqa-clad women of Afghanistan." more... Roses and Thorns on A Thousand Splendid Suns In his first novel, The Kite Runner, Hosseini created an instant classic, and he has done it again with A Thousand Splendid Suns. In this much-anticipated second novel, Hosseini's sharp, insightful prose has only gotten better. Like The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns is set against the backdrop of a war-torn Afghanistan from the days before the Soviet invasion, through the Taliban's reign of terror, to after September 11th and the reconstruction. Themes of violence, hope, faith, fear, and the power of human endurance resonate throughout the novel. more... Crazy Mountain Deluxe on Little Stalker I finished Jennifer Belle's Little Stalker and I have a toddler – I think that is quite an endorsement in itself. I will be reading High Maintenance soon. When I was in high school I love Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen this has a similar feel – except put broken mirrors all over it and make it absolutely heartbreakingly hilarious then you will get Little Stalker. more... Los Angeles Times on Flower Children by Maxine Swan Maxine Swann is keen on this youthful perspective, having employed it in her semi-autobiographical stories and her first novel, "Serious Girls." Her new novel, "Flower Children," relies mostly on a young girl to chronicle a deliriously hippie-like upbringing. The book is full of the visceral pleasures and anxieties of childhood – the tree-climbing, treasure-collecting, knee-scabbing of it all. more... Otto's Random Thoughts on Dinaw Mengestu What follows is a review of Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears published earlier this year by Riverhead Books. This is the first work of fiction I have reviewed here. Most fiction I read is genre rather than literary and merely entertaining. But, this book was exceptional. more... Popmatters Interviews Steven Johnson This idea of the "long zoom," a perspective that shifts back and forth from the macro- to the microcosm, organizes each of Steven Johnson's five books of cultural criticism and science journalism. As he explains below, Johnson deploys concepts borrowed from contemporary science and from literary theory, using these in particular to understand the way information – biological, cultural, or other – self-organizes as it moves along networks. more... Seattle Post-Intelligencer on Anne Lamott Anne Lamott
has turned her quirky California life into a touchstone for readers
all across the country. The 52-year-old writer from Marin County
has chronicled her life and its twists and turns (turning up pregnant,
getting sober, becoming a single mother, returning to the Christian
faith) in a string of best-sellers that have included "Operating
Instructions," "Traveling Mercies" and "Plan
B." |
 YOU'RE BUYING
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Me of Little Faith
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Last Summer (of You and Me)
I Was Told There'd Be Cake
American Eve
Johnny Bunko
The Ten-Year Nap The Kite Runner A Whole New Mind
The Teahouse Fire The New Kings of Nonfiction The Areas of My Expertise |
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Junot Díaz and his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao won The Mercantile Library Center for Fiction's
2007 John Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize. It was the second year the now annual prize has been awarded. It includes a $10,000 cash award.
You can read more about the prize 
