Web Exclusive Reviews: Week of 5/12/2008 05/12/2008
This week: the return of the Moonwatchers! Plus Georgio Armani, love songs gone wrong, Patricia Cornwell's FBI lover, and three delicious travelogues. Plus: poets from Canada and Russia, the Simpsons way of worship, and the new spaghetti noir.
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From a Real-life Lara Croft 05/12/2008
The White Mary Kira Salak . Holt , $25 (384p) ISBN 978-0-8050-8847-2 A young reporter embarks on a dangerous adventure in Salak's gripping debut novel, a blend of Heart of Darkness and Tomb Raider. Like her protagonist, Marika Vecera, award-winning journalist Salak has traveled solo—and narrowly escaped death—in the world's most remote and terrifying places, including war-torn Co...
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Children's Book Reviews: Week of 5/12/2008 05/12/2008
Picture Books Such a Silly Baby! Steffanie and Richard Lorig , illus. by Amanda Shepherd. Chronicle , $15.99 ISBN 978-0-8118-5134-3 As preschoolers will undoubtedly note with glee, the title of this book should be “Such a Silly Mommy!” After all, it's Mommy who can't manage to go on an outing without bringing home an animal instead of her offspring.
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Fiction Reviews: Week of 5/12/2008 05/12/2008
Goldengrove Francine Prose . Harper , $24.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-06-621411-5 In Prose's deeply touching and absorbing 15th novel, narrator Nico, 13, comes upon Gerard Manley Hopkins's “Spring and Fall” (which opens “Margaret, are you grieving/ Over Goldengrove unleaving?”) in her father's upstate New York bookstore, also named Goldengrove.
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NBCC Suggests Spring and Summer "Good Reads" by Craig Morgan Teicher - 05/05/2008
The third installment of the National Book Critics Circle's "Good Reads" list includes new books by Jhumpa Lahiri, Honor Moore and Marie Howe.
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The Importance of Being God by Adam P. Knave - 05/05/2008
Though writers are known for their egos, few have come out and literally declared themselves God. New Wave fantasist and poet Thomas M. Disch does just that in The Word of God or, Holy Writ Rewritten (Reviews, May 5). Why declare yourself God and why now? God is eternal and eternally relevant. One of the wonderful things about being God is you can say such nonsense and it's all true.
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The Spy Thriller Rules by Paul Goat Allen - 05/05/2008
Central Europe provides the locale for Rules of Deception (p. 43), California novelist Christopher Reich's new spy novel. You were born in Tokyo and have lived in Switzerland. In what way do you think your experiences abroad have affected your writing? I've always loved the “buzz” away from home, a stranger in a foreign land.
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ShelfTalker: A Children's Bookseller's Blog Alison Morris, Children's Book Buyer, Wellesley Booksmith, Wellesley, Mass. July 31, 2007 Tote Couture
In my previous post, I mentioned the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows totebags th... More
