About.com Contemporary Literature

Oprah's 25 Books of Summer

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:22:45 +0000

Unsurprisingly, Oprah has a few book picks for Summer - 25 to be exact and a nice assortment. Here are three I will likely pick up:

A Meaningful Life by L.J. Davis
A reissue of L.J. Davis's 1971 comic novel in which a plumbing magazine editor and frustrated novelist takes on the renovation of a run-down mansion in a Brooklyn slum.

Plan Bee by Susan Brackney
There is some cause for alarm at the rate at which bees are disappearing around the world. Brackney, a beekeeper, illuminates the nature of this hero of the food chain.

Farm City by Novella Carpenter
A food writer's memoir of her squatter's garden in an Oakland, California ghetto is an inspiration to anyone who wishes to pursue the agricultural dream while remaining in the city limits.

Oprah's 25 Summer Book Picks

Whale Book takes BBC Samuel Johnson Prize

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:20:34 +0000

The BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction was yesterday awarded to Leviathan, Or The Whale, Philip Hoare's memoir of his life-long obsession and humanity's own fascination with whales.

The BBC Samuel Johnson Prize is the UK's most prestigious prize for nonfiction, a £20,000 award sponsored by the BBC and open to all nonfiction work in the realms of current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts.

The other books shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize were:

Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed (William Heinemann)
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre (Fourth Estate)
The Lost City of Z by David Grann(Simon and Schuster)
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes (HarperPress)
Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality by Manjit Kumar (Icon Books)

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:35:30 +0000

Critics loved Cleave's previous book, Incendiary. He also has a website, where he posts the columns he writes for The Guardian. They're funny, full of gentle, sarcastic humor about his family life - well written and fun to read, but not stunning. Little Bee, however, is stunning. Read more.

_{Photo credit: Simon and Schuster}

Friday's Endpapers

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:22:01 +0000

Ignore Everybody : And 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:03:29 +0000

Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity is the reincarnation of a piece Hugh MacLeod published years ago on his website entitled "How to Be Creative," which has been downloaded over a million times. It's a small book with large type and lots of pictures, but MacLeod squeezes a lot of meaning into this small package, as with his business card drawings. Read more.

_{Photo credit: Portfolio}

Read Infinite Jest With a Few Thousand of Your Closest Friends

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:27:24 +0000

What are you reading this Summer? You may want to join thousands of readers (including me) in a group "endurance reading event" by tackling David Foster Wallace's massive novel, Infinite Jest. Organized by writer Mathew Balden, Infinite Summer begins June 21 and runs the duration of the Summer (or whenever you finish the novel). Not only will Infinite Jest guides be blogging about it at the website, there are a whole host of online collaboration resources including a discussion forum, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account (you can also follow #infsum hashtag on Twitter).

Infinite Jest (1996) is widely considered David Foster Wallace's masterwork, a nearly-1,000 page tome followed by another 100 pages of endnotes (of the not-to-be-skipped variety). The novel also sports the lexicological complexities and and stylistic experimentation that have cemented Wallace's reputation as one of the greatest writers of our time. It's a big read.

Like many others, the mere heft of Infinite Jest has been enough to keep me from reading it for some number of years. I don't know when I bought my copy, but I do know that I had to brush a considerable layer of dust off the cover for this endeavor. The momentum of a massive, global, online book club is exactly the sort of kick in the pants I needed to overcome my inertia.

Everything I've ever read leads me to believe that you either love Infinite Jest or you hate it. I've a feeling I'll be one of the former, but there is no better way to find out than by reading it with a few thousand of my closest friends right now. Will you join us?

Visit www.infinitesummer.org, and get started!

Flint & Silver: A Prequel to Treasure Island By John Drake

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:00:57 +0000

Flint and Silver is the first in a series of prequels John Drake is planning to the much loved children's book Treasure Island. This rollicking tale of pirates and buried treasure is not a children's book, however. Drake has penned a wonderful beginning to the story that is finished in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, but with an eye on the adult reader who perhaps still longs for adventure on the high seas. Read more.

_{Photo credit: Simon & Schuster}

Friday's Endpapers

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:48:00 +0000

A round-up of some of the week's book news:

R.I.P. Kamala Das Nominate your favorite beach reads ever at NPR.org
Listen to the eyeonbooks.com interview with Laila Lalami
Can Twitter save publishing?
Judge blocks J.D. Salinger Tribute
World Literature Weekend at the British Museum
Penguin Group launches From the Publisher's Office
Tim Winton Wins Australian Literary Award

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:58:42 +0000

"It began as a small flurry of poems" allegedly written by Billy the Kid, according to Michael Ondaatje's lyrical collage of poetry, photography, and fiction that make up this portrait of an old West legend. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid was Ondaatje's first novel, originally published in 1970 to critical acclaim, and rereleased here by Vintage. Read more.

_{Photo credit: Vintage Books}

Reading by the Digital Pool

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 17:40:39 +0000

Just weeks before Simon and Schuster announced a deal to sell e-books on the document-sharing website Scribd.com, this Wired article from Clive Thompson points to the book as "the last bastion of the old business model�the only major medium that still hasn't embraced the digital age."

Of course music and film went digital more quickly than books. While books were still dipping their toes in the digital pool, music and film were pushed in by forces like Napster and YouTube. One wonders what form the marrriage of pixels and publishing will take. Thompson points to projects like Book Glutton and Doris Lessing's online version of The Golden Notebook, both of which make possible a communal sort of book discovery through web-based annotation.

It's hard to envision what the publishing industry's digital tipping point will look like, though I'm certain that it isn't merely the porting over of reading to devices like the Amazon Kindle. Whatever it is, I'm all over it! Though when that time comes, I'll still find refuge in the solitary pleasure that is reading ink on paper.

_{Photo by Annie Mole}