Archive for May 2006

Stroll the Hay Festival with Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is a literary goddess to many. The author of such modern marvels as The Handmaid’s Tale and The Blind Assassin is one of our bravest, most prodigious authors. We all know that. But did you also know that she’s an apparent fiend for decadent dairy products? That’s only one of the interesting nuggets […]

Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War, by Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss

Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War, written by Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss, is a horrific and truly haunting account of atrocities committed by members of an elite recon platoon in Vietnam, less than a year before the 1968 massacre at My Lai.
Expanding on their Pulitzer Prize–winning series of articles published in […]

Will the Big Read be a big yawn?

Standby literary classics will receive more moments in the sun as the National Endowment for the Arts gears up to shell out substantial bucks to “encourage citizens to read for pleasure and enlightenment” as part of a program called The Big Read.
Pilot reading programs are underway at nine libraries and community institutions, where readers are […]

Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story, by Kurt Eichenwald

The story of the improbable rise and infamous fall of Enron, Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story ends with Kenneth Lay (former Enron chairman and CEO) and Jeffrey Skilling (former Enron president and later CEO) in handcuffs and in court. More than a year after the Enron train wreck of corporate greed and stupidity was […]

Brick Lane, by Monica Ali

What could not be changed must be borne. And since nothing could be changed, everything had to be borne. That principle ruled her life. It was mantra, fettle, and challenge. So that, at the age of thirty-four, after she had been given three children and had one taken away, when she had a futile husband […]

The Audies honor Harry Potter, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and more

Presented by the Audio Publishers Association, The Audies were awarded May 19 to “celebrate excellence in audio publishing.” Following are some highlighted awards and their respective winners:

Hall of Fame Award: The Harry Potter Audiobook Series, by J.K. Rowling
Audiobook of the Year: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Tertiary Phase, by Douglas Adams
Nonfiction, Abridged: Luckiest […]

Rowling, Irving, and King on Radio City Music Hall marquee

Maybe this is the literary equivalent of seeing the Rockettes: improbable, odd, and kind of dazzling.
J.K. Rowling announced on her Web site that she will be joining John Irving and Stephen King in New York City on the stage of Radio City Music Hall, home of those famous dancing ladies. The literary trio will be […]

British book club spotlights Nick Hornby

Is Oprah’s Book Club not blue-blooded enough for you? Are you itching to get away—say, to England?—from your neighbors and their never-ending discussion of The Da Vinci Code? Well, soar across the pond with Culture Vulture (Guardian Unlimited’s pop culture blog) and join a very British book club.
The Guardian’s Book Club features a particular book […]

Great American novels and a few challengers from abroad

Ask 125 eminent (and graying) writers and editors, as The New York Times did, to name the single greatest American novel of the last 25 years and what do you get? A lot of arguing about what constitutes “American,” what constitutes “a novel,” and what constitutes “great,”—not to mention a few questions about whether it […]

No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy

I’m sometimes a sucker for a stark, suspenseful western. Well, I mean “contemporary westerns,” which are less spaghetti and more pesto, less Louis L’Amour and more Annie Proulx. There’s Postcards, where Proulx surreptitiously unspools the westward flight and simmering turmoil of a man who’s (accidentally?) murdered his fiancée. There’s Wizard and Glass, the captivating, gunslinging, […]