New Book Roundup: July/August 2008

This is the latest I think I've ever posted a roundup. Life has been crazy, but reading must go on. In order for that to happen, we need good books to choose from. The reviews from July and August announced great bounties for the Fall. Here's what looked most tantalizing to yours truly.

TOP PICKS

Anathem by Neal Stephenson
I started reading Stephenson's latest in a bookstore and got drawn in quickly. This may be the first Stephenson doorstopper I actually attempt to read. And reviews have been excellent.

Dark Banquet: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood-Feeding Creatures by Bill Schutt
Now this title just appeals to the 12 year old in me, anticipating every gross-out detail. Just read the rave reviews for a taste!

The Black Tower by Louis Bayard
Bayard's latest historical adventure has master detective Vidocq investigating the whereabouts of Marie Antoinette's lost son in 1818 France.

FICTION

NOVELS
2666 by Roberto Bolano
I've read that along with Savage Detectives this is Bolano's other great masterpiece. I've been sticking to his shorter work so far, but I'd like to tackle one of the biggies eventually.

The Little Book by Selden Edwards
Quirky time travel story that takes its American hero back to the Vienna of 1897, seems to be catching on with readers.

Chicago by Alaa Al Aswany
Seems like the author of The Yacoubian Building has got a good groundswell of interest going for his latest novel, a story of culture clash in post-9/11 Chicago.

Daphne by Justine Picardie
Inspired by Daphne du Maurier's fascination with the Brontes.

Sicilian Tragedee: A Novel by Ottavio Cappellani
A Sicilian-set "madcap comedy" that revolves around Shakespeare's work, and crazy lovers of various persuasions. Sounds fun.

Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam
Barbara Hoffert at Library Journal has good taste. She recommends this book. I ask no further questions.

A Week in October by Elizabeth Subercaseaux
Inventive Chilean novel of domestic subterfuge that plays with form. Booklist: "sublime."

Fault Lines by Nancy Huston
A bestseller in Europe, Huston's much-praised novel works its way back through the stories of four generations of a family ending with a WWII era shocker.

The Only Son by Stephane Audeguy
French novel that tells the story of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's older brother.

Esther's Inheritance by Sándor Márai
The works of Hungarian Márai (who died in California in 1989) have rather quietly been getting released to acclaim these last few years. One of these days I'm going to take the plunge and check him out.

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
Booker shortlisted, and it's probably not a bad idea to just pick up a book anytime you have no idea how to pronounce the author's name.

Victorine by Maude Hutchins
My Fantoms by Theophile Gautier
The Inverted World by Christopher Priest
Trio of promising reprints from NYRB: The Hutchins is a pre-sexual revolution (1959) tale of a young girl's sexual awakening; Gautier's is a collection of "impossible" fictions from a friend of Hugo and Baudelaire; then, a science fiction classic from the author of The Prestige? Sold!

The Mirror in the Well by Micheline Aharonian Marcom
A short novel that "explores the mysteries of sexual obsession." Booklist's star reviewer Donna Seaman compares her to Anais Nin, Annie Ernaux and Kate Braverman. (Hmm, now I have a couple more names to look up.)

The Glass of Time by Michael Cox
Sequel to The Meaning of Night.

Homage to Czerny: Studies in Virtuoso Technique by Gert Jonke
I admire Europeans for being able to do something interesting with novels in under 200 pages.

Death with Interruptions by Jose Saramago
What would happen if one day people stopped dying? I've never read any Saramgo, but that still seems like a recognizably Saramago-esque conceit.

The New Annotated Dracula by Bram Stoker
From the folks who produced the beautiful annotated Sherlock Holmes. Is that Santa's sled I hear?

SHORT STORIES
Ghosts of Chicago by John McNally
I've seen nary a blurb about this new book anywhere, though the author's novel America's Report Card was a critical success. Who dropped the ball on this one?

Ant King: And Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum
Songs of praise for this collection from Cory Doctorow and Booklist's Ray Olson. Reason enough to give this a try.

The Best of Lucius Shepard
Apparently Shepard is celebrated as a fine writer of dark fantasy, whatever that is. Sounds interesting.

SF/FANTASY
Orcs by Stan Nicholls
But have you considered things from the Orc point of view? Hmm?

An Evil Guest by Gene Wolfe
This is a bewildering novel to sum up from reviews. It apparently belongs to every genre ever invented and is a mashup of period influences from most decades of the 20C. Sounds interesting, but I always wonder where a fiction crosses the line from interestingly weird to weirdness for its own sake, which is usually tedious. Hopefully Wolfe has figured all this out.

More Noteworthy Fiction:
Holding Pattern by Jeffery Renard Allen
Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman
Something to Tell You by Hanif Kureishi
The Great Weaver from Kashmir by Halladr Laxness
Given Day by Dennis Lehane
Knowledge of Hell by Antonio Lobo Antunes
Serena by Ron Rash

NONFICTION

ARTS and MUSIC
Have You Seen ... ?: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films by David Thomson
Mr. Thomson is some kind of super-crank. He's often insightful and always interesting (definitely worthwhile), but he can be wrong like nobody's business (see anything he's written about John Ford). Still, I'd love to see this book - I always think critics are at their best talking about what they love.

Patronizing the Arts by Marjorie Garber
What an interesting topic for Garber. If anyone can get to the heart of the perennial problem of the arts in America, I'll bet she can.

Scorsese by Ebert by Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert has long had a special affinity for Scorsese, so it's only fitting to see him publish a monograph on the topic.

John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman
Sounds like the first major bio of Lennon, that ne plus ultra of Beatleness.

Fear of Music: The Greatest 261 Albums Since Punk and Disco by Garry Mulholland
I like list books. Yes, I'm part of the problem, I know.

The Jazz Ear: Conversations over Music by Ben Ratliff
Gleanings from interviews with Jazz stars.

LITERATURE
Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex ed. by Ellen Sussman
Four-Letter Words: And Other Secrets of a Crossword Insider by Michelle Arnot
In the former, various writers (including Antonya Nelson, Pagan Kennedy and Jonathan Ames) take on those four-letter words so near and dear to our ever-cursin' mouths. As for the latter, I come and go through crossword phases, but this sounds useful as well as interesting.

The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Book Publishers, Their Editors, and Authors by Al Silverman
Call me a nerd, but this sounds interesting. (And besides, you'd only be stating the obvious.)

One Secret Thing by Sharon Olds
Olds is wonderful. She's one of the few poets whose new books tempt me to check them out.

Frank O'Hara: Selected Poems
This new selection of O'Hara poems has gotten some very impressive write-ups.

The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English by Henry Hitchings
Righting the Mother Tongue : From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling by David Wolman
In a review of the Hitchings, I learned that the word "pajamas" came from India, but it makes sense. Nifty. Imagine what I could learn from the full book? The Wolman promises to tell "the cockamamie story of English spelling." Ok. Yeah. Someone do, please explain this mess.

Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the Future of English by Mark Abley
And now that we know how we got to this point, what's next?

All Art Is Propaganda : Critical Essays by George Orwell
Facing Unpleasant Facts : Narrative Essays by George Orwell
Reissues of classic essays. "Such, Such Were the Joys" and "Confessions of a Book Reviewer" sound particularly good.

Alphabet Juice : The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Therof: Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences: With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory by
Even with a huge subtitle I'm still not sure what this is, but in this case maybe that's part of the fun.

Casanova: Actor Lover Priest Spy by Ian Kelly
Casanova had a stint as a librarian? Makes sense to me, actually. Books are famously erotic.

HISTORY
Madame de Stael: The First Modern Woman by Francine du Plessix Gray
Don't know why exactly, but this book sounds fascinating to me, and I'm no fan of biographies in general.

Profiles in Folly: History's Worst Decisions and Why They Went Wrong by Alan Axelrod
Sounds like the makings of some very fine Monty Python sketches. I just love titles like this.

Children of the Revolution: The French, 1799-1914 by Robert Gildea
Who can resist the story of those crazy French and their revolutions? Pas moi, that's for durned sure.

Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered by Peter S. Wells
The Dark Ages may not be such a bad place to visit after all, but I still wouldn't want to live there.

Old World, New World: Great Britain and America from the Beginning by Kathleen Burk
I still remember rolling my eyes and gently trying to explain things to my 6th grade deskmate who leaned over to me, confused, murmuring, "But I thought the British were our enemies?" If only this book had been handy.

POLITICS
The Opinion Makers: An Insider Reveals How Media Polls Distort Elections and Manipulate Democracy by David W. Moore
Everybody's working the refs these days, and who can blame them? They're lousy.

Taking on the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga
Kos does seem like one bright guy. He's given me hope on at least one recent occasion.

SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY
Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End... by Philip Plait
Forget the bad Hollywood versions, here's the scoop on all the Apocalypses we could be in for.

Planet Google: One Company's Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know by Randall Stross
Google scares me a little bit. You?

Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators by William Stolzenburg
Perhaps it's true what they say about it coming down to us, the rats, the pigeons and the roaches. The mosquitoes, the Jellyfish, hmm, who else would you invite to the party?

MISC.
Numerati by Stephen Baker
Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters by Bill Tancer
Just what are they doing with all the data that companies' web sites are collecting from us online? Hmm? And just what are you neighbors up to online? I've seen that Mrs. Kravtiz's office light on pretty late across the street. Both these books sounds fascinating.

The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chroniclesed. by Jeff Martin
Sounds funny. Includes a piece by Jim DeRogatis.

The Big Necessity by Rose George
Eww. Gross.

Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell
I wonder how often Sarah has to endure, "I'd like to buy a Vowell" jokes when signing books. And is it just me or does she have the smuggest author photo of any living writer? She's probably an ok person, though.

Counterknowledge by Damian Thompson
As far as I'm concerned, we need as many people attacking pseudonews and pseudolearning as are willing to take up the call.

More Noteworthy Nonfiction:
Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World by Sharon Waxman
Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life by Paul Mariani
We're Going to See the Beatles!: An Oral History of Beatlemania as Told by the Fans Who Were There by Garry Berman
Samuel Johnson: A Biography by Peter Martin
This I Believe II: More Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women ed. by Jay Allison, Dan Gediman
John Ashbery: Collected Poems 1956-1987 by John Ashbery
Versailles: A Biography of a Palace by Tony Spawforth
The Decline of Men: How the American Male Is Tuning Out, Giving Up, and Flipping Off His Future by Guy Garcia
Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl by Stacey O'Brien
The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril by Eugene Jarecki
World of Letters: Yale University Press, 1908-2008 by Nicholas A. Basbanes
Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926-1933 ed. by Joan Simon and Brigitte Leal
Searching for Schindler: A Memoir by Thomas Keneally
Rock and Roll Cage Match: Music's Greatest Rivalries, Decided by Sean Manning
Fabergé's Eggs: The Extraordinary Story of the Masterpieces That Outlived an Empire by Toby Faber
There's a Riot Going On: Revolutionaries, Rock Stars, and the Rise and Fall of the '60s by Peter Doggett
Green, Inc. by Christine MacDonald
Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson by David S. Reynolds
Hollywood under Siege: Martin Scorsese, the Religious Right, and the Culture Wars by Thomas R. Lindlof
Master of Ceremonies: A Tale of Love, Murder, Rollerskates & Chippendales by David Henry Sterry
Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace
The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Book Publishers, Their Editors, and Authors by Al Silverman
Save the World on Your Own Time by Stanley Fish
Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life by Wynton Marsalis with Geoffrey C. Ward

Of Gay Interest:

Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel by Edmund White
I gather this is a briefer biography than White's Genet, but the match of subject and writer seems to have been made in publishing heaven.

Oscar Wilde and a Game Called Murder by Gyles Brandreth
Second installment in the mystery series, and critics are saying it's even better than the first.

Letters to a Stranger by Thomas James
Apparently this poet, who committed suicide at a young age 30 years ago, has a cult following.

What Can I Do When Everything's on Fire? : A Novel by Antonio Lobo Antunes
"Epic" story of a Lisbon drag queen.

Twisted Head : An Italian American Memoir by Carl Capotorto
Growing up gay in the Bronx in the 70s. One of the best book cover designs of the year.

Also Noteworthy:
Smile As They Bow by Nu Nu Yi
Master of Ceremonies: A Tale of Love, Murder, Rollerskates & Chippendales by David Henry Sterry
Oscar Wilde and a Game Called Murder by Gyles Brandreth
Dancing In The Low Country by James Villas
Half a Crown by Jo Walton
Only the Lonely by Gary Zebrun

Graphic Work:

Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! by Art Spiegelman
Reprint of acclaimed work from the late 70s. It's Spiegelman, people. You know you want it.

Good-Bye by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
PW made the enticing comment that this grandfather of Japanese alt-comics "reads as if Haruki Murakami decided to try his hand at Manga."

The Burma Chronicles by Guy Delisle
Another reportorial graphic novel on life in Asia from Delisle.

Pocket Full of Rain: And Other Stories by Jason
Jason's got a fun light style, and I'd like to read more of his books.

Also Noteworthy:
Flight, Volume 5 by Kazu Kibuishi
A Treasury of 20th Century Murder: The Lindbergh Child - America's Hero and the Crime of the Century by Rick Geary

New Book Roundup: May/June 2008

What was all that hooey earlier in the year when the buzz had it that all the big books would be coming out way before the election and the Fall season would be quiet? There are lots of big books coming, many of which are listed below (and many of which aren't, because they haven't been reviewed yet, including forthcoming books by John Updike, Toni Morrison, and Thomas Friedman).

TOP PICKS

Home by Marilynne Robinson
A companion novel to Gilead? OK, now I'm even more motivated to read that novel. I adored Housekeeping (even liked the movie a lot), and I look forward to catching up with the suddenly (by her standards) prolific Robinson.

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
I was charmed by the Moomins when I came across them last year, and this short novel for adults sounds lovely, the episodic story of a girl and her grandmother on an island in the Gulf of Finland. As it's a reissue and not a new work, reviews have been scarce but glowing.

FICTION

NOVELS

To Siberia by Per Petterson
The success of Petterson's Out Stealing Horses was one of the more surprising publishing events of the last couple years, and this novel sounds excellent, if rather bleak. It was actually written before Horses, in 1996, and has been available in English before, but Petterson's success warrants a re-launching of the title.

What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn
I'm late in posting about this book, which was out in June, but reviews have been steadily glowing. It's about the impact of the disappearance of a young girl on a group of characters. I know, bleak, right? Only that reviews say it has a sense of humor and surprising intelligence.

Train to Trieste by Domnica Radulescu
Consistently solid reviews for this story of a young woman whose love is complicated by the politics of the Ceausescu era in Romania.

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
I'd originally skipped over this post-9/11 novel featuring cricket players in Brooklyn (call me crazy), but it received some spectacular reviews (Dwight Garner in the Times and James Wood in The New Yorker) and has become a surprise hit, compared by all to The Great Gatsby.

America America by Ethan Canin
Conventional wisdom has it that Canin is a great short story writer but struggles with novels and that this is his finest attempt yet. That's where the consensus ends.

Man in the Dark by Paul Auster
Early reviews are mostly very strong for the latest novel by Auster. It's the first thing he's written in a while that I can imagine wanting to read.

The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti
Orphans and scallywags in this historical picaresque that sounds a bit like Robert Louis Stevenson or Charles Dickens.

Goldengrove by Francine Prose
It's early yet, and reviews are still coming in, but after having read Reading Like a Writer, there's no way I could skip over this novel.

Indignation by Philip Roth
Another gem of a novella from Roth, set in Winesburg, Ohio. Stellar reviews.

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
The reviews are lining up for what looks, to me, like a book that would appeal to the hip fiction crowd. "A romance spanning centuries" was the turn of phrase (thank you, Kirkus) that finally made this book sound potentially appealing to me.

Gossip of the Starlings by Nina de Gramont
Another girls' prep-school story, but it sounds good, has been compared to Donna Tartt who I really need to get around to reading one of these days, as it seems many authors want to make her particular lightning strike again.

Being Written: A Novel by William Conescu
Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
I was quite surprised to see Amazon pick Galchen's book as a highlight of the month. Along with Tom McCarthy's Remainder, these seem to be part of a minor trend (back?) towards philosophical / postmodern / metafictional novels. David Foster Wallace, are you working on something new, by any chance?

Timeskipper by Stefano Benni
This "quasi-fantasy," or work of Italian "magical realism" (as two reviews have it) sounds very Italian and rather interesting.

The Club of Angels by Luis Fernando Verissimo
Celebrated writer's novella is back in print, and Booklist warns us not to miss this second chance.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
A hit in Europe, this philosophical French novel sounds rather strange, with one critic calling it "precious" and another calling it "elegant" and "refined."

When We Were Romans by Matthew Kneale
Written from a nine-year-old's point of view, bad spelling and all, this is the story of an English family which flees to Rome to escape a stalker father. Some absolute raves.

The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant
A rough tale of crime and passion (and Depression Era bootlegging) which features Sherwood Anderson as a secondary character. Based on a true story?

The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls by John R. King
Some raves for this imagining of what happened after that legendary encounter. Sherlockians know what I mean.

SHORT STORIES
The Development by John Barth
I read one of these stories in Best American Short Stories last year where it was one of the highlights, comic yet thoughtful.

A Better Angel by Chris Adrian
I was intrigued by Adrian's novel The Children's Hospital yet put off by its density - wouldn't mind getting a shorter introduction to his work, and he definitely sounds like an author with consistent themes and interests.

Old Devil Moon by Christopher Fowler
Includes a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, "The Lady Downstairs," told from the perspective of the detective's landlady. Sounds fun.

Vermeer's Milkmaid by Manuel Rivas
Galicia, Spain, is the setting for this collection of 16 stories.

Wifeshopping by Steven Wingate
Sounds like a collection worth picking up, at least for the highlights.

Young Irelanders by Gerard Donovan
I've been meaning to read something by this Irish writer, been hearing good things. A story of two from this collection might just make me a fan.

SF/FANTASY
Word of God: Or, Holy Writ Rewritten by Thomas M. Disch
Sounds like a typically heady outing from the (late) cult author.

Replay by Ken Grimwood
After a rave recommendation on NPR, this work of fantasy from the 80s, about a couple who get to live out the classic "if you could go back to your childhood knowing what you know now..." scenario, has started selling like hotcakes.

The Veil of Gold by Kim Wilkins
Seems like one of the best-reviewed standalone fantasies of the year, and the Russian backdrop seems like a wonderful choice for the fantasy genre. (Yes, I know she isn't the first to use it, but still, it's fresher than the usual Anglo-Nordic backdrop.)

Ink and Steel: A Novel of the Promethean Age and Hell and Earth: A Novel of the Promethean Age by Elizabeth Bear
Two-part story of magic in the Elizabethan court, featuring Christopher Marlowe and Will Shakespeare.

More Noteworthy Fiction:
Darker Mask: Heroes from the Shadows ed. by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers
Death of the Author by Gilbert Adair
Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno
Diary of a Blood Donor by Mati Unt
Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
A Quiet Adjustment by Benjamin Markovits
Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue
Slumberland by Paul Beatty
Two Marriages by Phillip Lopate
Valfierno: The Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa by Martin Caparros
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection ed. by Gardner Dozois

NONFICTION

ARTS and MUSIC
Put on a Happy Face by Charles Strouse
I've seen three raves for this Broadway memoir from the man who wrote Annie and Bye Bye Birdie. Booklist: refreshingly "free of ego and bitterness."

Harlan Ellison's Watching by Harlan Ellison (intro by Leonard Maltin)
SF writer Ellison wrote film criticism?

We're Going to See the Beatles!: An Oral History of Beatlemania as Told by the Fans Who Were There by Garry Berman
Yes, what exactly was going through the minds of those crowds of screaming kids we see in the famous footage? I've actually pondered that a few times.

Touch Me, I'm Sick: The 52 Creepiest Love Songs You've Ever Heard by Tom Reynolds
That title says it all, except that it's a follow-up to the similar I Hate Myself and Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You've Ever Heard.

The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature by Daniel J. Levitin
New book from the writer of This Is Your Brain on Music.

LITERATURE
Catching Life by the Throat: How to Read Poetry and Why ed. by Josephine Hart
The Poem I Turn To: Actors and Directors Present Poetry That Inspires Them ed. by Jason Shinder
Both books comes with cd recordings of interesting people reading poems, including (in the former case) actors like Ralph Fiennes and Juliet Stevenson and (in the latter) Lili Taylor, Mary Louise Parker and many more.

Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot by Anna R. Beer
I had no idea this year was the Milton quadricentenary (December 20, 1608). Well, hell. Get the party started early, I say.

A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern-day Iraq by Fernando Baez
A history of book destruction which apparently includes a chapter devoted to fictional bibliocasts (there, I learned a new word today).

How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them--A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman
I might just be an expert on this subject. Still, I'm betting the authors have some more useful advice.

The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington by Jennet Conant
Roald Dahl, some sort of undercover spy? Apparently. (Though I think I've just exaggerated a bit.)

The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh in Love and War by David Lebedoff
A slim double-biography that has contrasted its two prestigious subjects to acclaim so far in the review process.

White Heat : The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson by Brenda Wineapple
Study of a notable friendship between two literary figures, from the author of the acclaimed Hawthorne: A Life.

1001 Books for Every Mood by Hallie Ephron
The burgeoning readers advisory field sees another entry - sounds like an interesting browse.

HISTORY and POLITICS
The Wrecking Crew by Thomas Frank
Few books have been as profitably debated as Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?, and his new book is garnering excellent notices so far.

Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered by Peter S. Wells
Great reviews so far, for this book that promises to change our minds about those mysterious centuries - apparently, we've been biased by the Roman point of view.

SCIENCE
Upgrade Me: Our Amazing Journey to Human 2.0 by Brian Clegg
Looking forward to the day you could live forever and upload data like a computer?

Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst
A study of alternative medicines that determines they are - guess what? - pretty much worthless. Oprah, get *these* guys on your show.

The Healthy Skeptic: Cutting through the Hype about Your Health by Robert Davis
The more I read about health claims, the more I'm convinced that most of the coverage we read (even of academic studies) is more light than heat.

The Science of Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn't--and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger by Daniel Gardner
I'm always tempted by books that sound like Barry Glassner's The Culture of Fear, though this one is coming at our irrational fears from a completely different angle.

13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time by Michael Brooks
Dark matter, cold fusion, life on Mars, the placebo effects and other scientific quandaries are considered.

MISC.
Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You by Sam Gosling
A psychology professor looks at our relationship to our possessions, an interesting topic well worth some contemplation, seeing as how advertising constantly manipulates our desires along these lines.

How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken by Daniel Mendelsohn
A collection of essays mostly from the New York Review of Books, covering books, movies, and plays as diverse as Middlesex, The Glass Menagerie and Kill Bill.

Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes by Jim Holt
This is going to make me sound humor-impaired, I know, but if you really think about it, aren't jokes strange? Do you suppose any other species has them?

Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex ed. by Ellen Sussman
From what I understand, this is not a reference book at all but an anthology of fine contemporary writers (including Pagan Kennedy and Jonathan Ames) writing on sex-themed topics like "bisexuality," "kissing," and "adultery."

Dangerous Joy of Dr. Sex and Other True Stories by Pagan Kennedy
It's not actually all about sex (I know, drat) but is a collection of the writer's essays and articles. Sounds like an interesting collection.

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says about Us) by Tom Vanderbilt
Weirdly, this book is one of the more hyped books of the season. Will readers go for it? With gas prices being what they are, perhaps it's a good time to stay home and just read about driving.

Collections of Nothing by William Davies King
The New Yorker reviewed this book by a man who collects, well, junk, essentially: cereal boxes, envelope linings, illustrations snipped from dictionaries. Apparently King mixes memoir with a discussion of his collection and his reasons for collecting. As I'm rather fascinated by the collecting impulse, this sounds very interesting to me.

The Civility Solution: What to Do When People Are Rude by P. M. Forni
I'm not the type to read self-help books, but this sounds really useful.

In Defense of Lost Causes and
Violence by Slavoj Zizek
You have to admire a modern philosopher whose ideas and style are so compelling, so interesting (it helps that he engages pop culture fully) that he actually sells books, not to mention movie tickets. Have you seen A Pervert's Guide to Cinema? Good stuff.

More Noteworthy Nonfiction:
American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century by Howard Blum
Best Thought, Worst Thought: On Art, Sex, Work and Death by Don Paterson
Children's Literature: A Reader's History, from Aesop to Harry Potter by Seth Lerer
Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict between Faith and Reason by Russell Shorto
Drink : A Cultural History of Alcohol by Iain Gately
Ernie: An Autobiography by Ernest Borgnine
Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Edward Dolnick
Fruitless Fall : The Collapse of the Honeybee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis by Rowan Jacobsen
Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic by Ingrid D. Rowland
I Don't: A Contrarian History of Marriage by Susan Squire
I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like : A Comprehensive Compilation of History's Greatest Analogies, Metaphors, and Similes by Mardy Grothe
Irène Némirovsky: Her Life and Works by Jonathan M. Weiss
The Liberal Hour: The 1960s and the Remaking of American Life by Robert S. Weisbrot and G. Calvin MacKenzie
The Not So Invisible Woman by Suzanne Portnoy
Notebooks 1951-1959, Vol. 3 by Albert Camus
Ousmane Sembene: Interviews ed. by Annett Busch and Max Annas
Polanski by Christopher Sandford
Sam Peckinpah: Interviews ed. by Kevin J. Hayes
A TV Guide to Life: How I Learned Everything I Needed to Know From Watching Television by Jeff Alexander
Visual History of the English Bible: The Tumultuous Tale of the World's Bestselling Book by Donald L. Brake
Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip--Confessions of a Cynical Waiter by The Waiter
Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life by James Hawes (great cover!)

Of Gay Interest:

The Screwed up Life of Charlie the Second by Drew Ferguson
Gay YA lit seems to be very popular with lots of people today, young and old, men and women, gay and not.

My Trip Down the Pink Carpet by Leslie Jordan
A coworker very much enjoyed this campy memoir filled with bon mots and Southern wit. From the guy who played Will & Grace's Beverly Leslie character, aka Karen Walker's arch-nemesis.

Also Noteworthy:
All I Could Bare : My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, D.C. by Craig Seymour
Anything Goes: The Autobiography by John Barrowman with Carole Barrowman
Band Fags! by Frank Anthony Polito
Closer to Fine by Meri Weiss
Every Frat Boy Wants It by Todd Gregory
Family Outing: What Happened When I Found Out My Mother Is Gay by Troy Johnson
The Flash Press: Sporting Male Weeklies in 1840s New York by Patricia Cline Cohen, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz and Timothy J. Gilfoyle
The Letters of Allen Ginsberg ed. by Bill Morgan
Long Before Stonewall: Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality in Early America by Thomas Foster (afterword by John D'Emilio)
Next in Line: Poems by Christopher Schmidt
The Palace of Varieties by James Lear
Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza: Hard Tails by Arnaldo Cruz-Malave
Schooled in Murder by Mark Richard Zubro
Sex, Love, and Fashion: A Memoir of a Male Model by Bruce Hulse
Since My Last Confession: A Gay Catholic Memoir by Scott Pomfret
Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South by E. Patrick Johnson
Worshipping Walt - The Whitman Principles by Michael Robertson
Writing Desire: Sixty Years of Gay Autobiography by Bertram J. Cohler

Of Chicago Interest:

For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Chicago by Simon Baatz
How many novels and film have been inspired by Leopold and Loeb's crimes? Will their story still sell as true crime/history?

Lawyer Boy: A Case Study on Growing Up by Rick Lax
Memoir of law school (DePaul).

The Color of Light: Watercolors by Winslow Homer by Martha Tedeschi and Kristi Dahm
Catalogue of the recent Art Institute exhibit.

Also Noteworthy:
Debunked!: Conspiracy Theories, Urban Legends, and Evil Plots of the 21st Century by Richard Roeper
Drunkard: A Hard-Drinking Life by Neil Steinberg
The Fifth Floor by Michael Harvey
Gunmetal Black by Daniel Serrano
Good People by Marcus Sakey

Graphic Work:

Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories, Vol. 2 ed. by Ivan Brunetti
I like Brunetti's classic-comics meets warped underground comics sensibility, and I'm eager to see what he's compiled here.

Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw
It's been a while since a graphic novel has really grabbed me, but this one is getting great reviews and looks like a winner.

Also Noteworthy:
The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames and Dan Haspiel
The Complete Peanuts 1967 To 1968 by Charles M. Schulz (Introduction by John Waters!)
Ex-Machina (Deluxe) by Brian K. Vaughan
Holmes: Haydn's Head by Omaha Perez
Shmobots by Adam Rifkin and Les Toil

Shortlists, Retrospectives, Appreciations, and Bug Porn

Have you heard? Missing footage from the film classic Metropolis has been discovered. Cool!

"Give us back our shortlists" - in a nutshell, this columnist chides the current Frank O'Connor award jurors for skipping the shortlist stage and simply announcing the winner, Jhumpa Lahiri. I agree. I'm not a big Lahiri fan, but that's beside the point. I don't begrudge her winning (though does the only short story writer to top the bestseller list in ages really need this little award?), but I do think a shortlist should have been announced, and I don't want to see this become a trend. I'm the kind of reader who looks at shortlists and finds them useful in deciding what to read. The top 5 in any literary finals are generally strong, and there's usually something on any such list that I just needed a bit of encouragement to try. Somehow, I think the odds are much lower that a list of one will inspire me to read. OR. TO. BUY.

Two articles On the films of Hal Ashby: there's a retrospective of his work going on out West. Wow, that's a series I'd love to see. I'd never heard of The Landlord in particular, and it looks fantastic. The rest are on dvd, and I just may screen my own series at home if the series doesn't come to town.

I agree with NY Magazine: that was one delicious takedown in the Times a few weeks back. I usually resist reviews that are so nasty, but it just so happens that I recently picked up another book (Choke) by the target, erm, author in question, Chuck Palahniuk, hoping for an enjoyable if pulpy bit of subversiveness (in other words, exactly what the book's advertised to deliver) and found it so mediocre, so contrived and strained that I had to put it down, which I rarely do. So I was fairly cheering Lucy Ellman on, even though I still kind of wish Palahniuk well in his mission. Oh, man. She included Alice Sebold in her list of overrated hacks. Joy! I'm not the only one, hallelujah! This is one mean review to savor.

On his blog, continuing to clear out his drawers, Jonathan Rosenbaum posts an appreciation of Susan Sontag from 2005. (Hmm, small coincidence: Sontag also wrote the intro for the novella I just finished, Pedro Paramo.) So far, what I've found most interesting here is a glancing reference to the debates which went on in the 60s about whether film could be considered an art form: "What impressed me most in her writing was ... and the fact that all four articles treated film as part of art and thought without any sort of self-consciousness or special pleading—-an approach that seemed virtually unprecedented at the time." I came across references to this moment in film history a few times last year while reading coverage of the deaths of Bergman and Antonioni, but this time it registered more consciously, made me stop and wonder: how strange that film should ever have been discriminated against in this way. I've taken it for granted at least since I was a teenager that film was as valid an art form as literature or theater. Then it occurred to me that perhaps a similar debate has been going on in the last ten years towards comics/ "graphic novels," whatever we're calling them. Perhaps a symptom of these cultural growing pains has been the struggle to name the art form. (The title of JR's piece, btw, alludes to Goodbye, South, Goodbye, directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien, championed by Sontag.) [More Rosenbaum: on Marcel L'Herbier? Who? And on Tati's Trafic, coming soon from Criterion.]

"Three gay and lesbian fiction gems" by Michael Upchurch (who also recently wrote an enjoyable appreciation of Guy Maddin's latest). Enjoyed the McCartney, and I kind of want to read the Maguire.

Are movie critics out-of-touch elitists? And, besides, don't bad movies dominate at the box office, anyway? Apparently not.

The stupid newspapers may be chopping book coverage (right, because you can't make money selling books to the freaks who read newspapers in print), but NPR apparently understands what its audience wants. (I'm not really a big fan of Jessa Crispin, though, I must admit.) Hey, Chicago Tribune, take a lesson as you redesign your paper - don't cut your book coverage, expand it, improve it.

"The Fate of The Sentence: Is the Writing On the Wall?" Or is this a case of silly alarmism?

Looking for something good to read? Check out the Telegraph's "50 best ever summer holiday books" or the Guardian's travel-themed selection, "Friends for faraway places," featuring Dave Eggers on Chicago books, David Mitchell on Japanese books, etc.

"10 Ways to Become a Better Film Critic" - Who is Evan Derrick? This is brilliant.

A little Wikipedia observation. So I was looking up playwright Brian Friel a couple weeks ago and came across startling evidence of a battle among its contributors over the content. This is what it said in the subsection on the play "Molly Sweeney," capitalization exactly as it was:

Molly Sweeney (1993) enjoyed considerable success on the stage, but it attracted little critical interest, perhaps because of its superficial similarities to Faith Healer (1979), another play comprised of a series of monologues. This play is about a blind woman in Ballybeg who constructed for herself an independent life rich in friendships and sensual fulfillment and her ill-fated encounter with two men who destroy her life--Frank, the man she marries who becomes convinced that she can only be complete when her vision is restored, and Dr. Rice, a once-renowned eye surgeon who uses Molly to restore his career. Richard Pine has written in depth on the relationship of his play to Oliver Sacks' work and the controversy that forced Friel to recognize Sacks' work as an inspiration for the play. THIS IS COMPLETELY ERRONEOUS - I HAVE NOT WRITTEN ANYTHING ABOUT 'THE CONTROVERSY THAT FORCED FRIEL TO RECOGNIZE SACKS' WORK' - NOT LEAST BECAUSE I AM NOT AWARE OF ANY SUCH CONTROVERSY. WHO IS THE AUTHOR OF THIS ERRONEOUS STATEMENT?

And this is how it reads today:

Molly Sweeney (1993) enjoyed considerable success on the stage, but it attracted little critical interest, perhaps because of its superficial similarities to Faith Healer (1979), another play comprised of a series of monologues. This play is about a blind woman in Ballybeg who constructed for herself an independent life rich in friendships and sensual fulfillment and her ill-fated encounter with two men who destroy her life--Frank, the man she marries who becomes convinced that she can only be complete when her vision is restored, and Dr. Rice, a once-renowned eye surgeon who uses Molly to restore his career. In a note in the programme of the 1996 Broadway production Friel says that the story was inspired in part by Oliver Sacks's To See and Not See.

You hear about these things, but I'd never really come across such a good example before of how the site is constantly in flux. I read a good point the other day about how WP (the people's Encyclopedia) is not appropriate for citation, not because the information is bad or can't be trusted (that's the route the argument usually takes into heated territory) but simply because it probably won't be the same when you check back. That does kind of turn the whole exercise of citation into an absurdity, doesn't it? You may as well just write in the footnote of your paper, "Well, this is what someone on the internet said on such-and-such a date and time.)

I know it's made the rounds already, but if you haven't seen Isabella Rossellini's funny "Green Porno" series, you should take a peek. Isabella, you are a goddess.

Finally, the movie "Ben & Arthur" is currently at #8 on the imdb bottom 100, and you really have to watch the trailer to appreciate just what's gone wrong with gay independent filmmaking - or perhaps independent filmmaking in general. (Or wait: maybe it's an intentional satire, and it's actually wickedly brilliant and...and...)