Books

07/20/2008

Author Jodi Picoult's real life provides respite from intense subjects
WASHINGTON – Who wants to spend priceless fiction-reading time delving into topics such as child abuse, incest, adultery and teen suicide, sometimes all in the same book? Millions, apparently, based on the best-selling success of New Hampshire-based author Jodi Picoult, who couples in-depth characters with hot-button issues. She spoke recently with The Washington Post :

'Telex from Cuba' by Rachel Kushner: Author pens a multilayered tale of Castro's revolution
For her debut novel, Los Angeles-based author Rachel Kushner intricately and intelligently weaves a multilayered quilt of nationalities and social classes, adolescence and adulthood, even good and evil.

'The Story of Edgar Sawtelle' by David Wroblewski: Best-selling boy-and-his-dog story has parallels to 'Hamlet'
There's something rotten in the state of Wisconsin.

'Rome 1960' by David Maraniss and 'Boycott' by Tom Caraccioli and Jerry Caraccioli' : New books look at crucial years in history of the Olympics
The Olympics have been riddled with politics, commercialism and drug scandals since Ancient Greece, but David Maraniss' Rome 1960 offers the Olympic vices in forms first recognizable to modern sports fans.

'Around the World With LBJ' by James U. Cross: A loyal pilot's trip back in time
Air Force One pilot James U. Cross' job was not finished after he landed and parked Lyndon Baines Johnson's big presidential jet. Indeed, as this engaging memoir reveals, his workday was just beginning, even if he had been airborne for many hours.

'Collision' by Jeff Abbott: Suspense-packed spy thriller, Texas locales
No wonder 20th Century Fox scooped up Collision before publication. From its opening scene where a new bride falls victim to a bullet on Maui to the bittersweet ending in a Tyler park, Jeff Abbott's action thriller is camera-ready cinematic.

Local and national best-sellers
This week's list of local best-sellers is from Borders, 10720 Preston Road (at Royal Lane). National best-sellers are from The New York Times. Parentheses indicate book's position last week; indicates first week on list.

Authors touring the area this week
Alan Smith will discuss UnBreak Your Health – The Complete Guide to Complementary & Alternative Therapies at the Body, Mind, Spirit Expo at 2 p.m. today at the Richardson Civic Center, 411 W. Arapaho. Expo tickets $6 at BMSE.net.

07/19/2008

Danielle Steel reluctantly steals spotlight to promote latest novel
NEW YORK – It's only 9:33 a.m., but already Danielle Steel is having a lousy morning.

07/18/2008

Texas novelist Larry McMurtry says he's 'outta gas' for writing fiction
The prose of William Faulkner, Larry McMurtry said Thursday night, always felt like a perfect match for the pine-forested terrain of the Mississippi Delta. His own prose, he said, matches that of his homeland, the West Texas plains. Simple, spare, direct.

07/17/2008

Mitch Albom's latest book published exclusively through Kindle
Mitch Albom has a new book out - well, not really a book, but a commencement speech in book form. And not in traditional book form, but as an e-book, published exclusively through Amazon.com's Kindle reader.

Californian Kay Ryan chosen as U.S. poet laureate
NEW YORK – Kay Ryan – award-winning poet, mountain-bike rider and self-described "modern hermit" – will soon be going to Washington.

'Laughing Fit to Kill': Confronting racist stereotypes with humor
You've surely heard of laughing until it hurts. Perhaps you've even had to laugh to keep from crying.

07/16/2008

'Voice of my ancestors' guided N. Scott Momaday, keynote speaker at Mayborn literary conference
N. Scott Momaday, considered the dean of American Indian writers, grew up steeped in language.

07/14/2008

An interview with Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, author of the 'Dirty Girls' books
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez jump-started the Latina chick-lit movement when she published the best-selling Dirty Girls Social Club five years ago.

'Captain America: The Chosen' by creator of Rambo
David Morrell has done something totally new: The best-selling author of action thrillers has written a comic-book series.

07/13/2008

Dennis Lehane expands his literary horizon

File 2005 / Getty

Dennis Lehane

Until now you've been able to find Dennis Lehane's work in two places: the mystery paperback shelves, where his superbly crafted novels have been confined to a sort of genre fiction ghetto, and the multiplex, where filmmakers have converted his cinematic prose into movies such as Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone. But when The Given Day hits stores in September, you can expect to find it in the literature section – where, some might argue, Mr. Lehane's work has belonged all along.

New books about Texas: 'State Fare' by Don Graham, 'Extraordinary Texas Women' by Judy Alter and 'Texas Country Singers' by Phil Fry and Jim Lee
Herewith, TCU Press launches its Texas Small Books series. These little booklings are perfect for brassing your way through Texas in a big way. Don Graham's State Fare is subtitled "irreverent" but what's irreverent about insight, wit and historical context? Texas history students viewing Red River , Giant , Hud and The Last Picture Show in sequence, along with the book, would easily see the rise, decline and fall of the Texas oil and cattle myth.

'Slumberland' by Paul Beatty: Riffs on the fall of the Berlin Wall
Like the mercurial jazz beats that function as its background, Paul Beatty's third novel, Slumberland , is full of wild riffs and madcap solos. Told from the point of view of Ferguson W. Sowell, a black American expatriate disc jockey in Berlin who goes by the name of DJ Darky, what passes for story here is funky, raucous and screwball literate.

'Posthumous Keats' by Stanley Plumly: Poet's brief life becomes a grand biographical endeavor
The pleasure of this book is that it's a slow read. It lingers, meanders, circles, crisscrosses, overlaps. Poet Stanley Plumly had no wish to retell the familiar story of John Keats' life in a linear way. He was obsessed, rather, with the idea that "certain connections and crossovers" did not fit into strict biographical narrative. He wanted "to walk around in Keats' life and art, not simply through them."

'The Billionaire's Vinegar' by Benjamin Wallace: Inside the world of wine forgery
The Billionaire's Vinegar is a cautionary tale: Money will make you stupid.

Local and national best-sellers
This week's list of local best-sellers is from Jokae's African American Books, 3223 Camp Wisdom Road. National best-sellers are from The New York Times. Parentheses indicate book's position last week; indicates first week on list.

Authors touring the area this week
Victor Gischler ( Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse ) and Anthony N. Smith ( Yellow Medicine ) will appear at 2 p.m. Sunday at Barnes & Noble, 7700 West Northwest Highway.

07/21/2008

'Oxygen' by Carol Wiley Cassella: Anesthesiologist pens intriguing hospital thriller
As an anesthesiologist, Dr. Marie Heaton prides herself on her ability to put patients and family at ease before putting them under. Then a little girl dies on the operating table from anesthesia complications, and Heaton loses the confidence she spent 12 years building. Within a matter of days, she has become uncertain about her abilities and is the object of a lawsuit.

07/09/2008

Harry Potter conference in Dallas shows books still working their magic

AFP/Getty Images

A girl holds a Russian version of the final book of the Harry Potter series Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Almost a year after publication of the final book in J.K. Rowling's series, you might think that interest in all things Harry Potter would be vanishing. You'd be wrong. On Thursday through Sunday, Dallas will host "Portus 2008," the latest in a series of annual Potter conferences. It will mix the exuberant trappings of Potter obsession: quidditch games, a costume dance and – with serious scholarship – a presentation on "Harry Potter and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder."

07/12/2008

400-year-old Shakespeare folio recovered in U.S. 10 years after theft in England
A 400-year-old volume of Shakespeare stolen in England a decade ago and valued at $30 million has been recovered after a man walked into a library in Washington, D.C., and asked to have it authenticated.

07/10/2008

Memoir says Madonna's true love is herself
A memoir by Madonna's brother says the singer really does love her husband, director Guy Ritchie, but, apparently, not as much as she loves her career and herself.

07/06/2008

'Stuff White People Like' pokes fun at stereotypes
Like a virtual gold rush, millions of people wade into the Internet stream every day to try their luck at the electronic equivalent of panning for gold. Some of them put a video on YouTube. Many start a blog.

Books: 'The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal'
The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal

'Queen of the Oil Club' by Anna Rubino: When journalist Wanda Jablonski spoke, OPEC listened
Wanda Jablonski might be the most powerful journalist you never heard of.

'Mustang' by Deanne Stillman: An epic history of horses, especially the wild ones
During the 1998 Christmas holidays, 34 wild horses in the mountains near Reno, Nev., including a pregnant mare and a newborn foal, were shot and killed by three men armed with high-powered rifles.

'Books: A Memoir' by Larry McMurtry: Texas author reveals lifelong love affair with reading
There are, one may infer from Larry McMurtry's 38th solo volume, four kinds of people who love second-hand bookshops: readers, collectors, dealers and scouts. Writers, which he certainly is, do not always subscribe, for they often see a used-book store as a kind of mortuary, a place where careers often go, too soon, to be buried.

'Ark of the Liberties' by Ted Widmer: America's virtues and missteps
If you think our country has engaged in shameful wars of choice, drifted from our Constitutional moorings and generally failed to live up to our self-proclaimed role as the world's guarantor of liberty, you may be right. But which century are you talking about?

Local and national best-sellers
This week's list of local best-sellers is from Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 2201 Preston Road, Plano. National best-sellers are from The New York Times. Parentheses indicate book's position last week; indicates first week on list.

Books: 'Beijing Coma' by Ma Jian
Dai Wei lay in a coma for 10 years, paralyzed and unable to see or to speak. He had been shot in the head by Chinese government troops during the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Authors touring the area this week
Jackie Collins will read and sign Married Lovers at 7 p.m. Monday at Borders, Preston Road at Royal Lane.

Judy Alter's Texas Letters column
Why doesn't that reclusive housewife across the street ever come out of her house during the day? Could just be that she's writing a mystery.

07/05/2008

MICHAEL TURNER 1971-2008
SANTA MONICA, Calif. – Michael Turner, a comic book artist who drew covers for major titles such as Superman/Batman , The Flash and Civil War died June 27.

Comic-book collectors pay large sums for original artwork
Comic-book collectors like their numbers. They know that the first issue of X-Men , which introduced Marvel's mutant superheroes, was published in 1963 and had a cover price of 12 cents. They also know that today a copy of that issue, in near mint condition, is worth $16,500.

07/04/2008

Alan Peppard on Molly Ivins, Bill Minutaglio, Roger Horchow and others

06/30/2008

Joseph O'Neill talks about his 'cricket novel', 'Netherland'
Joseph O'Neill's fourth book and third novel, Netherland , has introduced the unlikely phrase "cricket novel" into the literary lexicon.

Fast plots and engaging characters make up the great beach read

STAFF ILLUSTRATION: Adrienne Dye

Summer demands a certain kind of book. It's a time for beach reads, they say, not for Finnegans Wake or Gravity's Rainbow. But what does "beach read" mean, beyond bonanza sales? We dialed up some best-selling novelists to ask.
Blog: Find more beach reading, and suggest your own

06/29/2008

Texas and Southwest books

'What Was Lost' by Catherine O'Flynn: Masterful mystery draws shivers with tale of missing girl
It is no great surprise that in 2007, when Britain was obsessed with the Madeleine McCann case, a novel about a missing child should resonate with readers there. What Was Lost won Catherine O'Flynn the prestigious Costa First Novel Award and made her the British book trade's "Newcomer of the Year."

'Made in the U.S.A.' by Billie Letts: Back to the Wal-Mart
Oklahoma's star novelist, Billie Letts, returns to Wal-Mart, the scene of her first book, the Oprah-blessed Where the Heart Is , for her fourth, Made in the U.S.A. Ms. Letts has insightfully homed in on the inherent drama of superstores: These are places where humanity, in all its varieties, teems and gathers, and any out-of-the-ordinary incident becomes hyper-dramatic through the sheer number of witnesses.

'Doris Day' by David Kaufman: Author details public and private life of screen star
Doris Day is best remembered as the relentlessly cheerful co-star of Rock Hudson in Pillow Talk and other chaste sex comedies. Her fans included millions of ordinary Americans as well as literary giant John Updike, who told viewers on a TV documentary about Ms. Day that "she just glowed for me."

Local and national best-sellers
This week's list of local best-sellers is from Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 7700 W. Northwest Highway. National best-sellers are from The New York Times. Parentheses indicate book's position last week; indicates first week on list.

'Say You're One of Them' by Uwem Akpan: Grim stories from the tragedies in Africa
Dedicated followers of the news will recall the grim events around which Uwem Akpan's debut story collection revolves.

06/25/2008

Steven Spielberg looks to direct 'The 39 Clues'
A multimedia-multi-author narrative being planned by the U.S. publisher of the Harry Potter books has picked up a famous patron: Steven Spielberg.