| 1. | Roundup: Non-fiction, in brief
The latest in non-fiction: |
| | USA Today ~ Wednesday, 7th May, 2008 | Subscribe to USA Today • |
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| 2. | A scholarly 'Man Who Loved China'
Simon Winchester's The Man Who Loved China proves the adage that if you really want to learn a foreign language, fall in love with a native speaker. |
| | USA Today ~ Wednesday, 7th May, 2008 | Subscribe to USA Today • |
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| 3. | 'Three Girls and Their Brother': All are dysfunctional
It's fitting that Theresa Rebeck's Three Girls and Their Brother opens with a photo shoot. |
| | USA Today ~ Wednesday, 7th May, 2008 | Subscribe to USA Today • |
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| 4. | Fresh, tasty 'Comfort Food' goes down mighty easily
Weeks shy of turning 50, Gus Simpson is tired of being - as the self-help books would call her - a woman who does too much. |
| | USA Today ~ Monday, 5th May, 2008 | Subscribe to USA Today • |
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| 5. | 'Twilight' author sinks her teeth into an adult tale of aliens, love
Stephenie Meyer, reigning queen of young-adult novels about teenage vampires, turns her gaze skyward in her first adult novel, The Host. Result: a startling and addictive Invasion of the Body Snatchers alien fest for the 21st century. |
| | USA Today ~ Monday, 5th May, 2008 | Subscribe to USA Today • |
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| 6. | Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner
We wonder if inside Jennifer Weiner is another, a better writer who is screaming, but not yet loudly enough, to get out. |
| | Houston Chronicle ~ Sunday, 4th May, 2008 | Subscribe to Houston Chronicle • |
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| 7. | One Soldier's War by Arkady Babchenko
Arkady Babchenko's book, One Soldier's War, is recommended book in a limited way — as an emotionally powerful chronicle of hatred morphing into violence that defies logic. |
| | Houston Chronicle ~ Sunday, 4th May, 2008 | Subscribe to Houston Chronicle • |
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| 8. | Arnie & Jack by Ian O'Connor
Arnie & Jack is 24 chapters of workable prose that offers a detailed account of two unique and driven athletes. |
| | Houston Chronicle ~ Sunday, 4th May, 2008 | Subscribe to Houston Chronicle • |
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| 9. | Incognegro by Mat Johnson |
| | Houston Chronicle ~ Sunday, 4th May, 2008 | Subscribe to Houston Chronicle • |
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| 10. | No peace to be found in 'The Plague of Doves'
Louise Erdrich's monumental new novel, The Plague of Doves, begins with a chilling scene that contains no violence but implies - through the scent of blood in a room - that a heinous act has taken place. |
| | USA Today ~ Wednesday, 30th April, 2008 | Subscribe to USA Today • |
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| 11. | Roundup: Historical fiction
If you're ancient enough to have watched The Rat Patrol, the TV series from the 1960s (guilty as charged), you know about the Long Range Desert Group. These brave lads were charged with getting behind enemy lines in North Africa to track down Germany's Field Marshal Rommel. Despite the titillating title, killing the elusive Desert Fox wasn't so easy. Steven Pressfield's well-written fictional memoir (by a literate British lieutenant named Chapman) is surprisingly contemplative, more a coming-of-age tale than a thriller. But gearheads will love every vehicular snafu, and the one pulse-racing battle sequence - when Chapman's patrol is shot up during a surprise encounter with the enemy - is worth the wait. |
| | USA Today ~ Wednesday, 30th April, 2008 | Subscribe to USA Today • |
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| 12. | Two memoirs dig deep into divorce
Mamas, don't let your daughters grow up to marry narcissists. Or gamblers. That's the message in two new memoirs about divorce: Suzanne Finnamore's Split and Theo Pauline Nestor's How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed. |
| | USA Today ~ Wednesday, 30th April, 2008 | Subscribe to USA Today • |
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| 13. | The sequel is as sweet as 'Chocolat'
Joanne Harris brings back mother and daughter Vianne and Anouk Rocher in The Girl With No Shadow, a sweetly enthralling sequel to her 1999 hit, Chocolat. |
| | USA Today ~ Wednesday, 30th April, 2008 | Subscribe to USA Today • |
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| 14. | Burroughs' 'Wolf at the Table' memoir is a serious departure
With his new book, A Wolf at the Table, writer Augusten Burroughs proves that his memory well hasn't gone dry. He's still dipping his favorite literary bucket - the memoir - into the past and pulling up fresh material. |
| | USA Today ~ Monday, 28th April, 2008 | Subscribe to USA Today • |
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| 15. | Joni, Carly, Carole united voices for a generation
Reading Girls Like Us, Sheila Weller's juicy tri-ography of three very different women who helped define a creatively and socially charged era in pop music and culture, you can't help but be infected by the author's giddy enthusiasm for her subjects. |
| | USA Today ~ Monday, 28th April, 2008 | Subscribe to USA Today • |
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| 16. | Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin
With her new novel Lavinia, fantasy and science fiction virtuoso Ursula K. Le Guin vividly fills in some of the blanks in Virgil's Aeneid. |
| | Houston Chronicle ~ Sunday, 27th April, 2008 | Subscribe to Houston Chronicle • |
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| 17. | Home: A Memoir of My Early Years by Julie Andrews
Home: A Memoir of My Early Years, is a lucidly told and engaging autobiography by Julie Andrews, who has confined her literary career thus far to a series of successful children's books. |
| | Houston Chronicle ~ Sunday, 27th April, 2008 | Subscribe to Houston Chronicle • |
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| 18. | Three books, three types of darkness
Three new titles cover dark themes ranging from alcoholic fathers to the fictional collapse of our industrial society to life in 1980s Dublin. |
| | Houston Chronicle ~ Sunday, 27th April, 2008 | Subscribe to Houston Chronicle • |
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| 19. | After Tamerlane by John Darwin |
| | Houston Chronicle ~ Sunday, 27th April, 2008 | Subscribe to Houston Chronicle • |
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| 20. | Essays remind of Vonnegut and Styron's mastery of words
Kurt Vonnegut, who died a year ago at 84, once wrote, "I trust my writing most and others seem to trust it most when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am." |
| | USA Today ~ Wednesday, 23rd April, 2008 | Subscribe to USA Today • |
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| 21. | Roundup: Debut novels
Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger is one of the most powerful books I've read in decades. No hyperbole. This debut novel from an Indian journalist living in Mumbai hit me like a kick to the head - the same effect Richard Wright's Native Son and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man had. But Tiger isn't about race or caste in India. It's about the vast economic inequality between the poor and the wealthy elite. The narrator is an Indian entrepreneur detailing his rise to power. His India is a merciless, corrupt Darwinian jungle where only the ruthless survive. Think young Vito Corleone in The Godfather refusing to be a puppet but subtract the sentimentality. This is an amazing and angry novel about injustice and power. |
| | USA Today ~ Wednesday, 23rd April, 2008 | Subscribe to USA Today • |
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| 22. | 'Olive Kitteridge': Intertwined lives, stories
Fiction lovers, remember this name: Olive Kitteridge. |
| | USA Today ~ Wednesday, 23rd April, 2008 | Subscribe to USA Today • |
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| 23. | 'Smoke' obscures the rightfulness of WWII
It was not such a "Good War" after all, Nicholson Baker says in his unconventional, provocative and controversial new history of the causes and early years of the Second World War. Baker, a best-selling novelist (Vox) and a splendid non-fiction author (Double Fold), begins with the two-decades-long political and military run-up to Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland and ends on New Year's Eve 1941, in the month that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and America entered the war. |
| | USA Today ~ Wednesday, 23rd April, 2008 | Subscribe to USA Today • |
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| 24. | Sexual Fluidity by Lisa M. Diamond
In a culture in which the pornographic has become predictable, it seems cheeky to write and publish a sex book, but Lisa M. Diamond and Brian Alexander think there's plenty left to say about sex. |
| | Houston Chronicle ~ Sunday, 20th April, 2008 | Subscribe to Houston Chronicle • |
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| 25. | Setting the Desert on Fire by James Barr
James Barr's new book, Setting the Desert on Fire, covers the romance and betryal that defined World War I's Arabian campaign. |
| | Houston Chronicle ~ Sunday, 20th April, 2008 | Subscribe to Houston Chronicle • |
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