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Your next favorite book
is waiting.
The picture book market is in the doldrums. Publishers report that sales are flat and disappointed booksellers must box up the brightly colored, lavishly illustrated volumes - unopened, unread, and most dispiriting of all, unloved - and send them back to the warehouses from whence they came.
I just finished No Cheating, No Dying: I Had a Good Marriage. Then I Tried to Make It Better. (Scribner, Feb 2012) by Elizabeth Weil. It's a fun, easy read, but with depth.
I'm not a big fan of "self help" books, steering away from tomes that threaten to give me step by step improvement instructions. Instead I prefer to learn from other people's narratives (that is to say, other people's mistakes) - which is just what one can do from No Cheating, No Dying.
The English language is a wonderful thing. For a whistle stop tour through it's 1500 year (or thereabouts) history, sit back and enjoy The History of English in 10 Minutes produced by Britain's Open University:
Over the last few years we've discovered many exceptional books through BookBrowse's "First Impressions" program, including these three Fall debut novels which our members are particularly enthusiastic about:
It's rare that a book trailer catches my eye, but this one for Wonderstruck, Brian Selznick's follow up to The Adventures of Hugo Cabret, is great as it gives both a sense of the uniqueness of the book and the author behind it...
London's Southbank Centre is planning a huge "Poetry Parnassus" to coincide with next year's Olympics.
Members of the public are invited to nominate up to 3 poets from any of the 205 Olympic competing nations. The organizers will select one from each country who will be provided with airfare, accommodation and visa so they can attend the event to be held in London in late June/early July 2012.
