Booklist Online: More than 130,000 book reviews for librarians, book groups, and book lovers - from the trusted experts at the American Library Association

(No, not that kind of overalls.) The overall winners for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize were announced last Sunday at the Calabash International Literary Festival in Kingston, Jamaica. I would have been there, but I had pressing business in Miami, Oklahoma. Overall Best Book Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones (Penguin) Overall Best First Book Vandal Love, by D.Y. Béchard [...]

Back to work after a long weekend in Oklahoma, visiting my wife’s father’s family. I missed this fun Slate piece (“My Favorite Font“) when it came out on Friday. I was a bit surprised to learn that most writers (in this small sample, anyway) prefer to compose in Courier — I write in Times New [...]

Cormac McCarthy’s appearance on Oprah has been scheduled for Tuesday, June 5, according to Publishers Weekly (“McCarthy Meets Oprah,” by Charlotte Abbott): On Tuesday, June 5, literary recluse Cormac McCarthy will make his TV debut in a conversation with Oprah Winfrey, who will also announce her summer club pick that day. In the taped interview, [...]

Galleycat’s Ron Hogan gets some face time with Laura Albert, the writer formerly known as JT Leroy. She’s not repentant about the hoax, which at least makes for more interesting reading than if she was contrite. “People always talked about the authenticity of the work,” Laura Albert tells me as a makeup artist fixes her eyes during [...]

From Reuters (“‘Kazakh’ reporter Borat pens book of travel advice”): NEW YORK (Reuters) – Fictional Kazakh television reporter Borat Sagdiyev, who made movie audiences around the world laugh and cringe as he toured the United States, is going into print with a book of travel advice. Borat, the creation of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, [...]

My favorite trend in titling continues: Blogistan, by A. Srebeny and G. Khiabany (Holtzbrinck) Richistan, by Robert Frank (Crown) Londonstani, by Gautam Malkani (Penguin) Prisoner of Trebekistan, by Bob Harris (Crown) Dispatches from Blogistan, by Suzanne Stefanac (New Riders) Londonistan, by Melanie Phillips (Encounter) Absurdistan, by Gary Shteyngart (Random) Absurdistan, by R. Lee Wright (Cocolalla) [...]

The winners of the 2007 James Beard Foundation/KitchenAid Book Awards have been announced. When? Oh, a little while ago. I started this post shortly after the fact but I must have gotten distracted by something. But, like most enthusiastic amateur cooks, I love cookbooks–and buy far more than I need. I might love food reference books even more. [...]

Christian publisher Thomas Nelson has implemented an interesting strategy: eliminating all 21 of their imprints (From Where I Sit, “Changing the Publishing Model,” by Michael S. Hyatt): I guess I really can’t comment on what is best for other publishers; maybe there are some unique situations where imprints make sense. (I can acknowledge it as [...]

I didn’t see that Lloyd Alexander had died until yesterday. From the Washington Post (“Lloyd Alexander; Fantasy and Adventure Writer,” by Adam Bernstein): Lloyd Alexander, 83, a critically acclaimed fantasy and adventure writer whose coming-of-age novels use vivid action and elements of mythology to depict contemporary struggles between good and evil, died May 17 at his [...]

Soon everything will be modeled on either a game show or the stock market. From The New York Times (“Publisher to Let the Public Have a Vote on Book Projects,” by Motoko Rich): When predicting which candidate is likely to win an election, what a movie will make at the box office or how much the price [...]