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

Well, I’ll be headed out the door shortly for nice, long Christmas vacation. Likely Stories will be dark until I return on Monday, January 5th. Thanks for reading in 2008–there will be some exciting changes around here in 2009. Happy Holidays and a very Merry New Year! I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Brian [...]

In the New York Times Magazine (“Consider the Philosopher“), James Ryerson reviews David Foster Wallace’s undergraduate thesis, which remains unpublished and largely unknown. There is, however, a reason that it may never receive wide readership, as you’ll see below: Given his considerable intellectual gifts and large cult following, it may come as a surprise to [...]

Bah, humbug! On Salon (“Read it and weep“), Jason Boog writes about “the end of days” for the publishing industry: “There were hedge fund guys with no background in publishing buying up publishing houses,” says André Schiffrin, founder of the New Press and author of “The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing [...]

On Slate, Erica S. Perl offers a spirited defense of the premier award in children’s literature (“Captain Underpants Doesn’t Need a Newbery Medal“): But literary awards should do more than simply affirm books that are easy to love and would likely find fans regardless of a medal. They also serve as inspiration for authors to [...]

I’ve long defended the traditional route of publishing (as opposed to self-publishing) as a flawed but extremely useful vetting process. I feel that way as both a book reviewer and a reader–there are just so many books out there that the often-ruthless decisions made by publishing houses improve the odds that the book you pluck off the shelf will be [...]

Horace Engdahl, who earned the admiration of the literary world with his embrace of good writing, regardless of the country it comes from, has resigned as permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy (“Swedish Academy Secretary to Step Down in June,” by Steven McElroy, New York Times). Or maybe I should say that he has become the impermanent secretary of [...]

In the book-review world’s equivalent of stunt casting, Tina Brown assigned Conrad Black to write a review of Michael Wolff’s The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch. Although Black is not primarily known as a book reviewer, he is the author of two books, including Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom [...]

It’s the holiday season, and James Frey (Bright Shiny Morning, 2008) is the gift that keeps on giving. From The Guardian, and the headline says it all: “James Frey to write ‘third book of the Bible’.” James Frey is moving on from his drugs and booze-soaked memoirs to write the third book of the Bible, in [...]

The poetry beat is getting more and more seedy. From The Independent (“Chinese ‘classical poem’ was brothel ad,” by Clifford Coonan): There were red faces on the editorial board of one of Germany’s top scientific institutions, the Max Planck Institute, after it ran the text of a handbill for a Macau strip club on the front page of [...]

Usually, if I want to read criticism of the ALA and its works, I need look no farther than the Library Journal website. But, this fall, as the Washington Post reports (“Plot Twist,” by Valerie Strauss), attacks have been coming from unlikely quarters: John Beach, associate professor of literacy education at St. John’s University in [...]