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

The more people keep talking about how irrelevant book trailers are, the less I’m inclined to believe them. Last week Salon devoted (another) lengthy piece to this (apparently irrelevant) topic. We’re going to talk this thing into relevancy if we’re not careful, folks. “Alas, Web videos are even more numerous than books, and as with [...]

All right, I’ve kind of been tuning out all the media hype around the new Dante’s Inferno video game — maybe I’m worn out from thinking of new titles for Quirk Classics, or maybe it just seems like the classic lit/video game jokes write themselves. (I love NPR’s observation that “some Dante scholars bristle at the [...]

I’m sure I’m not the only one who is surprised to learn that McSweeney’s had a real-life namesake: Timothy McSweeney died on January 24 at the age of 67. On the McSweeney’s website you can find a message from his family as well as Dave Eggers’ short, touching essay: Knowing that the journal bore the name of [...]

The International Association of Crime Writers North American Branch announced the 2010 nominees for the Hammett Prize: Bury Me Deep, by Megan Abbott Devil’s Garden, by Ace Atkins The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry The Long Fall, by Walter Mosley The Way Home, by George Pelecanos

Online horror magazine Dark Scribe announced their Black Quill winners. The dark genre novel of year editors’ choice award went to Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places, while the reader’s choice prize went to Drood, by Dan Simmons. For a complete list of winners visit the Dark Scribe website.

Jenny Sanford has been making the rounds hawking her book, Staying True. Her visit to The Daily Show last night can be described in one word — awkward! Jon Stewart, for once, seemed at a loss for words (although he did notice, as I pointed out in my review, Sanford is adept at complimenting her [...]

In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot chronicles the amazing story of the medical breakthroughs gained from a black woman’s cell line. I heard Skloot last week on NPR’s Fresh Air where she told host Terry Gross that in 1951 Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer. A doctor at Johns Hopkins [...]

J. D. Salinger has died. The writer who lived so privately has, in death, once again become the subject of the kind of intense public scrutiny that infuriated him. After the reflections of our own Daniel Kraus,  the pieces I enjoyed the most were sort of quirky, personal views: Joanna Smith Rakoff’s memories of working for Salinger’s [...]

Casting aside the mantle of starving artist, D.A. Powell joins the ranks of the well-paid. He won the $100,000 award for his collection Chronic. Read more about Powell’s win here.

Have you been looking for an outlet for your Great American Young Adult Novel? For the first time Penguin Group and Amazon are opening the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition to young-adult submissions. Authors Sarah Dessen and Nancy Werlin are two of the judges on the young-adult panel, and entries will be accepted until February 7. [...]