Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

Vedran Smailovic, the “Cellist of Sarajevo,” wants money from Steven Galloway, the Canadian author of The Cellist of Sarajevo, for his role in the book (”Famous cellist claims story stolen by Canadian author,” CBC):
With a stool and his cello, Smailovic once played on top of the rubble from a deadly mortar attack in Sarajevo. In plain [...]

From the Department of Almost Too Good to Be True, a dinner party for the authors of Dinner Party Disasters turns, well, disastrous. From Publishers Weekly (”Bloodshed at Connecticut Book Party,” by Lynn Andriani):
As entrées were being enjoyed, a McCain supporter and an Obama supporter, having exhausted their verbal arguments, lunged at each other with fists [...]

Now this is my kind of literary feud. There’s been bad blood between Derek Walcott (The Prodigal, 2004) and V. S. Naipaul (A Writer’s People, 2008) for years, but Walcott just took it to a whole new level, debuting a poem, “The Mongoose,” onstage at the Calabash Literary Festival in Kingston, Jamaica. From the Guardian (”Rhyme [...]

You’ve gotta love Jonathan Franzen (The Discomfort Zone, 2006). At least he doesn’t pick fights with small-timers. The New York Observer reports that he called Michiko Kakutani “the stupidest person in New York City.” It must have been something she wrote:
In that review, Ms. Kakutani wrote: “there is something oddly preening about [Franzen's] self-inventory of sins, as [...]

Remember Thomas Kohnstamm? Well, he’s in the news again. His claims that Lonely Planet guides are not entirely trustworthy have irked a number of people, including, er, Lonely Planet. On their site, they address his charges, although they respond to one of his biggest complaints in a fairly vague manner:
5. Thomas claims he was not [...]

Pol’ Atteu & Patrik Simpson v. Jody (Babydol) Gibson (”Authors of new Anna Nicole book sue their own publisher,” Ben Widdicombe, Daily News):
Simpson and Atteu acknowledge signing an agreement with Gibson, but told me Monday they regarded the document as a “draft.” And quite apart from making any money from the book, they say they gave [...]

On Galleycat, Ron Hogan is continuing his campaign to get the New York Times Book Review to replace Dave Itzkoff. Itzkoff recently made the following jaw-dropping statement (”Across the Universe: Elsewhere’s Children“):
I sometimes wonder how any self-respecting author of speculative fiction can find fulfillment in writing novels for young readers. I suppose J. K. Rowling [...]

In the Los Angeles Times (”A classic, or a fraud?“), Philip L. Fradkin keeps alive the ghost of Wallace Stegner’s sins, reexamining the curious case of Angle of Repose. Fradkin borrows from–but doesn’t plagiarize–Jonathan Lethem. (Although he plagiarizes other writers. Read it, you’ll see what I mean. Lethem did it better.)
Criticism of Stegner’s use of Foote’s material [...]

I’m a little slow getting around to this story (”Editing of Frost Notebooks in Dispute,” by Motoko Rich, New York Times), but I can’t resist it: last January, Harvard University Press published The Notebooks of Robert Frost, by Robert Faggen (not to be confused with Mr. Dickens’ Mr. Fagin). The hefty tome, which provided transcriptions of 47 notebooks [...]

I’ve been enjoying the posts at Book Group Buzz. Yesterday, Misha Stone’s “When Fiction and Reality Collide” addressed–well, you’re probably one step ahead of me on that one. Says Stone:
As a Fiction Librarian, I often get a little annoyed when patrons distinguish the difference between fiction and non-fiction as "fake" versus "real."
As a fiction reviewer, [...]