Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

In regard to last week’s query, yes, I did forget something. I forgot flarf.
So Enid Blyton, author of those fabulous Famous Five books I so adored as a callow youth, wasn’t much of a mum (”Why Enid Blyton’s greatest creation was herself,” by Garry Jenkins (Telegraph):
The drama reveals how Enid exploited even her own family to [...]

Donald Harington has died. If you’re asking yourself “Who was Donald Harington?” you’re not alone–the man the New York Times calls the “Ozark Surrealist” never found a very wide readership during his long career (”Donald Harington, Ozark Surrealist, 73,” by William Grimes). But the readers he did have found him a wonderful writer.
“Don Harington is not an underappreciated novelist,” [...]

As you might know from reading 10 inches below this post (or, if for some reason you gets infos from somewhere else other than our little Likely Stories, you already know from anywhere else), the National Book Award nominations were announced yesterday. And while the NBAs are no stranger to odd picks, especially in the [...]

I know something happened this week–everybody was talking about it. Writing about it, even. Something, something . . . some guy published a book? Oh, yeah! Dan Brown thrilled the world by finally–finally–giving us The Lost Symbol. The New York Times, which really is getting the hang of this breaking-the-embargo thing, wrote, puzzlingly, that Brown [...]

It’s been so long since I’ve posted that I had to dust off the blog’s dashboard before I could start. And, somehow, my fingers got stuck inside the computer monitor, and it was hours before the IT department could come to my desk and set me free. Very embarrassing.
The real problem has been a combination of late-summer [...]

Where were you when you heard that Canadian uber-fiction writer Alice Munro has withdrawn her latest collection of stories, Too Much Happiness, from consideration for the annual Giller Prize? (The Giller is the Canadian literary award that has more money attached to it than any other Canadian literary prize: $50,000, that is.) That Munro has [...]

Some reviewers and readers may find this hard to believe, but I will miss Dominick Dunne (”Dominick Dunne, Chronicler of Crime, Dies at 83,” by Enid Nemy, New York Times). He has always been a favored writer on my reading list. I would call him a guilty pleasure author except his writing and storytelling were [...]

I hereby encourage The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to increase their coverage of publishing and library news, that I may have an excuse to watch them during the work day.

The Colbert Report
Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Nailed ‘Em - Library Crime

www.colbertnation.com

I have been swamped–SWAMPED–the past few weeks, editing newsletters, mining data, writing reviews, and preparing for and attending Annual Conference. I say that not to complain but to account for my near-absence from both the blogosphere and the twitterdome. This absence pains me, because the news has been full of my kind of blogfodder. As I am an [...]

The Chicago Tribune reports on a case of book-phobia that’s not all that far from ALA headquarters: Antioch, Illinois (”Some parents seek to ban ‘The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian’,” by Ruth Fuller). According to the story:
Some parents of incoming freshmen at Antioch High School want an assigned summer reading book pulled from [...]