Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

In their first post-election 60 Minutes interview, the President- and First Lady-elect said they’d like to open the White House up to the people. They mentioned poetry and jazz.
I knew that Michelle Obama had seen spoken word and poetry slam poets while in Chicago, so I called them. I reminded myself that their house, 1600 [...]

Here’s some video of poetry slam founder Marc Kelly Smith, who I wrote about yesterday. The first link (excuse the lighting) is a show I put together for the Society of Midland Authors April program in the beautiful Cliff Dwellers Club on Michigan Avenue. The room is all windows, high in the air, with a [...]

I first met poet and poetry slam founder Marc Kelly Smith in a class that he taught at Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois, way back in 1991. An enthusiast of poetry and fiction in all of their personalities for a long while, I can say with pride that I am but one of a legion of [...]

After getting a ton of ink in 2008 (much of it electric ink right here at Likely Stories), Sherry Jones’ controversial Jewel of Medina hasn’t made much news this year. Now, however, in a story with a tabloid-worthy headline (”Muhammad child bride novel author condemns UK ‘censorship’,” by Alison Flood) The Guardian reports that Jones “has [...]

We don’t usually report on the Glauser Award, said to be Germany’s “most prestigious crime writing prize,” but this time I can’t resist: Hans Werner Kettenbach has won the award for lifetime achievement. Reviewing Black Ice (2006), Glauser’s first novel to be published in English, Frank Sennett wrote:
In what amounts to a virtuoso shaggy-dog story, Kettenbach provides an [...]

Booklist copyeditor extraordinaire Eloise Kinney passed on an urgent news item: Craig Arnold, a poet (Shells, 1999) and university professor, is missing in Japan (”University Professor Missing for Several Days,” Laramie Boomerang).
According to the university, Assistant Professor Craig Arnold, a faculty member in the Department of English, is in Japan through the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission’s Creative Artists [...]

After paying some bills last night, I clicked “headlines” on my browser bar and saw that J. G. Ballard had died. There’s no shortage of news about this now, but as many of the obits seem to focus on his role as an influencer (see “Author J. G. Ballard dies after lengthy illness,” by Ben Hoyle, Times), [...]

In the Wall Street Journal, Stephen Marche has a nice piece on books that don’t exist (”Longing for Great Lost Works“)–not books that have been invented by authors for fictional purposes, but books that have been destroyed or lost forever. A poignant thought:
Classical literature, like classical architecture, is a collection of delicious ruins. The destruction [...]

Like a lot of people, I’ve been guided on my writing journey by Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. According to Geoffrey K. Pullum’s eye-opening expose in The Chronicle of Higher Education, however (”50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice“), I’ve been had. Describing “the overopinionated and underinformed” book’s authors as “a pair of idiosyncratic bumblers who [...]

Arrived at work this morning to find an e-mail from Keith Michael Fiels, ALA’s executive director, announcing the death of Judith Krug, the founder of Banned Books Week and the director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom. There’s a brief note on AP (”Judith Krug, founder of Banned Books Week, dies“); click “read the rest of [...]