Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

A coupla-three week ago I wrote about using my brand-new iPhonish-like device to read comics. Well friends, it’s become a verifiable obsession, and it seems like every day there’s a new reader app or comic designed specifically for mobile devices. Of the applications, comiXology seems to have the frontrunner, offering comics from some pretty reliable indie [...]

My favorite novelist is Anthony Trollope, and for that reason I take a lot of ribbing from my Booklist colleagues.  Trollope seems to be  the poster boy for fiction that is stuffy, boring, and old fashioned.  So imagine my delight when I opened my copy of Newsweek yesterday–the one with “What to Read Now” on the [...]

I am so sick of “death of publishing” articles, so tired of talking about the ridiculously oversimplified “print versus web” argument that I could spit. (But I won’t, because Mama Graff didn’t raise no spitter.) So what did I do last night? Why, I hied myself down to “The Future of the Book: A Conversation on [...]

I’ve often written about what we do at Booklist and how we do it, about our recommend-only policy, the staggering volume of books we review, and the people we’re reviewing for–but, until now, I never had a visual aid.
Fortunately, Books for Youth Associate Editor Daniel Kraus, who in his spare time writes novels and makes documentary films, [...]

In the Boston Globe (”What’s so funny?“), Alex Beam discusses the challenge of writing the comic novel:
In the immortal deathbed phrase variously attributed to actors Edwin Booth, Edmund Kean, Donald Wolfit, and others: “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” Comedy on the printed page may be the hardest of all. Writer Roy Blount Jr. once [...]

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 [...]

Donna Seaman, in her Booklist review of the essay collection A Narrative Compass: Stories That Guide Women’s Lives, wrote: “In each elegant interpretation, the author traces the ripple effects of a story that thrilled or provoked her, a story that became a catalyst for a lifelong passion, and a story that became a virtual [...]

Disregard, for a moment, what web-enabled mobile devices (aka “cellphones”) are doing to the habit of reading. Matt Richtel (”If Only Literature Could Be a Cell-Phone Free Zone,” New York Times) asks us to consider what these ubiquitous gadgets are doing to reading material.
Must we now hit “delete” on tension that simmers for hundreds of [...]

As Laura Tillotson reminded us, April is not only the cruellest month, it’s also National Poetry Month. Alas, poetry readership is at a 16-year low (”The End of Verse?” by Marc Bain, Newsweek). There are many things you can do to fight this depressing trend. You could take down that tattered copy of Robert Frost [...]