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A quick compilation of recent reads before I head off to the holiday party… In “No sex, please, we’re literary!” Laura Miller takes aim at the Bad Sex in Fiction Award, calling it a “sniggering exercise” that “poses as a knowing blow against literary pretension while embodying the most retrograde prudery.” This is the only [...]

Three years ago, I made a public vow (well, it appeared on this blog, anyway) to read a book by Harlan Coben. I had read a profile of him in the Atlantic (“Paperback Writer,” by Eric Konigsberg) that, while not damning him as some have damned James Patterson, did portray Coben as being a guy who cared as [...]

so I have here on my desk the uncorrected proof of Zone, by Mathias Enard, which will be published December 14 by Open Letter although, really, it seems that Zone Books would have been a more appropriate publisher but anyway, the book concerns a French-born Croat intelligence officer who takes a train from Milan to [...]

I have a nice fat copy of War and Peace sitting on my shelf. And, this morning, I finished reading Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece–without even opening the covers. How did I manage that feat? Via e-mail. Way back on February 27, 2008, in a post titled “If I Start Now, I Can Be Done by December [...]

In reviewing Bob Woodward’s new book, Obama’s Wars, I made my first foray into the world of e-books. First times are never all that pleasurable, are they? Getting the book online was a no-brainer. Obama’s Wars was embargoed and it would be faster to get it Monday morning first thing than wait for the stores to [...]

On the Guardian‘s Books Blog, Lesley McDowell writes about writers who are reviewers, and reviewers who are writers–and, honestly, I would have no idea what one of those looks like: It’s a strange hybrid, this author-critic creature. I can’t think of another art form where the “practitioner” and the critic overlap like this. Where are [...]

From the Department of I’m Shocked, Shocked, NPR reports that the NYTRB is mostly by and about white males (“Are ‘The New York Times’ Book Reviews Fair?“). Also on NPR.org (“Books Have Many Futures,” although I couldn’t find audio), Linton Weeks presents this amusing scenario: Other types of books are not only meant to be [...]

It’s been so long since I wrote a Weeklings that this is really a Monthlings–and that’s being charitable. Here are a few of the things I’ve read recently that have lodged in my brain…due to the length of this post, I have introduced subject headings. First Editions Much as I covet first editions, I only [...]

I’m not exactly sure when I read Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. It might have been in college as part of a black literature course or after college as “required reading” for any young black person with any level of race consciousness. But I have certainly come to know Ellison more through reading about him, particularly [...]

Colleen Mondor is one of Booklist’s many ardent, expert, and versatile freelance reviewers. I rely on Colleen to cover all kinds of topical nonfiction, with a strong emphasis on books about nature and environmental concerns and Alaska, where she lived for a decade or so after college. Colleen grew up in Florida, not far from [...]