Booklist Online: More than 130,000 book reviews for librarians, book groups, and book lovers - from the trusted experts at the American Library Association

The Social Network, the new movie about the people who made Facebook, is getting a lot of publicity. The television ads hype the director, David Fincher (Se7en, Zodiac, Fight Club), and the writer, Aaron Sorkin (The American President, The West Wing, A Few Good Men), but, as television commercials generally do, they ignore the guy [...]

So it’s the thirtieth anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, the second installment in the first of George Lucas’s Star Wars trilogies. In celebration  — okay, and also in the interest of making some money — Random House is releasing a splendid book, J.W. Rinzler’s The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. If [...]

As you may be aware, Gary Oldman is set to reprise an iconic role originated by Alec Guinness. No, not Obi-Wan Kenobi (but wouldn’t that be awesome?).  According to this article at the Guardian’s website, he’s going to play George Smiley, John Le Carre’s fictional spy, in a big-screen adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. [...]

According to a story on the Los Angeles Times website, Ray Bradbury’s classic 1950 short story collection The Martian Chronicles is being turned into a movie.  Apparently producer John Davis has optioned the rights to the book. Davis produced 2004′s I, Robot, based on Isaac Asimov’s short story collection by the same name, and that [...]

You’ve probably heard that V, the ABC alien-invasion series, has been picked up for a second season. The show is based, of course, on the 1983 NBC miniseries, its sequel, and a short-lived weekly series. If you haven’t seen any of these (they’re all on DVD), you can check out the various spin-off novels. Start [...]

According to a May 20 Associated Press story, a thief, working alone, made off with several paintings from the Paris Museum of Modern Art.  Works by Picasso, Matisse, and Modigliani are among the missing. If you’re anything like me — and I imagine you are, but perhaps a bit taller — then this story piques your [...]

Have you seen Billionaire Boys Club, the 1987 two-part TV movie about Joe Hunt (compellingly played by Judd Nelson) and his band of wealthy young friends who passed off a Ponzi scheme as an investment club and, oh by the way, murdered a couple of people? For years there was an abridged VHS version that looked [...]

You probably already know this, but the final episode of Columbo – the original NBC series, not the ABC follow-up — aired on May 13, 1978. There were 45 episodes, if you include the 1968 and 1971 TV movies. You can read all about them in Mark Dawidziak’s absolutely indispensible 1989 book, The Columbo Phile. It’s [...]

The season finale of Bones, the television series based on the Kathy Reichs novels about Temperance Brennan, the crime-solving forensic anthropologist, is scheduled to air on May 20 — which is all the excuse I need to hype Reichs’ upcoming book, Spider Bones. It’s not officially published until August, but I’ve read it, and it’s very [...]

When a book is about an author’s compelling personal history, nothing brings the book alive as much as actually meeting the author or seeing them in an interview. Wes Moore, author of The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, was a featured guest on a recent installment of The Oprah Show about people with [...]