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

Books inspired and continue to fuel the environmental movement, from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and to today’s frontline writers, including David Gessner, Bill McKibben, Frances Moore Lappé, Carl Safina, Terry Tempest Williams, and many more. Consequently, The Orion Book Award honors environmental writing. The finalists have been announced on the eve [...]

As National Poetry Month begins, poet Adrienne Rich is much on the mind of poetry readers in the wake of her death at 82 on March 27, 2012. Adrienne Rich’s poems are works you turn to when the fog of stress grows too thick and the static too loud, when the world seems cruel and [...]

A week before the publication of Anne Tyler’s twentieth novel, The Beginner’s Goodbye, NPR’s Morning Edition has aired an interview with the famously publicity-shy author (“The Art of the Everyday: The Alchemy of Anne Tyler,” by Lynn Neary). “Famously publicity-shy” sounds like an oxymoron, I know, but I think it works. “When I finish a book, I send the [...]

Almost as soon as Harry Potter et. al. took their final ride on the Hogwarts Express in 2007, readers began to speculate what the next big project was for J.K. Rowling. Now we know. She has finished an adult novel, though the publication date is still under wraps. What was disclosed in a press release is that [...]

Even without a visit to the boardwalk to consult your most reliable fortune teller, you might have guessed this week’s Book Trailer Thursday pick (though perhaps you should still make that trip for the popcorn and cotton candy–due to predicted snow in Chicago, Booklist‘s carrier pigeon snack delivery system has halted service). Coinciding with the [...]

The connection between medicine and literature is a long and noble one, including the works of Chekhov and William Carlos Williams, to name the two most readily cited. Women and men become doctors because they want to help and heal others, which are acts of compassion, and compassion is born of the imagination. To feel [...]

Step one, read Saul Bellow’s lengthy masterpiece, The Adventures of Augie March. That is this fall’s selection for One Book, One Chicago, the 10th anniversary of the Chicago Public Library program. I read Augie March years ago, and was amazed to find that I remembered most vividly the sections set in Mexico, and recalled little [...]

In July, my colleague Donna Seaman and I participated in ALA’s virtual conference. We were the lunchtime “entertainment.” We interviewed an author apiece, and we were each able to chose an author for whom we have great admiration; and “my” author was the distinguished historian David McCullough, author of, most recently, The Greater Journey, a [...]

Pellinore Warthrop, the arrogant, brilliant hero of Rick Yancey’s thrice-starred Monstrumologist series, is in trouble. Snap to, Will Henry, and rescue your master! Or that’s what we would say if this was a story. Unfortunately, it’s a very real tale of art versus commerce, and the only one who might be able to help is [...]

Whether you couldn’t make it to ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans or you did make it and want to recapture that conference glow, you’ll probably want to register for the ALA Virtual Conference to be held next week on July 13 and 14. My Booklist colleagues Brad Hooper and Donna Seaman will be playing important [...]