Books | Tops in crime fiction: Best mysteries of 2011

December 12th, 2011

Books | Tops in crime fiction: Best mysteries of 2011 | Seattle Times Newspaper.

The top 10, according to Adam Woog.

32 of the year’s best books | Seattle Times

December 12th, 2011

Books | 32 of the year’s best books | Seattle Times Newspaper

Seattle Times book editor Mary Ann Gwinn is a bit of a rebel when it comes to these annual book lists. Here’s how she introduces this one:

 

Before I share The Seattle Times list of 2011′s most worthy books, I’m going to divulge an opinion: I think the whole “best books of the year” concept is squishy. How can there be exactly 10 best books published in a given year? Number 11 was probably a pretty good book, too.

But readers love “best of” lists, so here’s our version. In the interest of disclosure, here’s how we do it: I ask reviewers to nominate the best book published in 2011 they reviewed for us, and the best book published in the past year that they read but didn’t review.

Here are the results — 32 books, 21 fiction (who says the novel is dead!?), 11 nonfiction. Top vote getters were three novels, “The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes, “The Marriage Plot” by Jeffrey Eugenides and “Ed King” by David Guterson, and Erik Larson’s work of nonfiction, “In the Garden of Beasts.”

 

Monday Miscellany

December 12th, 2011

If your life is anything like mine, you’re swamped right about now with holiday preparations and festivities. This week’s installment of Monday Miscellany, therefore, will be mercifully short.

An Introduction to Psych You Up. Literally.

Maria Konnikova is a woman after my own heart. At Scientific American she has just introduced her new column, Literally Psyched, a “journey of interdisciplinary exploration”:

Here, I propose to use literature and creative inspiration to explore concepts in the psychology of the mind and human thought. To create a place that will blend the world of fiction and non-fiction, that of the literary and the psychological, of artistic inspiration and scientific exploration. To use whatever inspires me—a book, a character, a line, a moment—as a window of insight into the human mind. For who are creative writers but individuals who have dedicated their life and art to observing and chronicling humans as a whole: their interactions, their dreams, their hopes, their disappointments, the full complexity of their internal life?

And, as if her interdisciplinary approach to the areas in which literature (and other creative endeavors) and psychology intersect weren’t enough, she begins this introductory post with a personal story, a narrative anecdote from her own life that illustrates how she has become the person she is.

Literature, psychology, and life narrative all wrapped up together! This is good stuff. I think she’d probably be interested in Literature & Psychology.

Not Exactly Everyday Engineering: a Q&A with Brian Clegg

Publishers Weekly interviews Brian Clegg:

In his new book How to Build a Time Machine, Brian Clegg takes a “pop science” look at time travel, explaining quantum entanglement and superluminal speeds in terms that even a technophobe could understand. We asked Clegg about his book, some of his favorite time travel stories, and the most important scientific discovery of his lifetime.

I’ve always been fascinated by the literary potential of time travel. Devising a means of time travel is a challenge to a writer’s creative ingenuity: a blow to the head, a drug, a complex machine, a dream, a wormhole in the space-time continuum, a genetic disease, a ghostly netherworld. But the means of time travel is only a gimmick. What’s really important are the philosophical, psychological, scientific, and moral questions that would arise if, like Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, we were to come unstuck in time: What happens if a time traveler changes history? Can time travelers meet their older or younger selves in a different time period? If I could go back to an earlier time in my life knowing what I know now, would I change anything, and, if so, what might the results be? What advice would I offer my younger self? Would I listen to anything my older self had to tell me? Would I want to know how and when I was going to die?

Asked about his favorite fiction involving time travel, Brian Clegg, who has a degree in physics from Cambridge, replied:

One of my all time favorites is a short story by Robert Heinlein called “All You Zombies.” Heinlein sets up a wonderful time paradox, where the main character, who has had a sex change, goes back in time to impregnate his younger, female self. The resultant child is then moved back through time to become the mother. The character has literally come from nowhere. Perhaps my favorite novel with a time travel theme is Joe Haldeman’s Forever War, originally envisaged as a counter to Heinlein’s gung-ho Starship Troopers. Because the protagonists in Forever War are always taking long journeys at near the speed of light, they travel far into the future. By the time they return home everyone they once knew is dead, the world is not the one they remember – so there is nothing for it but to sign up for another tour.

See, its the implications of the time travelers’ actions, not the time travel itself, that’s fascinating.

Clegg believes that our ability to construct the technology necessary for time travel is thousands of years away. “But for me the amazing thing is that it’s only a matter of getting the technology right. There’s nothing in physics that prevents time travel.”

Give the holiday gift with the most staying power

For Walter Rodgers, writing in The Christian Science Monitor, that gift is books:

Even the best Christmas gifts lose their luster within a few months. Books have a staying power few gifts can match. I have nothing left from Christmases long past except my childhood books, each still prized. This season, give books. They are our bulwarks against time, ignorance, and barbarity.

 

Finally, here’s a photo for the season:

 

wreath

Conversation Starters: 2011′s Top 5 Book Club Picks : NPR

December 11th, 2011

Conversation Starters: 2011′s Top 5 Book Club Picks : NPR.

“Here are five fascinating books that will be sure to catalyze serious and lively conversation”:

  • State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
  • The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
  • We the Animals by Justin Torres
  • Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
  • The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak

The best audio books of 2011

December 11th, 2011

The best audio books of 2011 – The Washington Post.

Recommendations from Katherine A. Powers.

Best Books of 2011 – The Washington Post

December 10th, 2011

Best Books of 2011 – The Washington Post.

The Washington Post weighs in with its top five fiction and top five nonfiction books of 2011.

Warning: This is another one of those “click for every item” lists.

And there’s also a link labeled “More Best of 2011.”

Best Books of 2011: Two More Lists

December 9th, 2011

Booksellers’ Picks: Catch The Year’s Freshest Reads

This winter, our independent booksellers have selected books that range in subject from toasters to typeface, odd bookmarks to old Volkswagens, department stores to pasta design. Whether you need a picture book for a toddler, kid lit for a young reader, or quirky nonfiction for the grown-up set, these booksellers have just the thing on their shelves.

NPR offers choices by Lucia Silva, the book buyer at Portrait of a Bookstore in Studio City, Calif; Rona Brinlee of The BookMark in Neptune Beach, Fla.; and Daniel Goldin of Boswell Book Co. in Milwaukee.

Three books on this list caught my eye as particularly good gift choices for booklovers on your list:

  • Unpacking my Library: Writers and Their Books by Leah Price
  • Forgotten Bookmarks: A Bookseller’s Collection of Odd Things Lost Between the Pages by Michael Popek
  • Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield

Writers choose their favorite books of 2011

Salon has collected a HUGE list: favorite books chosen by 50+ authors:

The more than 50 responses we received — from Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners as well as big-time bestsellers — chronicle a thriving, eventful year in the life of the literary culture, and will likely point you toward more than a few titles you haven’t read (or maybe haven’t even heard of). Some of the most popular selections on our list haven’t shown up on many others, including Denis Johnson’s “Train Dreams” and Alan Heathcock’s story collection “Volt.” (Another book popular with critics, Chad Harbach’s “The Art of Fielding,” was surprising in its absence here.)

Famous Writers as Handcrafted Dolls

December 9th, 2011

Just in time for your holiday gift giving!

Tipped off by a Facebook post by literary scene fixture Miss Sara Rosen, we just discovered the most amazing treasure trove of handcrafted, miniature versions of some of our favorite writers of all time over on Etsy — and they’re all available for purchase. Just think, you can make a tiny Kurt Vonnegut chat up a pint-sized Flannery O’Connor! Joyce Carol Oates can have a deep conversation about heartbreak with Sylvia Plath! JRR Tolkien and Isaac Asimov can arm wrestle to determine who is more popular! The possibilities are endless.

via Flavorwire » Gallery: Famous Writers as Handcrafted Dolls.

OMG. I’d like the Harper Lee. Or the Dorothy Parker. Or the Joyce Carol Oates. Or. . .

The best nonfiction of 2011

December 8th, 2011

The best nonfiction of 2011 – Books – Salon.com

Our favorite nonfiction spanned centuries and the world, and told stories of writers, princesses and great thinkers

As promised yesterday, Salon’s Laura Miller today presents her list of the five best nonfiction books of the year:

  • Townie by Andre Dubus, III
  • Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution by Mary Gabriel
  • The Information: A Histsory, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick
  • Catherine the Great: The Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie
  • Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff

As with the fiction list, there are links to Salon’s review of each of these books. But unlike the fiction list, there is no extensive list of “honorable mentions,” unfortunately.

Visitors make special literary find at bookstore in downtown Houston, MO

December 8th, 2011

Visitors make special literary find at bookstore in downtown Houston – houstonherald.com | Houston Herald – Houston, MO: News.

When they came to Houston for the first time a few weeks ago, a Columbia couple didn’t expect to go home with a prized addition to their collection of books by a famous 20th century Canadian writer.

But when Drs. Karl and Georgia Nolph accompanied their granddaughter, Shelby Ringdahl – the reining Miss Texas County, who is also from Columbia – their love for books led them to set foot in the Friends of the Library book store on Grand Avenue while exploring the downtown area. When they had picked out a few items to purchase and were preparing to leave, something on a shelf caught their eye: a clean, hardback copy of “The Governor’s Lady” written by Thomas Head Raddall in 1960.

The price: a quarter.

The value: maybe $25 retail to the right buyer, but a whole lot more to the Nolphs in non-monetary terms.

Book lovers find a treasure in a small southern Missouri town.