Wallace Public Library

It took over five years for Nathaniel Rich to finish his first novel — maybe because he was writing The Mayor's Tongue secretly, first as a college student, and then while writing film criticism during the day.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Grand Rapids, Michigan, was the first stop on Sarah Palin's Going Rouge book tour. The former governor of Alaska and vice presidential candidate signed copies of her book. Palin fans had waited in line all day for a chance to see her.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The 60th annual National Book Awards were handed out Wednesday night in New York. Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, a novel about daring, luck and mortality in 1970s New York, won the fiction prize. T.J. Stiles' biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt, The First Tycoon, was the nonfiction winner and Keith Waldrop's Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy won for poetry.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, a novel about daring, luck and mortality in 1970s New York, won the fiction prize Wednesday night at the 60th annual National Book Awards. T.J. Stiles' biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt, The First Tycoon, was the nonfiction winner.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

It’s not even Thanksgiving, and some Christmas-related books are already creeping up the list and Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel, “The Lacuna,” enters the hardcover fiction list at No. 5.

Jonathan Safran Foer is just the latest in a long line of distinguished literary vegetarians.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and Republican vice presidential candidate, is now a best-selling author. Palin's book, Going Rogue, made the best-seller list before it was released. She's planning a book tour that will only stoke her meteoric political celebrity. But to what end?

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Sarah Palin may be the Republican party's next big hope, but commentator Rod Dreher says her new book, Going Rogue, does little to bolster her image. She may be the perkiest small-town American in the spotlight, but Palin is selling her personality, not a platform.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Just one day after its release, Sarah Palin's new memoir, Going Rogue, is already on its way to the bestseller lists. Pundits are combing the book for signs of the former vice presidential candidate's political ambitions — and prospects. NPR's Congressional correspondent Andrea Seabrook gave it a read.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Before his death in June 2008, comedian George Carlin spent 10 years working on a memoir, Last Words, with his longtime friend Tony Hendra. Hendra, a writer and comedian, talks with Rebecca Roberts about Carlin's life and legacy.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The history of literature is filled with authors who also performed surgery or scribbled prescriptions. Lynn Neary speaks with two doctors who are also fiction writers — Abraham Verghese and Terrence Holt — about the link between medicine and writing literature.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

This week's staff picks: Biographies from bad-boy Andre Agassi and 'Rogue' politician Sarah Palin. Stephen King returns to form in a new novel, Zadie Smith fascinates in collected essays, and science writer Nicholas Wade argues that God is just an evolutionary adaptation.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The themes of this collection are a good way to characterize the author himself: a minor genius who unwittingly demonstrates the hazards of statistical reasoning.

The Booker Prize-winning author calls her new novel, The Children's Book, her "easiest to love." In it, the children of a bohemian turn-of-the-century couple discover the truth about their parents. Byatt is also the author of Possession.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

In a new book, journalist Joshua Kosman predicts a coming credit crisis, and assigns blame to private equity firms. While such firms make a fast profit from buying companies, improving them and reselling them, the companies take on the debt incurred from the purchase, leaving them in danger of financial collapse.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us