Tina Fey Memoir: A Funny Failure?

Nick Hornby, Judy Blume, and more weigh in

(NEWSER) - What was the best book of the year? Salon asked Nick Hornby, Junot Diaz, Curtis Sittenfeld, and other people with better literary credentials than ours what they enjoyed in 2009. Their responses are in the photo gallery. More»

Same old Sarah: 'ever optimistic, weirdly ungrammatical'

(NEWSER) - Most reviewers agree Sarah Palin's Going Rogue is intriguing—mostly for the swipes at the McCain campaign and what Palin writes about her life off the political stage. Some takes:

• The book is "a crackling read of grudges recalled, and settled, in her favor, a rewriting of the 2008 campaign that makes Palin the heroine of every encounter," Margaret Carlson writes for Bloomberg . The message appears to be that "if only Sarah could have been Sarah, the course of history might have been different."

Going Rogue shows Palin as smart feminist with eye on presidency

(NEWSER) - The Sarah Palin who emerges on the pages of Going Rogue is a far cry from the "prejudiced, dim-witted ideologue of the popular liberal imagination," Melanie Kirkpatrick writes in the Wall Street Journal . Kirkpatrick finds a "nuanced" politician "capable of mastering complicated issues," and a "new style of feminist" who writes with "sensitivity and affection" about issues like homosexuality and abortion. More»

Open has griping, conceit, lots of tennis

(NEWSER) - Andre Agassi’s autobiography has gotten a lot of hype, thanks to his admission of using both crystal meth and a toupee—but most of Open deals with “tennis, more tennis, the misery of tennis,” writes Janet Maslin in the New York Times. Still, even minutely detailed descriptions of matches prove “lively” thanks in part to writer JR Moehringer, whose name does not appear on the book: “Somebody on the memoir team has great gifts for heart-tugging drama.” More»

'Heartfelt' memoir depicts pursuit of public good, atonement

(NEWSER) - In True Compass, Ted Kennedy’s memoir, he writes with “searching candor” about the personal losses he endured, the mistakes he made, and the struggle to live up to his family reputation, writes Michiko Kakutani for the New York Times. The result is a powerful tribute to perseverance and the satisfaction that can be gained from slow, steady work in “pursuit of a cause” or “atonement for one’s failures.” More»