Modern Novels' Shift: We Can Understand Them

Stephen King, Christopher Hitchens make the cut

(NEWSER) - If you need a book recommendation for holiday reading, look no further than the New York Times ' list of the 10 best books of the year. Five are fiction and five non-fiction:

• 11/22/63 by Stephen King: A time portal sends an English teacher back to 1958 to try and stop Lee Harvey Oswald. King reflects "on questions of memory, fate, and free will as he richly evokes midcentury America."
• Swamplandia! By Karen Russell: "Exuberantly inventive language" marks this story of "a heroine who is wise beyond her years" as she tries to preserve her family's way of life. Also, an alligator theme park is involved.

As he nears 200, the novelist is more relevant than ever: Michael Levenson

(NEWSER) - Charles Dickens wrote in the 19th century, but at nearly 200 years old, he’s an expert on the 21st century as well. "For the mid-Victorians, government intervention was unthinkable, the market was king, only private philanthropy was tolerated," writes Michael Levenson for Slate . In other words, to paraphrase a Tale of Two Cities, it was a time much like the present. Dickens "has caught up to us, or we have reverted to him," Levenson notes. "Either way, it’s time to return to Dickens." More»

'News of a Kidnapping' selling out after Mousavi comment

(NEWSER) - Want to know what it’s like to be an Iranian opposition leader under house arrest? Read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s News of a Kidnapping. Ever since Mir Hossein Mousavi told his daughters the Colombian novel describes “my situation in captivity,” it’s been flying off the shelves in Iran, reports the Guardian . Mousavi’s comment to his daughters became an online sensation among Iran’s wired opposition; now, people are “queuing up to buy the book as if they were queuing up to buy a new Harry Potter,” said a Tehran journalist. More»

Because 'life, not death, is the novelist's subject': Laura Miller

(NEWSER) - Ten years later, and still no great 9/11 novels? Yes, because "at its heart, 9/11 was meaningless," writes Laura Miller at Salon . "I realize that sounds inflammatory, but hear me out." A novelist explores "the winding and unwinding of long strands of cause and effect, in the reasons people do things and the often unanticipated results they get." And it's hard to infuse that into the 2,996 deaths of 9/11. Those deaths were simply "abrupt and unanticipated, as is the case with most disasters." More»

BookLamp aims to change the way you get book recommendations

(NEWSER) - Need to find a new book to read? Allow us to introduce you to BookLamp , a project Mashable calls "Pandora for books." BookLamp is a recommendation engine launching today that uses the actual content of a book you like in order to recommend other books you might also like. The creators believe this method of utilizing what they call "Book DNA" will produce better recommendations than other sites that rely on marketing data for their recommendations. The only drawback? There are currently only about 20,000 books catalogued. More»