The Best Unsung Books of 2007

Step outside to find the best seasonal ingredients

(NEWSER) - Summer cooking should combine those elements we love most about the season: fresh fruits and vegetables, bright colors, arresting aromas, and the great outdoors. So NPR selected the 10 best cookbooks for jumping out of the frying pan and into the garden:

1. Simply Organic: A Cookbook for Sustainable, Seasonal, and Local Ingredients: Organic creations to complement eight distinct seasons.

5 gripping novels for those long summer days

(NEWSER) - Memorial Day means beaches, languid hours, and a page-turner within reach—so Salon has collared the season's best thrillers. This year's lineup includes: An art forger who gets in too deep; a Stalinist official who tries to do good; and a college prof who needs help solving an imaginary murder. Let's dive in! More»

For some good reading, check out these books recommended by your favorite authors

(NEWSER) - Read the books writers are raving about with the help of this list from the Guardian:

1. David Hare: Five Germanys I Have Known, Fritz Stern
2. Nicola Barker: Teenage, Jon Savage
3. Margaret Drabble: Edith Wharton, Hermione Lee

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»

Wired declares Klingon the king of sci-fi slang

(NEWSER) - Creators of true geek art follow JRR Tolkien’s example and craft fictional languages to populate their worlds. Wired lists the best examples:

1. Klingon. The Star Trek creation is the king of all sci-fi languages, with fully realized grammar and vocabulary.
2. City Speak. Blade Runner’s vision of earth as a mishmash of Western and Eastern cultures was greatly enriched by this language, described as a “mixture of Japanese, Spanish, German, what have you.”