Anne of Green Gables, at 100, Goes Legit

It can be healthy, safe way to explore sexuality: Tracy Clark-Flory

(NEWSER) - A new study about teen fiction raises a familiar alarm bell: The books have too much sex. Roughly half of young-adult titles have some kind of racy content, which runs the gamut from kissing to intercourse, warns the study from Brigham Young University. Oh, please, writes Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon . "These books aren't a replacement for sex-ed but rather a way to begin exploring what it means to be a sexual being," she writes. "Kids get to vicariously try on different roles in the safest way possible." More»

Remembering the writer, not the myth

(NEWSER) - The myth of JD Salinger the withdrawn man doesn't match Salinger the writer, Adam Gopnik writes. On the page, Salinger was charming, expansive, and relentlessly engaged with the world. "No American writer will ever have a more alert ear, a more attentive eye, or a more ardent heart," Gopnik writes in the New Yorker . "A self-enclosed writer doesn’t listen, and Salinger was a peerless listener: page after page of pure talk flowed out of him, moving and true and, above all, funny." More»

Sex, ghosts, long-lost twins, baby monkeys inhabit Salon's picks

(NEWSER) - The frankly subjective list of the year's best fiction from Salon avoids the obvious Wolff Hall, Hillary Mantel's latest and the Man Booker Prize winner. Laura Miller names five others that, too, offered “a sojourn, however brief, into another world”:

• The Children’s Book by AS Byatt: “This is a classic Byatt fusion of fact and uncannily luscious imagery, mixed in the ideal proportions: not too hot, not too cold—just right.”

Obama's vacation book list drives leaps in Amazon sales rankings

(NEWSER) - President Obama’s poll numbers are faltering, but his summer reading choices are getting rave reviews, Politico reports. A survey of the Amazon.com standings of the five books the White House announced he would take with him on his Martha’s Vineyard vacation show a drastic improvement in sales. If you’re doubtful about joining Obama’s Book Club, look at these numbers and follow the pack: More»

Fluffy novels 'must respond to a more sober age'

(NEWSER) - The world of chick lit is populated with material concerns and hefty price tags—but in today’s battered economy, such themes may no longer resonate, writes author Sarah Bilston for DoubleX. Her latest book's “cheery consumerism and aimless career-dithering were clearly out of touch in a world of mortgage defaulting, pink slips, and repossessed homes.” The UK version was already on shelves, but not so the US edition: So "in a single mad month I slashed and burned," as other writers must for the genre to survive. More»