Roth's Latest Doesn't Measure Up

NY Times names its top 10 for 2008

(NEWSER) - Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison's most recent novel and nonfiction books about two wars feature on the New York Times list of the 10 best books of the year. They include:

• A Mercy: Morrison's tale of 17th-century slaves and masters is "part Faulknerian puzzle, part dream-song."
• 2666: Chilean author Roberto Bolaño died in 2003 and "has posthumously risen, like a figure in one of his own splendid creations, to the summit of modern fiction."

Agent Zigzag and Foreskin's Lament among best 100 in Book Review

(NEWSER) - Recent write-ups say Americans should read more—but where to start? Try the New York Times' 100 notable books of 2007, ranging from fiction to poetry, essays to bios. Among the acclaimed page-turners:

• Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal, Ben Macintyre
• The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? Francisco Goldman
• The Bad Girl, Mario Vargas Llosa
• The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
• Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism, John Updike

Novelist refutes magazine, says it was a bad reaction to sleeping pill

(NEWSER) - Philip Roth isn't happy with the Atlantic: A recent piece in the magazine said he suffered from "a 'crack-up' in his mid-50s," and the novelist says that's simply "not true." The Atlantic Wire points out that the episode, "whatever you call it," has been widely discussed in past articles and interviews, but the novelist rejects the term "crack-up." The truth, says Roth, is that he suffered an "adverse reaction" to a sleeping pill called Halcion in the 1980s. More»

...but one member of the 3-person judging panel quits in protest

(NEWSER) - Philip Roth, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author of the 1960s cultural touchstone Portnoy's Complaint and more than two dozen other novels, was named today as the winner of the Man Booker International Prize for fiction. Roth beat 12 other short-listed authors—including Britain's John le Carre, Australia's David Malouf, and Indian-born Canadian Rohinton Mistry—for the $100,000 prize. "One of the particular pleasures I've had as a writer is to have my work read internationally despite all the heartaches of translation that that entails," Roth said in a statement. More»

Fiction and nonfiction will be ranked early next year

(NEWSER) - E-books are gaining sales and credibility: The New York Times will add two e-book bestseller lists, fiction and nonfiction, beginning next year. The company has been working on a system to track and verify sales for two years, using weekly data from publishers, bookstores, and online retailers. “It was clear that e-books were taking a greater and greater share of total sales,” says an editor; sales in the first nine months of 2010 were up almost 190% from the same period of 2009, and are expected to climb to 25% of total trade sales within the next few years. More»