Skip to: Content
Skip to: Site Navigation
Skip to: Search

News Sections

Newser Specials

Literature

Started by S Goldstein; Last updated Feb 28, 08 11:26 PM CST by D Lim | View history

Rate it:

Print

E-mail

|

Digg

Seed this on Newsvine

Add this link to Del.icio.us

StumbleUpon

| Edit thread | Notify editors | + Start a new thread

Literature

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me." -C.S. Lewis

Stories

Stories 1 - 20 of 128

<< Prev 1 2 3 4 5 ... 7 Next >>

July 2008
- Ex-Wife's Novel Details Taylor's Marital Breakup
  
  newser | New York Times | Jul 21, 08 6:53 PM CDT
  
  Book-jacket fodder that could alone put a novel on the bestseller list is curiously absent from Kathryn Walker’s debut, A Stopover in Venice , Celia McGee notes in the New York Times —though it’s a fictional account of her unhappy marriage to James Taylor. The musician comes in for a “not very flattering” portrait, McGee writes, as does first ex-wife Carly Simon. More »
- An Outsider Becomes Poet Laureate
  
  newser | New York Times | Jul 17, 08 7:54 AM CDT
  
  Kay Ryan, a poet from Fairfax, Calif., with a reputation as an individualist, has been chosen as the nation's new poet laureate. The 62-year-old writer is known for her sly, concise verse that incorporates plays on words and uses intricate rhyme structures. Despite receiving many of the field's highest accolades, Ryan remains something of an outsider, writes the New York Times . More »
- Midnight's Children Wins Best of Bookers
  
  newser | Guardian (UK) | Jul 13, 08 5:04 PM CDT
  
  Salman Rushdie's classic Midnight's Children , which nabbed the Booker Prize 27 years ago, has now won the Best of the Bookers by public vote, the Guardian reports. About a boy born at the hour of India's independence, the novel won over six previous prize winners. The prize "looks at what qualities of books survive" their "temporary celebrity," said one judge. More »
- Bard-Working Librarians Help Nab Book Thief
  
  newser | Washington Post | Jul 11, 08 4:29 PM CDT
  
  Quick-thinking librarians have helped recover a valuable book of Shakespeare's works stolen from a British university 10 years ago, the Washington Post reports. A man who arrived unannounced at Washington's Folger Shakespeare Library with a copy of the 1623 First Folio set off "alarm bells" with his tale of the $2.5 million volume's provenance, says a library official. More »
- Anne of Green Gables, at 100, Goes Legit
  
  newser | Slate | Jul 10, 08 12:31 PM CDT
  
  Impetuous redheaded orphan Anne of Green Gables got the biggest gift of all on her 100th birthday: Official introduction into the literary canon. The Modern Library will issue a centennial edition of the first book in the series of eight. Some scholars bristle at the decision to place Anne alongside Huck Finn and Anna Karenina, dubbing the novels sentimental and their readers nostalgic, but Meghan O’Rourke comes to her defense on Slate. More »
- Wife Shouldn't Worry Laura Bush: Dowd
  
  newser | New York Times | Jul 9, 08 1:11 PM CDT
  
  Words like "smear" and "gossip" have flown around American Wife , the novel probing the secret life of Laura Bush, but the book itself is pretty harmless, Maureen Dowd writes in the New York Times . Kings and queens have always inspired art, Dowd notes, and Wife isn’t sensationalist—it’s a well-researched attempt to get inside a guarded but intriguing figure. More »
- Evangelicals' Sex Talk Has Hidden Agenda
  
  newser | Salon | Jul 8, 08 7:50 PM CDT
  
  Sex is no longer taboo for the religious right—but the evangelical sexual revolution is no liberation movement, historian Dagmar Herzog argues in her new book, Sex in Crisis . Instead, Herzog asserts that “evangelicals, over the last couple of decades, have beaten liberals at their own game by adapting liberal rhetoric for conservative ends," writes Louis Bayard in Salon . He thinks, however, that Herzog has overstated the case a bit. More »
- Obama as Writer: He's the 'Real Deal'
  
  newser | New Republic | Jul 8, 08 2:37 PM CDT
  
  If it's true that the style is the man, then it makes sense, literary critic Andrew Delbanco writes in the New Republic , to take the measure of Barack Obama from his memoirs. Taking a tour of Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope , Delbanco finds a bit of overwriting, a propensity for cinematic flourishes, a sensitivity to the complexities of character, and an ability to use local details to "open out into universal experience." More »
- 'Laura Bush' No Conservative in New Novel
  
  newser | Radar | Jul 7, 08 4:44 PM CDT
  
  In a new book unlikely to top the presidential reading list, author Curtis Sittenfeld fictionalizes the story of Laura Bush. Radar got a sneak peek and calls the novel "a masterful highbrow-lowbrow mash-up." The narrator is a librarian who falls in love with a future president upon seeing his crotch, undergoes an abortion, and has steamy sex with the brother of her high school sweetheart (who dies in a car crash she causes). More »
- Is Something Rotten in the Bard's Works?
  
  newser | NPR | Jul 6, 08 12:37 PM CDT
  
  Did William Shakespeare really write the plays attributed to him? The question remains the subject of an intense academic debate, NPR reports. Those who doubt the “man from Stratford” penned his plays point to a lame rhyming epitaph on the supposed bard’s headstone, and to lack of documents tying him to his works—or even suggesting he was a writer. More »
- Gonzo Gets It
  
  newser | Rotten Tomatoes | Jul 4, 08 8:24 AM CDT
  
  There’s a “fascinating history lesson” in the documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson , “a lively collage of interviews and found materials,” writes A. O. Scott in the New York Times . The film cements the journalist's “place in the great American parade of cranks, renegades and sages,” Scott adds. It's “all you could wish for in a doc about the man,” notes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times . More »
June 2008
- That's Sir Salman Rushdie
  
  newser | Associated Press | Jun 25, 08 12:54 PM CDT
  
  Queen Elizabeth officially knighted Salman Rushdie today, the AP reports, a year after the award was announced to widespread Muslim protest. “I have no regrets about any of my work,” said Rushdie, when asked about his novel The Satanic Verses, for which the Shah of Iran awarded him a “death sentence” and forced him into hiding. No cameras were allowed at the knighting, which the 61-year-old described as a “private moment.” More »
- Christian Novel Outstrips Oprah Pick
  
  newser | New York Times | Jun 24, 08 9:16 AM CDT
  
  Once rejected by multiple mainstream publishers, the slim Christian novel The Shack is flying off shelves, topping the New York Times trade paperback bestseller list. “Everybody that I know has bought at least 10 copies,” says one devotee. The Times looks at a blockbuster built around an unconventional depiction of God—as a jolly black woman named “Papa.” More »
- Sentences That 'Evoke an Entire Universe'
  
  newser | Esquire | Jun 22, 08 7:32 PM CDT
  
  Celebrating 75 years of fiction, Esquire offers some samples from "writers who could evoke an entire universe with a single sentence." A smattering: "Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well," Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro , August, 1936. More »
- Nixonland Gets 'Excellent' Prez Utterly Wrong
  
  newser | New York Sun | Jun 19, 08 4:46 PM CDT
  
  The biography Nixonland is a hatchet job on an “excellent president,” media mogul Conrad Black (from behind bars) writes in the New York Sun , picking apart author Rick Perlstein’s slights—and reminding of the profound accomplishments of the 37th president. Beyond crediting Nixon with coarsening the political discourse permanently, Perlstein revels in his “manic, corrupt, rat cunning,” plus, Black notes, “cynicism, opportunism and chicanery.” More »
- Beastie Directs Film, Reilly Does Double Header
  
  newser | Esquire | Jun 15, 08 8:26 PM CDT
  
  Who will reign in pop culture next month? A dead drug addict and rapper-turned-filmmaker are on Esquire 's list of predictions: Actor John C. Reilly will compete with Will Farrell for jokes in the upcoming laffer, Step Brothers. Beastie Boy Adam Yauch has directed Gunnin' for that #1 Spot , a doc about high school basketball prospects in Harlem. More »
- Summer's 'Most Enchanting Debut Novel'
  
  newser | New York Times | Jun 13, 08 4:25 PM CDT
  
  The Story of Edgar Sawtelle , the debut novel from former software developer David Wroblewski, is “a great, big, mesmerizing read, audaciously envisioned as classic Americana," Janet Maslin raves in the New York Times . "Pick up this book and expect to feel very, very reluctant to put it down," she says of a coming-of-age story involving a deaf boy and the dogs his family breeds. More »
- Rowling's Potter Prequel Conjures Up $49K for Charity
  
  newser | Reuters | Jun 11, 08 5:01 AM CDT
  
  JK Rowling’s handwritten “prequel” to the Harry Potter books has sold for $49,000 at a charity auction to benefit the PEN writers organization, Reuters reports. In the 800-word story, which takes place before Harry’s birth, the boy wizard’s father and Sirius Black use magic to elude police in a high-speed chase. The work also manages to brush aside rumors that an eighth Potter book is in the works. More »
- Not Very PC: Why Typewriters Beat Computers
  
  newser | BBC | Jun 8, 08 2:31 PM CDT
  
  Favored by novelists and technophobes and sold out of car trunks, typewriters remain the implement of choice for some Brits, reports BBC. Despite their weight and Internet deficiencies, the tangible writing experience free from computer meltdowns or deletions may save the typewriter from extinction—at least for now. One sales rep says he’s “amazed” his company still sells models at nearly $1,000. More »
- 'Realish' Sedaris Book Skirts Memoir Scrutiny
  
  newser | New York Times | Jun 8, 08 10:45 AM CDT
  
  With his new book of nonfiction essays, Engulfed in Flames , David Sedaris finds himself engulfed in questions of truth and accuracy. In America, the recent explosion of memoirs has been followed with one scandal after another, prompting more scrutiny of the humorist’s work. “I do think Sedaris exaggerates too much for a writer using a nonfiction label," a New Republic writer argued last year. More »

Stories 1 - 20 of 128

<< Prev 1 2 3 4 5 ... 7 Next >>

(Index Stock (http://www.indexstock.com))

Eli Loves Books ((c) Yogi)

« Prev« Prev | Next »Next » Slideshow

Related Threads

So You Like Lists? • Harry's Last Hurrah • Obituaries • Film • The Internet • Nobel Laureates • Parenting • Theater • Africa • Amazon.com

More Recommend Reading

What is Newser?

2008 Codie Finalist

Newser gives you more news in less time. We search for the best and most important stories all over the web, read them for you, and deliver concise and sharp summaries—along with links to the full text. Newser provides a way to stay on top of an ever-expanding horizon of news and opinion—politics, sports, business, trends, technology, personalities, crimes, and controversies. Newser keeps you not just better informed, but, with our signature graphic interface and smart condensed format, more enjoyably informed.