Yesterday's Man?

The : The New Yourk Review of Books

Photo : aleksandreia.wordpress.com

Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic
by Michael Scammell
Random House, 689 pp., $35.00

He began his education in the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, at an experimental kindergarten in Budapest. His mother was briefly a patient of Sigmund Freud's. In interwar Vienna he wound up as the personal secretary of Vladimir Jabotinsky, one of the early leaders of the Zionist movement. Traveling in Soviet Turkmenistan as a young and ardent Communist sympathizer, he ran into Langston Hughes. Fighting in the Spanish civil war, he met W.H. Auden at a "crazy party" in Valencia, before winding up in one of Franco's prisons. In Weimar Berlin he fell into the circle of the infamous Comintern agent Willi Münzenberg, through whom he met the leading German Communists of the era: Johannes Becher, Hanns Eisler, Bertolt Brecht. Afraid of being caught by the Gestapo while fleeing France, he borrowed suicide pills from Walter Benjamin. He took them several weeks later when it seemed he would be unable to get out of Lisbon, but didn't die (though Benjamin, denied passage into Spain at the French border, took them and did).
Along the way he had lunch with Thomas Mann,

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A Very Bad Wizard: Morality Behind the Curtain

From : Metapsychology

Photo :http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net

A Very Bad Wizard is a collection of delightful interviews or conversations conducted by philosopher Tamler Sommers.

Sommers interviews an array of researchers--from psychologists to primatologists to philosophers--who all have one thing in common: their work has direct implications for the study of morality. The distinguished interviewees are Galen Strawson, Philip Zimabrdo, Franz De Waal, Michael Ruse, Joseph Henrich, Joshua Greene, Liane Young, Jonathan Haidt, Stephen Stich, and William Ian Miller. I read the book on my flights back to the West Coast after picking it up a few days prior in Massachusetts. I simply couldn't put it down! It truly is--as Steven Pinker states in his blurb--both thought-provoking and entertaining. It is a lively way into some of the most fascinating interdisciplinary research on ethics--what often now goes under the heading "moral psychology."

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The Water Table by Philip Gross

From : The Guardian


Photo : http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Polly Clark applauds a humane collection which this week won the TS Eliot prize for poetry.





Water is a dominant theme in many of poetry's recent prizewinners: Don ­Paterson's Rain won the 2009 Forward prize and Sean O'Brien's The Drowned Book was a double winner of TS Eliot and Forward in 2007. One of the poets shortlisted for this year's Eliot prize, Alice Oswald, is also a chronicler of the life of rivers and won the prize a few years ago for her second collection, Dart. So The Water Table enters a somewhat crowded waterway, and one might be forgiven for doubting that there is much more that can be said


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More from L.A.Time


Nonfiction
1.
What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown: $27.99) A collection of the author's writings of everyday and extraordinary people.
3
2.
SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (William Morrow: $29.99) More funny, informative facts and questions to ponder.
4
3.
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown: $27.99) An exploration of the background of high achievers.
50
4.
Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom (Hyperion: $23.99) Albom's observations of a rabbi and a pastor on an eight-year journey of faith.
7
5.
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (Little, Brown : $25.99) An examination and behind-the-scenes look at factory farming.
1
6.
Save the Deli by David Sax (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt : $24) The history behind and search for the best delis across America.
2
7.
Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon (Harper: $26.99) A collection of autobiographical essays reflecting on what it means to be a man and father.
5
8.
It's Your Time by Joel Osteen (Free Press: $25) Finding inspiration and faith during difficult times.
1
9.
The Queen Mother by William Shawcross (Publisher: $40) The biography of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon and a century of devotion to the British monarchy.
1
10.
Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer (Doubleday: $27.95) A chronicle of Pat Tillman, the NFL star turned Army Ranger whose death in Afghanistan stunned the power structure.

Like-minded fellows

From : The Economist

Photo : http://www.economist.com/

Seeing Further: The Story of Science and the Royal Society. Edited by Bill Bryson. Harper Press; 490 pages; £25.

SOME 350 years ago, a dozen men meeting in the City of London heard a lecture by a young astronomer named Christopher Wren, who would later become the architect of St Paul’s Cathedral. They determined to gather on a regular basis. Inspired by the writing of Sir Francis Bacon, a 17th-century statesman and philosopher who argued that knowledge could be gained by testing ideas through experiments, the group began to meet every week to discuss scientific matters and witness experiments conducted by its members. Two years later, Charles II granted the society its royal charter; the Royal Society gave birth to modern science.

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There's an art to writing historical novels

From : The Globle And Mail


Photo : http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Elizabeth Kostova's novel is compelling and well written, but ill-conceived in places.

The U.S. novelist Elizabeth Kostova has a winning way with description. Here is what she writes about the obsessive artist Robert Oliver, the main figure in her second novel, The Swan Thieves: “I remembered now those gestures of hand and arm, and the curling edges of his mouth, the oddly sculpted face, the charm that was charming because there was no awareness behind it, as if he were simply renting his body and it had turned out to be a good one, although he treated it with a renter's lack of caring.”

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Top : Nonfiction
1.
What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown: $27.99) A collection of the author's writings of everyday and extraordinary people.
3
2.
SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (William Morrow: $29.99) More funny, informative facts and questions to ponder.
4
3.
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown: $27.99) An exploration of the background of high achievers.
50
4.
Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom (Hyperion: $23.99) Albom's observations of a rabbi and a pastor on an eight-year journey of faith.
7
5.
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (Little, Brown : $25.99) An examination and behind-the-scenes look at factory farming.
1
6.
Save the Deli by David Sax (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt : $24) The history behind and search for the best delis across America.
2
7.
Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon (Harper: $26.99) A collection of autobiographical essays reflecting on what it means to be a man and father.
5
8.
It's Your Time by Joel Osteen (Free Press: $25) Finding inspiration and faith during difficult times.
1
9.
The Queen Mother by William Shawcross (Publisher: $40) The biography of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon and a century of devotion to the British monarchy.
1
10.
Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer (Doubleday: $27.95) A chronicle of Pat Tillman, the NFL star turned Army Ranger whose death in Afghanistan stunned the power structure.

A Skeptic’s Skeptic

From : Tablet


Photo : http://www.tabletmag.com/

A new biography takes a look at Derrida’s philosophy of disillusionment.





In Who Was Jacques Derrida?, David Mikics provides a lucid, polemical intellectual biography of the French philosopher. He is also settling accounts. In the 1970s and 1980s, Derrida, who died six years ago at 73, was the most important and most polarizing figure in the humanities in America. His brand of thought, deconstruction, dominated classrooms, conferences, articles, and books. Derridian deconstruction was a heady brew of high philosophical discussion and counterintuitive assertion, all spiced up by Derrida’s trademark labyrinthine style, which was easy to parody but hard to surpass.


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Top Fiction

Weeks on list
1.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam: $24.95) The lives of a maid, a cook and a college graduate become intertwined as they change a Mississippi town.
24
2.
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper: $26.99) A writer's escapades encompassing 1930s Mexican artist communities and Cold War America.
1
3.
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel ( Henry Holt: $27) The rise of Henry VIII's advisor Thomas Cromwell.
2
4.
Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown : $27.99) An LAPD detective travels to Hong Kong to solve the murder of a Chinese immigrant.
5
5.
The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (Doubleday: $25.99) Harvard professor Robert Langdon uses his symbology skills to find a missing Freemason in Washington, D.C.
9
6.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days by Jeff Kinney (Amulet: $13.95) Greg desires to spend summer vacation indoors despite his mother's wishes for outdoor family fun.
5
7.
Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving (Random House: $28) A father and son on the run in 1950s Northeast logging communities.
2
8.
The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (Tor: $29.99) Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, attempts to unite kingdoms and alliances in preparation for the Last Battle.
3
9.
Ford County by John Grisham (Doubleday: $24) A collection of short stories set in the same locale as "A Time to Kill."
1
10.
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby (Riverhead: $25.95) A woman acquaints herself with the songwriter whose album caused the breakup of her recent relationship.

The many faces of liberalism

From : F T .COM

Photo : http://www.ft.com/cms

The Neo-liberal State By Raymond Plant OUP £50, 312 pages

British Party Politics and Ideology after New Labour Edited by Simon Griffiths and Kevin Hickson Palgrave Macmillan £60 256 pages

The Science of Liberty By Timothy Ferris HarperCollins $26.99 384 pages.

Anyone searching for the underlying ideas behind the smokescreen of election battles is up against a preliminary difficulty: the key terms of political theory now have a very wide and often contradictory set of meanings. Take the word “liberal”. In the US a liberal is usually someone with an overriding belief in state intervention as a cure for social problems and market inefficiencies. Indeed, President Bush Sr used the “l” word as a slur on his Democratic opponents. But in the European tradition a liberal is committed, above all, to personal freedom, including a belief in free competitive markets as a means to this end. To confuse matters, the US meaning is creeping into European usage too.

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The Chess Master and the Computer

From : The New Yorks Review Books


Photo : http://www.artcentergallery.com/

Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind
by Diego Rasskin-Gutman, translated from the Spanish by Deborah Klosky
MIT Press, 205 pp., $24.95







In 1985, in Hamburg, I played against thirty-two different chess computers at the same time in what is known as a simultaneous exhibition. I walked from one machine to the next, making my moves over a period of more than five hours. The four leading chess computer manufacturers had sent their top models, including eight named after me from the electronics firm Saitek.

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Los Angeles Times bestsellers
Fiction

Weeks on list
1.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam: $24.95) The lives of a maid, a cook and a college graduate become intertwined as they change a Mississippi town.
24
2.
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper: $26.99) A writer's escapades encompassing 1930s Mexican artist communities and Cold War America.
1
3.
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel ( Henry Holt: $27) The rise of Henry VIII's advisor Thomas Cromwell.
2
4.
Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown : $27.99) An LAPD detective travels to Hong Kong to solve the murder of a Chinese immigrant.
5
5.
The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (Doubleday: $25.99) Harvard professor Robert Langdon uses his symbology skills to find a missing Freemason in Washington, D.C.
9
6.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days by Jeff Kinney (Amulet: $13.95) Greg desires to spend summer vacation indoors despite his mother's wishes for outdoor family fun.
5
7.
Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving (Random House: $28) A father and son on the run in 1950s Northeast logging communities.
2
8.
The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (Tor: $29.99) Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, attempts to unite kingdoms and alliances in preparation for the Last Battle.
3
9.
Ford County by John Grisham (Doubleday: $24) A collection of short stories set in the same locale as "A Time to Kill."
1
10.
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby (Riverhead: $25.95) A woman acquaints herself with the songwriter whose album caused the breakup of her recent relationship.
5
11.
Pursuit of Honor by Vince Flynn (Atria: $27.99) Two counterterrorism operatives deal with the fallout from a deadly terrorist attack.
5
12.
Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy (Knopf : $28.95) A bank heist sets off an escapade through '60s L.A. with run-ins with the mob, the FBI and Howard Hughes.
7
13.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Roderick Rules by Jeff Kinney (Amulet : $12.95) Greg navigates middle school while trying to keep his brother from revealing a secret.
2
14.
The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk (Knopf: $28.95) An Istanbul bourgeois pursues a shopgirl, collecting objects associated with her.
1
15.
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson (Knopf: $25.95) A hacker implicated in two murders must revisit her past to prove her innocence.

Dog Boy by Eva Hornung

From : The Telegraph

Photo : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Philip Womack is intrigued by Eva Hornung's novel Dog Boy, about a boy growing up with pack of dogs in Moscow .



Dog Boy by Eva Hornung

The liminal holds an enduring fascination for us as we become further and further separated from nature. Feral children, suckled and weaned by wolves, dogs and bears, appear every now and again on the news, reminding us of how close we are to savagery and animality. One such story inspired Eva Hornung to write this novel.

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America’s role in Kashmir

From : The Hindu


Photo : http://www.hindu.com/

Schaffer says the time is opportune for Obama to pick up the threads where Kennedy left









THE LIMITS OF INFLUENCE — America’s Role in Kashmir: Howard B. Schaffer; Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11, Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017.
Rs. 499.
Like relics tossed from speeding trains, Indian discourses have a way of rejecting the preposterous idea of an American role in Kashmir. Yet the United States has always been a “party” to the Kashmir problem. If ever Indian archives become available for public scrutiny, it might seem New Delhi never really shied away from the U.S. attempts at mediation. This new book by the former American diplomat, Ambassador Howard B. Schaffer does tear off the veil of secrecy regarding the 60-year U.S. mediation efforts in resolving the India-Pakistan differences over Kashmir.





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Homer and Langley by EL Doctorow

From : The Guardian

Photo : http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Doctorow's New York hermits cannot keep the 20th century at bay

The Collyer brothers were a pair of congenital pack-rats who amassed 130 tons of rubbish at their New York mansion. They collected banjos and baby carriages, plaster busts and bowling balls, organs (both musical and human) and the chassis from a Model T Ford that they installed in the basement and ran as a generator. When the house filled up there was no room for the brothers. Langley was eventually killed after blundering beneath an avalanche of his own domestic clutter. Homer, blind, infirm and unable to fend for himself, died from starvation a few days later.

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Junk box

From : The Economist


Photo : http://www.economist.com/






The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History.

COMPETITION for the title of the worst car in the world is stiff. Aficionados of communist-era automobile disasters remember with fondness the East German Trabant, whose sputtering two-stroke engine and resinated papier-mâché bodywork barely deserved the devotion lavished on it by that country’s frustrated car-lovers. But even the Trabant was a luxury sedan compared with the Soviet Zaporozhets, a parody of a proper car notable for its gnat-sized and fire-prone engine.





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Top for L A Time

Nonfiction
1.
What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown: $27.99) A collection of the author's writings of everyday and extraordinary people.
3
2.
SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (William Morrow: $29.99) More funny, informative facts and questions to ponder.
4
3.
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown: $27.99) An exploration of the background of high achievers.
50
4.
Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom (Hyperion: $23.99) Albom's observations of a rabbi and a pastor on an eight-year journey of faith.
7
5.
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (Little, Brown : $25.99) An examination and behind-the-scenes look at factory farming.
1
6.
Save the Deli by David Sax (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt : $24) The history behind and search for the best delis across America.
2
7.
Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon (Harper: $26.99) A collection of autobiographical essays reflecting on what it means to be a man and father.
5
8.
It's Your Time by Joel Osteen (Free Press: $25) Finding inspiration and faith during difficult times.
1
9.
The Queen Mother by William Shawcross (Publisher: $40) The biography of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon and a century of devotion to the British monarchy.
1
10.
Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer (Doubleday: $27.95) A chronicle of Pat Tillman, the NFL star turned Army Ranger whose death in Afghanistan stunned the power structure.

Family values

From : The National




Photo :Elisabetta A Villa / Wire Image

A new memoir of Osama bin Laden by his wife and son presents the most intimate portrait yet of the al Qa’eda leader, but its revelations do little to illuminate its subject, Thomas Hegghammer writes.






Growing Up bin Laden: Osama’s Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret WorldJean Sasson, Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden Oneworld Dh98“I remember staring into his kindly eyes, tartly thinking to myself that my cousin was shyer than a virgin under the veil.” Thus Najwa Ghanem recalls a meeting with 16-year old Osama bin Laden shortly before she became his first wife: “My life progressed from childhood into adulthood by the end of that evening. I was a married woman in every way.”

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Last 24 hours

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2. Love Story author Erich Segal dies aged 72
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The Wilding

From : F. T.

Photo : http://www.ft.com/

Maria McCann’s magnificent As Meat Loves Salt (2001) has for years betokened the fact that there’s no justice in the world – or at least not in the literary one.

The term “tour de force” has been degraded from overuse, and more’s the pity; it should have been reserved for achievements of such magnitude. A page-turner, a compendium of meticulous yet seamlessly integrated historical research and 500-plus pages of virtuoso prose, McCann’s astonishing first novel was nonetheless roundly ignored by book awards – which

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Book news and information

Will GOP race for governor kick off on the bookshelves? 01/19/2010, 2:14 p.m.
'Love Story' author Erich Segal dies at 72 01/19/2010, 1:02 p.m.
Robert B. Parker, creator of the Spenser series, has died [updated] 01/19/2010, 9:33 a.m.
Newbery, Caldecott awards: Give those books a sticker! 01/19/2010, 7:35 a.m.
Thinking about Martin Luther King Jr., bookishly 01/18/2010, 4:02 p.m.
Literary Haiti 01/18/2010, 10:42 a.m.
Author and 1960s icon George B. Leonard dies 01/18/2010, 8:06 a.m.

My Life with Harold Pinter by Antonia Fraser

From : The Guardian

Photo : http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Antonia Fraser's eulogy to her husband, Harold Pinter, impresses Blake Morrison.

Among the souvenirs found in Harold Pinter's desk after his death was a placemat from a dinner party during which he'd been banging on about ­politics. "Darling – You are right," Antonia Fraser had scribbled on it from across the table, "So SHUT UP." The plea might seem to confirm the received media image of their marriage: he combative, cantankerous, a rougher-up; she genteel, discreet, a smoother-over. But the more interesting fact is that he kept the note, in a spirit of rueful self-awareness, perhaps, and in tribute to the woman who not only knew him better than anyone else did but knew when to tell him – if ever so sweetly – to put a sock in it.

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5. Shlomo Sand: the man that Zionists love to hate Books interview

On Being a Bad Mother

From : THe Atlantic

Photo : http://www.theatlantic.com/

The dust jacket of Ayelet Waldman’s book Bad Mother is crumpled and coffee-ringed from sliding around the cluttered floor of my Volvo wagon these past few weeks.

I slipped the too-conspicuous BAD MOTHER cover off the hardback that lives on my dashboard because my car already reveals too much about me. In some ways, sure, my Volvo is a typical messy mom-mobile with the usual flotsam and jetsam: the Beast Quest and Junie B. Jones books, spines splayed; kids’ sneakers; pink socks; a nest of deflated Wild Cherry Capri Suns; a brand-new yellow boogie board (see how ambitious we are with our fun?). But squint farther back through the grimy windows and you might wonder: What’s with the brown-paper grocery bag stuffed with circa-1986 dress pumps, the electric toothbrush and hair dryer with cords trailing? Why the capsized Hewlett Packard printer drifting in a sea of copy paper, the plastic dry-cleaning sack stuffed with family snapshots? Who drives around with an Alpine-white $700 Miele vacuum cleaner pressing its nozzles and hose against the windows like a trapped octopus?

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Top For The Los angeles Times

Nonfiction
1.
What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown: $27.99) A collection of the author's writings of everyday and extraordinary people.
3
2.
SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (William Morrow: $29.99) More funny, informative facts and questions to ponder.
4
3.
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown: $27.99) An exploration of the background of high achievers.
50
4.
Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom (Hyperion: $23.99) Albom's observations of a rabbi and a pastor on an eight-year journey of faith.
7
5.
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (Little, Brown : $25.99) An examination and behind-the-scenes look at factory farming.
1
6.
Save the Deli by David Sax (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt : $24) The history behind and search for the best delis across America.
2
7.
Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon (Harper: $26.99) A collection of autobiographical essays reflecting on what it means to be a man and father.
5
8.
It's Your Time by Joel Osteen (Free Press: $25) Finding inspiration and faith during difficult times.
1
9.
The Queen Mother by William Shawcross (Publisher: $40) The biography of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon and a century of devotion to the British monarchy.
1
10.
Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer (Doubleday: $27.95) A chronicle of Pat Tillman, the NFL star turned Army Ranger whose death in Afghanistan stunned the power structure.

Understanding the real Islam

From : The Indu

Photo : http://www.hindu.com/

INDEX-CUM-CONCORDANCE FOR THE HOLY QURAN:

A.AKherie; Rs. 995. Both the books pub. by Adam Publishers & Distributors, 1542, Pataudi House, Daryaganj , New Delhi-110002.

Some years ago, I was watching on television, in New York, the legendary boxer Mohammed Ali’s interview, in which Ali was saying how self-contradictory are the contents of the Bible, whereas in the Koran there is no such contradiction. Looking at the way Islam is practised in the world, the Koran has a place in the life of Muslims that is vastly different from what many holy books of the other faiths have in their respective believers.

Some years ago, I was watching on television, in New York, the legendary boxer Mohammed Ali’s interview, in which Ali was saying how self-contradictory are the contents of the Bible, whereas in the Koran there is no such contradiction. Looking at the way Islam is practised in the world, the Koran has a place in the life of Muslims that is vastly different from what many holy books of the other faiths have in their respective believers.

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Nothing to Envy

From : The L.A TIMES

Photo : Spiegel & Grau

Ordinary Lives in North KoreaBarbara .

DemickSpiegel & Grau: 320 pp.,

In her early 20s, Mi-ran became a schoolteacher in a North Korean village not far from where her parents lived. She was lucky: Her father, a southerner taken prisoner by the north during the Korean War and not allowed to repatriate, was politically suspect, which meant that Mi-ran's family occupied a low rung in the politically defined caste system imposed by Kim Il-sung (postwar head of state and father of Kim Jong-il, North Korea's current leader). That could well have barred Mi-ran's entry to teacher's college, for the family was considered beulsun, to have "tainted blood," a stigma that carries across generations and did thwart her siblings' entry to schools.

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Unfinished Desires

From : The Christian Science Monitor


Photo : http://www.csmonitor.com/Books

A dark, sharp addition to the ranks of fiction set in high school.





The entertainment industry does a roaring trade with stories of high school. Just look at the success of movies like “Grease,” “The Breakfast Club,” and “Mean Girls,” or most recently, the “High School Musical” franchise. It’s even seeped into the book industry through Harry Potter and the Twilight book series. (Granted, vampires and wizards are a new addition to the high school scene, but I suppose times change.)


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Top for Los Angeles Time

Fiction
Weeks on list
1.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam: $24.95) The lives of a maid, a cook and a college graduate become intertwined as they change a Mississippi town.
24
2.
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper: $26.99) A writer's escapades encompassing 1930s Mexican artist communities and Cold War America.
1
3.
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel ( Henry Holt: $27) The rise of Henry VIII's advisor Thomas Cromwell.
2
4.
Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown : $27.99) An LAPD detective travels to Hong Kong to solve the murder of a Chinese immigrant.
5
5.
The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (Doubleday: $25.99) Harvard professor Robert Langdon uses his symbology skills to find a missing Freemason in Washington, D.C.
9
6.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days by Jeff Kinney (Amulet: $13.95) Greg desires to spend summer vacation indoors despite his mother's wishes for outdoor family fun.
5
7.
Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving (Random House: $28) A father and son on the run in 1950s Northeast logging communities.
2
8.
The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (Tor: $29.99) Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, attempts to unite kingdoms and alliances in preparation for the Last Battle.
3
9.
Ford County by John Grisham (Doubleday: $24) A collection of short stories set in the same locale as "A Time to Kill."
1
10.
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby (Riverhead: $25.95) A woman acquaints herself with the songwriter whose album caused the breakup of her recent relationship.

Rebels and Traitors

From : The Telegraph

Photo :http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Buy now for £16.99 (PLUS £1.25 p&p) 0844 871 1515 or from Telegraph Books

On a freezing January day in 1649, King Charles I, that ‘‘man of blood’’, was executed at Whitehall for waging war against his own people. Two witnesses to this spectacle – Gideon Jukes, a London printer turned soldier who has endured hardship in the Parliamentarian army, and Juliana Lovell, the resourceful wife of a Cavalier officer who seems to have abandoned her – are destined to find comfort in each other after the brutalities of war

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The Virgin Warrior: The Life and Death of Joan of Arc

From : The New Republic

Photo : http://www.tnr.com/

Joan of Arc .

Belongs to that select club of historical figures (Shakespeare, Napoleon, Lincoln, Churchill) who are so endlessly fascinating that new biographies appear on a virtually annual basis. And this is to say nothing of endless literary and artistic portrayals—in Joan’s case, by everyone from Shakespeare to Shaw to The Simpsons. Of course, membership in this club confers the dubious privilege of having every successive age project its fantasies and obsessions onto the screen of your personality. Joan, in the 580 years since she came to fame, has been hero and villain, primal innocent and cunning manipulator, nationalist and universalist, feminist and anti-feminist, rational leader and hysterical madwoman, straight and gay (and bi and transgender)—not to mention heretic and saint. Actual historical evidence rarely resists the force of a writer’s longing

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Adam’s Family Jewels

From : Killing the Buddha

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Keep that Bible out of reach of children.

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and He took the bone of Adam’s penis and made him a woman.”
Er, wait, wasn’t it from one of Adam’s ribs that Eve was created?
Not according to Ziony Zevit. A professor of Semitic languages at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles Zevit posits that the Hebrew word tsela (literally “side,” but traditionally translated as “rib”) employed in Genesis refers in fact to Adam’s member.
Zevit, author of the forthcoming What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden?, argues that, etiologically, “rib” doesn’t make much sense in a story pregnant with sexual innuendo; nor is there precedent in ancient Near Eastern mythology for it to feature as an instrument of creation. Instead,tsela was likely a euphemism for the baculum, or “penis bone,” found in the males of most mammals.

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Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem

From : The Guardian

Photo : Reuters/David Bebber

Patrick Ness searches through the smoke of a genial narrative.

Let us consider for a moment the deleterious effect of marijuana on the arts. George Michael, to take a random example, used to be one of the most extraordinary pop songwriters on the planet. A song such as "Freedom '90" bursts with so much invention and feeling it's like listening to 17 brilliant choruses all in a row. Then George started smoking weed in really quite extraordinary quantities, and things began to feel somewhat less vital. Gone was the controlled pop brilliance, and in its place were songs that noodled along aimlessly in search of a hook ­ before ending at least a minute later than you wished they would

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The O regonian

From : Powell's Books

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The Kingdom of Ohio by Matthew Flaming.

The Kingdom of Ohio is a strange and wonderful first novel by Portland writer Matthew Flaming. It is a story within a story, beginning with an antiques dealer in present-day Los Angeles who discovers an old photograph and is suddenly forced to confront a past that not even he finds believable.
In 1901 in New York

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Hands-On: Twin Screens Pack Potential In eDGe Netbook, E-Reader Combo

From Gadget Lab:

LAS VEGAS — The enTourage eDGe is an unusual device. With two screens that fold together like a book, the eDGe promises to be an electronic book reader and a netbook at the same time so users can switch from reading on the black-and-white E Ink screen to the adjacent LCD screen to send e-mails, browse and watch videos.

The eDGe, which was announced in October, made its debut Tuesday at a preview event for the Consumer Electronics Show here.

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On the Origin of Stories

From : The Arbuturian





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Evolution may help explain copulation and even cooperation, but can it account for the creative side of human life? Can it explain art?” (69).

This is the main issue concerning Brian Boyd’s mammoth book On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition and Fiction (2009). For those of us concerned with art and the creative process we have, as well, struggled with this issue. Undoubtedly, we have challenged our students and colleagues with circuitous discussions over the “what” of art. Boyd’s work, however, throws us a lifeline pulling us from the mire of unsolvable debate and repetitious frustration by shifting the essential question from “what” to “why”. This simple cognitive maneuver is, in my opinion, as significant to art theory and criticism as the first spark that brought fire to human kind

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Handbook on maximising profits

From : The Hindu

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The book attempts to ride two horses — economic theory and management guide

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Nazi Literature In the Americas

From : The Telegraph


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A collection of fictional autobiographies entertains and disquiets Lewis Jones .





Roberto Bolaño, who died aged 50, was a Chilean poet and novelist. In his youth he was a Trotskyite provocateur, a vagabond and possibly a heroin addict. He turned to fiction in his forties, as an exile in Spain with a young family to support, and soon achieved great literary success in the Spanish-speaking world. Since his death in 2003, the translation of such novels as The Savage Detectives and 2666 has brought him comparable success in English.


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TOP Non fiction ;

1.
What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown: $27.99) A collection of the author's writings of everyday and extraordinary people.

2.
SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (William Morrow: $29.99) More funny, informative facts and questions to ponder.

3.
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown: $27.99) An exploration of the background of high achievers.

4.
Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom (Hyperion: $23.99) Albom's observations of a rabbi and a pastor on an eight-year journey of faith.

5.
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (Little, Brown : $25.99) An examination and behind-the-scenes look at factory farming.

6.
Save the Deli by David Sax (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt : $24) The history behind and search for the best delis across America.

7.
Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon (Harper: $26.99) A collection of autobiographical essays reflecting on what it means to be a man and father.

8.
It's Your Time by Joel Osteen (Free Press: $25) Finding inspiration and faith during difficult times.

9.
The Queen Mother by William Shawcross (Publisher: $40) The biography of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon and a century of devotion to the British monarchy.

10.
Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer (Doubleday: $27.95) A chronicle of Pat Tillman, the NFL star turned Army Ranger whose death in Afghanistan stunned the power structure.

Generosity by Richard Powers

From : The Guardian



Photo : http://www.guardian.co.uk/







Christopher Tayler weighs up Richard Powers's new novel of ideas .




Early in Richard Powers's new novel comes a rundown of creative writing student types: "the classicist, the prince of the streets, the brainy one, the buckshot comic, the lyric queen of dialogue". There's no mystery about which of these roles would fit Powers, an American "brainiac novelist", in one interviewer's words, who bursts with citations from peer-reviewed papers and has recently started dictating his books to a tablet PC using voice recognition software. Powers specialises in ambitious, intensively researched fictions built around conjunctions of big ideas: artificial intelligence, the nature of consciousness, genetics, the impact of information technology. He made a splash early on with The Gold Bug Variations (1991), which was finished with the aid of a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation; his last novel, 2006's The Echo Maker, won the US National Book award.




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It Takes a Village Atheist

From : Reason.com

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Barbara Ehrenreich’s jeremiad against cheerful thinking
Kerry Howley from the January 2010 issue

Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, by Barbara Ehrenreich, New York: Metropolitan Books, 256 pages, $23

One of my earliest memories is no more than a command: “Smile.” The directive was delivered by my father, standing over me in a church pew, definitely not smiling. I wasn’t so much a morose kid as a deeply internal one, and whatever expression I made while lost in thought lacked the cheerfulness expected of little girls. As I would learn soon after that day in church, an American female with a downward-sloping mouth cannot escape the tyranny of smile-pushers. My dad’s request was echoed by teachers (“Try to look interested”), relatives (“Why so glum?”), and, much later, random construction workers (“Smile, baby!”).

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The Geek Freaks

From : Slate

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Why Jaron Lanier rants against what the Web has become.

Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget has one of the more sobering prefaces to be found in recent books. "It's early in the twenty-first century, and that means that these words will mostly be read by nonpersons," it begins. The words will be "minced into anatomized search engine keywords," then "copied millions of times by some algorithm somewhere designed to send an advertisement," and then, in a final insult, "scanned, rehashed, and misrepresented by crowds of quick and sloppy readers." Lanier's conclusion: "Real human eyes will read these words in only a tiny minority of the cases." My conclusion: Is that really such a bad thing?

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MAN FOR ALL SEASONS

From : Literary Review

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How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an AnswerBy Sarah Bakewell (Chatto & Windus 370pp £16.99)

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was born in 1533 and died (following an attack of kidney stones, like his father) in 1592. His mother was of Marrano descent; her family had been Sephardic Jews, forced into Catholicism. Montaigne himself was always formally obedient to the Church. 'Otherwise', he wrote, 'I could not keep myself from rolling about incessantly. Thus I have kept myself intact, without agitation or disturbance of conscience.' In this respect, he was somewhat the precursor of Evelyn Waugh, who said that, had he not been a Catholic, he would scarcely have been human. Montaigne, however, was a genial man of no officious piety; a dutiful mayor of Bordeaux, unaggressive lord of his modest Périgordin manor, and a courtier without grand ambition.

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Slim, Large Screen E-Reader Skiff To Debut On Sprint

From Gadget Lab:

E-readers are likely to get hotter with the next generation of devices sporting color screens and large displays expected to launch through the year.

One of the first products to announce its arrival is the Skiff e-reader, a lightweight device with a 11.5-inch full flexible touchscreen that makes it the largest e-reader on the market, beating the 9.7-inch display Kindle DX.

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The Tragedy of Happiness

From : The Wall Street Journal

Photo : Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Revisiting a philosopher's ambivalent thoughts about his prosperous adopted home—America.

Do Americans have a national character? The idea sounds plausible enough—until you try to pin it down.
Are we a nation of individualists pursuing happiness as we each see fit or a country of conformists taking the road most traveled by? The children of Puritans striving to build the city upon a hill or the heirs of Jamestown, driven by the promise of profit?

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I see a darkness

From : FT.COM

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American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the PulpsEdited by Peter StraubThe Library Of America $35, 750 pages.

A body is discovered in woods in rural Indiana, skinned from the neck up. The head is like “the cupped husk of a peeled orange”. The detective investigating soon unearths evidence that this grisly murder is linked to a war between two ancient secret cults, one celebrating laughter, the other despondency. The victim, a circus clown, was an adherent of one cult. His killer, from the opposing cult, removed his face – clown makeup and all – in order to appease a joyless deity and help usher in a dismal apocalypse.

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The Immigrant

From : F T .COM

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The ImmigrantBy Manju KapurFaber £7.99, 331 pages

Following the sudden death of his parents, Ananda emigrates to Canada, re-training in dentistry while staying with his westernised uncle in Halifax. Nina – still single at 30 after desultory affairs, and living in Delhi with her widowed mother – consents to an arranged marriage with Ananda. But her arrival in Canada is marred by the shock of oppressive cold, strange food and severe loneliness

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Have Books Turned Their Last Page?

Watch CBS News Videos Online

From CBS News:

Industry Experts Weigh In on How the Rise of E-Readers and E-Books Will Change the Publishing World.

(CBS) The era of the physical "book" may be ending.

This holiday season, Amazon.com says its E-reader, the Kindle, was its most-gifted item ever. And on Christmas Day, according to Amazon.com, E-books actually outsold physical books on the site.

Craig Berman, vice president of global communications at Amazon.com, said, "The best-selling, most wished for, most gifted product across the millions of products we have on Amazon is Amazon Kindle, our wireless e-reader."

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A Wildlife Miscellany by Graeme Gibson

From : The Guardian

Photo : http://www.guardian.co.uk/

The Bedside Book of Beasts: A Wildlife Miscellany by Graeme Gibson
Philip Hoare explores a modern bestiary that implores us to reconnect with our biological reality.

What do we want from wild animals? Nowadays, they're mere decoration, a cultural add-on in Attenborough HD; nature porn, exquisitely filmed and teasingly revealed. The reality is something else. In the flesh, animals have a magnetic strangeness that transcends their physical reality. At Smithfield, in central London the other evening, I watched a fox calmly strolling along the pavement, across the street, and up a spiral fire escape – a presentiment of what will happen when our species cedes its temporary hold and the world is abandoned once more to the wild. We bear witness to animals as emblems of a lost Eden – that's why our spirits lift with birdsong. We invest our emotions in animals, often at the expense of expending those emotions on each other.

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Happy New Year !

Happy New Year !

Saving the planet, one book at a time

From : The Los Angeles Times

Photo : http://www.latimes.com/

Eco books for kids: Saving the planet, one book at a time.

The subject of our world's imperiled environment has become increasingly conspicuous in children's books.The environmental movement may not yet have changed the world, but it has certainly changed the world of children's books. Hardly a science or nature book for kids fails to sound a warning about habitats, species and resources in danger. Where 10 years ago an author described a hibernating bear fast asleep, in a recent book, "Life in the Boreal Forest," we read: "The bear snoozes under a fallen tree, but his sleep is restless. Chip, chop! Now that the soggy ground is frozen, a logging crew is cutting trees. Each year brings new loggers, miners, and peat harvesters. The boreal forest is disappearing fast."

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