Trickling out of the far corner of the globe have been reports questioning the veracity of Ishmael Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone. Even the Australian reporters who discovered the problems with Beah’s memoir, doubted whether anyone should be too upset. After all, memoirs are subjective and often take liberties to get to a higher truth. But when the reporters tried to get in touch with Beah, he responded with a terse and accusatory note but won't answer questions.

Now the Australians are raising bigger issues. In Seirra Leone, no one has any evidence that an important element ...
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Sam Leith is the author of the disturbingly titled Dead Pets: Stuff Them, Eat Them, Love Them. It was a stocking stuffer book in 2004 that performed so poorly that "at the peak of its success, its sales ranking on Amazon could easily have been confused for its ISBN number" Leith wrote an article in today's Telegraph trying to decipher what makes a successful stocking stuffer.

His divides successful stocking stuffer books into three types, and gives some general guidelines for authors who hope to do slightly better than "Dead Pets."

I try to avoid buying stocking ...
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A few years ago it seemed like every prominent blogger was signing a book deal -- Wonkette, Gawker and Washingtonienne to name a few. But an article by Kara Warner in today’s AM New York suggests that these books have sold disappointingly, and that bloggers aren’t getting the royal treatment by publishers anymore. “The problem,” Warner notes, “is that online popularity doesn’t translate into sales.

Many of these blogs have cult followings – it seems natural that readers would be eager to pick up a book from their favorite blogger. But the sales just aren’t there. ...
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Doris Lessing was too ill to travel to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize herself. Her editor read her acceptance lecture, in which she notes that young people in wealthy countries have abundant books at their fingertips, but have lost interest in them due to television and the internet, while young people in impoverished countries are thirsty for books and they have none.

Lessing got the attention of the book bloggers back in October for being underwhelmed upon finding out she had won the prize. What do you think of her assessment that today's kids aren't interested in books?

I've been curious about the Amazon kindle. I'd heard that it wasn't very pretty. I had looked online at Amazon and sort of felt the same way. So I was excited to notice a co-worker using hers today in the elevator. All I can say it, this is not the ipod of e-readers. It's just not very pretty. It does look a little like those old TI-83 calculators.

Take a look at the Kindle. Have you seen one in ...
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I like to take a peek at what the people read on the subway. I just can't help wondering -- though I generally hate it when I catch others reading over my shoulder. I've started jotting down the titles. It's interesting to note the variety. Here's my report for today:

Place: Downtown C train, New York City
Time: 9:00 p.m.
Books:
Her Only Desire by Gaelen Foley
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
The Pocket New Testament
Eat, Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert<...
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The 10 best books of 2007, according to the New York Times. The Times didn't pick any of my favorites like A Thousand Splendid Suns. What books did you most enjoy this year?

The New York Times published it's list of 100 Notable Books of the Year this weekend. The Times notes that they will publish the 10 best books of 2007 on November 28. What do you think will make the cut? What do you think is missing from the list of Notable Books?

I'm on a mini vacation right now in Austin, Texas. What a cool city! Live music everywhere, one of the best indie bookstores I've been to, beautiful lakes and parks, and some delicious food.

Dinner last night was especially memorable at Eastside cafe. Its special because much of their produce comes from the garden right next door. I took a nice walk in the garden before dinner- it was full of fragrent herbs, and great seasonal veggies like buttenut quash and sweet potatoes. It all made me think of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a book that inspired me to try to eat local foods more often.

I'm headed back to NYC tomorrow for Thanksgiving with my family. I am hopeful that the sweet potatoes and green beans that end up on our table don't have to travel further tha...
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The winners of the 2007 National Book Awards were announced last night. The awards aim to bring together the American literary community to recognize the best of the year in four categories: non-fiction, fiction, poetry, and young people's literature. To read all about the awards, check out the NBA website (http://www.nationalbook.org/index.html).

Meanwhile, we want to know what you think of the winners. Please share your thoughts about these great books from 2007.

Fiction: Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
Non-Fiction: Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner
Poetry: Time and Materials by Robert ...
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Norman Mailer's death reminds us of that old line--was it the bard?--that the evil men do lives on long after their deaths. Let's reverse that for a second. Mailer's books--at least the good ones--will live on. But so will the mixed legacy of Jack Henry Abbott. If you've never read In the Belly of the Beast you're missing one of the best works of autobiography and prison literature. Mailer discovered Abbott. And it was on Mailer's word that he got out of prison only to commit a random and self-defeating (hard not to see it as intentional) murder of a waiter in a Greenwich Village restaurtant. Some say Abbott was just applying prison logic to the outside world. But the legacy of In the Belly of the Beast both good and bad will live on ...
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It's finally come to this. Norman Mailer is dead and no can remember why we should care. His first novel, The Naked and The Dead, might remind you of what Mailer was like before he was a blowhard. But this wonderful essay by Jim Lewis posted on Slate, really makes sense of the two Norman Mailers: the one who was a great writer and the one who was a bore.

People have been asking me how I feel about the WGA strike, probably because I work in "media" of some kind, and therefore should have an inside opinion. I don't, really, but I can tell you how it's affecting my life. I'm reading more.

I have been reading a lot due to the writer's strike - if only because The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are reruns. So it's actually been a good thing for me. I have turned off the tv in my room (it really shouldn't be there anyway!) and started focusing on a book before turning in for the night.

Being behind the rest of the world, I have just started The Kite Runner. I want to read it before watching the movie, which is coming out December 16. (http://www.kiterunnermovie.com/)

I should have more discipline to turn off Stewart and Colbert and dig my nose further into ...
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I went to book club last night, where we discussed Eat, Pray, Love. (Shameless plug: I wrote a fabulous bookspoke review for this book!)

While discussing the book with a bunch of fellow 20-something women, I laughed my head off. We shared stories from our own lives - successes and failures - over warm spaghetti caserole and many glasses of wine. It was by far the happiest moment of my day.

My hope is that we can capture some of that same spirit in online book clubs at bookspoke. How can we make bookspoke's online book clubs as inviting and warm as sitting around a friend's living room, drinking wine and sharing...
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I watched the New York City marathon on television this weekend. Watching Paula Radcliffe (the winner of the women's race who gave birth to a child just 10 months ago!) run, she seemed to run along with an inside rhythm. She bobbed her head along with music that wasn't there, and pumped her legs to what could only have been the beat of her own heart.

I immediately began thinking about Joyce Carol Oates' connection between running and writing. "Writers and poets are famous for loving to be in motion," she writes in The Faith of a Writer . She claims that running helps her to sort out her writing: "The structural problems I set for myself in writing, in a long, snarled, frustrating and sometimes despairing morning of work, for ...
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My mom is learning to speak French. Fortunately for her, I already do. She's at an intermediate level in her studies, and so I've let her in on my secret for how to be interested in reading French books. All the books I don't make time for in English – the romance novels and thrillers I secretly crave – I'll allow myself to read in French. Because it's studying, really.

While living in France, I had these books at my fingertips – French translations of Nora Roberts and Janet Evanovich were my favorites and they were in good supply at any corner bookstore. But here in the U.S., they're much harder to come by. I could pay the $20 in shipping to get it straight from Amazon.fr. Or, I can try to find the book on Amazon's U.S. marketplace, which is time consuming and not always fruitful.

While the quest is ...
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I think I need some bookstore therapy today. Often I'll order on amazon.com - but only when I know I'm going to buy the book. I can't use the Browse Inside feature (it's too clunky for me). So on a day like today, when I need to browse, I've just got to get over to the bookstore. I need to flip through pages, finding a new world in which to immerse myself.

But when at bookstores I need a strategy. Otherwise I'll get lost in the shuffle and totally intimidated. I'll usually arrive armed with the Booksense bestseller list and their pick of the month (currently The Pirate's Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson – has anybody read it yet?). I'm stuck on BookSense mostly because they recommended Water for Elephants. It's turned out to be the best book I've read this year. ...
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It's hard to know what to make of the new book club over at the New York Times where everyone from the Editor of the Book Review to Executive Editor of the newspaper is participating in a group grope over Tolstoy's War and Peace. Here are some very intelligent and accomplished persons muddling their way through a classic. Their entries are more writerly than your average book group participant. But are they more compelling?

You be the judge.

Raymond Carver’s widow is pissed. It seems too many readers come up to her and ask if Gordon Lish really wrote all her husband’s stories. So now she wants the originals published to prove that he could write all by himself. Whatever the merits of publishing new (old) versions of stories that had been published twice before, the whole affair reminds us of the infamous Captain Fiction and his role in creating a generation of American writers.

Now the NY Times's book blog, Papercuts, gives us much more on Lish. Don't forget to read the comments!

So which would you rather ...
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Does anyone really care whether a book is on the bestseller list anymore? From this article you would think that the Times bestseller list has magical powers. But the chain stores don't discount from that list anymore; Amazon rankings are more visible--though not necessarily more informative; and the press regularly describes books as bestsellers even when they've sold modestly.
Is bestseller a meaningful term anymore? And does it matter to you whether the book made the New York Times list before you take it seriously as something to buy or read?