by David Riklan
The First Couple will be honorary chairs of the National Book Festival, to be held in Washington, D.C., at the National Mall on Saturday, September 26th.
Sponsored by the Library of Congress, this will be the event’s ninth year celebrating “the joys of reading and lifelong literacy,” according to an event press release.
True colours
True colours. My life
By Adam Gilchrist
True Colours is his autobiography, and like the man himself it's incomparable. With unflinching honesty, intelligence, compassion and humour, Adam takes you into the world of cricket that few outside of the Australian team have ever seen. From his early struggles to establish himself, through to the giant achievements of the Australian test and one-day sides, True Colours offers an extraordinary window on Adam, on cricket's major stars and on the game itself.
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(Photo: Hannah Whitaker/New York Magazine)
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Could this be the summer we finally bury the notion that a beach read must be mindless to be fun? We find ourselves particularly drawn this season to nonfiction and a few realistic novels. Below, some of our top picks through July. Save August for Thomas Pynchon’s latest, Inherent Vice—“part noir, part psychedelic romp”—a mere 400 pages.
Everything ravaged, everything burned
Everything ravaged, everything burned
by Wells Tower
The stories in this outstanding debut collection explore the troubled relationships of men down on their luck, in failed marriages, estranged from family, caught in imbroglios between sons and their fathers and stepfathers, and even, in Wild America, the subtle and ferocious competition between teenage girls.
Sydney Writers’ Festival The Big Read title for 2009 is F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Arguably Fitzgerald's finest work, this popular classic written in 1925 is often referred to as 'the great American novel' and the quintessential portrait of the Jazz Age, in all its decadence and excess.
To see how your Book Club can participate in The Big Read 2009 go to the Sydney Writers’ Festival website.
The Girl who played with fire
The Girl who played with fire
by Steig Larsson
Dozens of authors and thousands of readers will converge on Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center on May 16 and 17 for the National Black Book Festival.
Featured authors will include Roland S. Martin (Speak Brother! A Black Man's View of America), Mary B. Morrison (Noire, Single Husbands) and Persia Walker (Harlem Redux, Darkness and the Devil Behind Me)
If there is one person who personifies selflessness, un-wavering love and caring the first to come to mind should be your mother. She cradled you for your fist nine months and held your hand though all the challenges life could throw at you. Like with all true heroes books are littered with examples of hundreds of miracle moms from the classic Hester Prynne in the Scarlet Letter, who taught her daughter it's not shameful to have pride in one’s self, to the more contemporary Mrs. Weasley the super poor super mom who took in Harry Potter like he was her own son.
However not all the mothers in literature come out smelling like roses. Abandonment, abuse, and adultery are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the bottom of the barrel of fictional mothers. To help you forget that time your mom forgot your birthday BookFinder.com has compiled a list of the 10 worst mothers in fiction.
I have been so disappointed in the last two books that I have read that I don't want to spend any more time thinking about them - even the time to write a blog post. So I am going to alert you to a new tool that I discovered that may help you answer the perennial question: "What should I read next?"
What happens when you combine artificial intelligence with social networking (don't stop reading - I promise that you won't have to participate in any network)? The result is www.gnooks.com.