Houston Great Books

“This isn’t as warm and fuzzy as those earlier books,” Charles Baxter comments, somewhat ruefully, about his latest novel, The Soul Thief (Pantheon, Feb.), as we eat lunch in a trendy Minneapolis restaurant above the Walker Art Center. “But these are dark times,” he insists, as we enjoy a bird’s-eye view of the city’s gleaming skyscrapers from the restaurant’s soaring wi…

This week anthropolgists, international photographers, the morbidly obese, a professional medium, Ronald Reagan’s right-hand man, a Men’s Health cover model, Kim Jong-Il and the youth of America school us on the human condition: eating, dying, fornicating, learning, partying, paying, marrying, deceiving, waging war and ogling naked people.

The ghost of Norman Mailer, who died November 10, seemed to preside over the 58th annual National Book Awards, held November 14 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City’s Times Square. Indeed, this year’s gala awards ceremony was marked by the oddly appropriate combination of an unruly picketline of strikers outside the hotel and the many heartfelt tributes by NBA award-winners to Mailer’…

57.3: Percentage of review editors who believe it is ethical to assign a review to an author acquaintance. 34.4: Percentage of review editors who believe it is acceptable for a reviewer to back out of writing a review to avoid negative criticism of a book. 34.4: Percentage of review editors who believe it is unacceptable for a reviewer to back out of writing a review to avoid negative criticism…

New Line Cinema’s adaptation of Philip Pullman’s novel The Golden Compass had its world premiere in London Tuesday night and has already received a four-star review from The Guardian. The author and director have been under fire over the controversial religious content in Pullman’s books as well as the celluloid interpretation, which debuts here on December 7.

Certainly there is no simple arithmetic that requires increasing screen based learning to be directly linked to diminishing paper based learning. Or is there an arithmetic that requires that increasing formats for oral (aural/visual) communication need to be linked to diminishing formats for text literacy (print). Or will increasing screen readership and diminishing print readership necessarily relate to measures of reading comprehension overall. More likely increasing skill sets for comprehension of conceptual works will layer and accumulate and feature increasing varieties of technological mediation. This has been the norm across media history.
Reports of withering reading skills may be based on a arithmetic which delivers the wrong answer inverted.

Thanks for all your well wishes yesterday. I’m feeling much better, although I still resemble Rudolph.

Hooray!! Loretta is back fr…

These days I often find myself saying “What the heck is wrong with people??” This whole Jennifer Love Hewitt fiasco has me in a t…

Well, it’s been a rough week, but with the weekend looming I only see blue skies and sunshine (in my mind…out my window I see snow, ice, wind a…

So, here’s the news from my inbox this week…

Did you know that Harlequin sends out newsletters to it’s authors about every six months? I…

Tis the season for giving. I love to give books and I love to get books.

I remember my first Christmas away from home.&nbs…

Well, the WW ladies have the day off, but the Friends are in the house. Today we have Gail with her very first blurb…well done Gail. And …

Sex. Maybe you like to write about, like to read about, like to do it (no, not cyber-sex…the real stuff). But how much do you…

Another busy week here. Monday was news and kudos, Tuesday was giving books for Christmas, Wednesday had the WW ladie’s friends with book b…

What a Sunday! Shoveled out 9 inches of snow (it’s so pretty, but what a pain in the butt) and watched the Green Bay Packers plow thro…

There is a lot of weirdness out there, but who thinks up these studies? Money is actually given to organizations who find answers to some o…

My ladies have been very busy reading this week and I am extremely grateful to them considering all the distractions during this holiday sea…

Every now and then I need a book to make me laugh out loud. You know, the kind that you tell your friends, who’ve also read it, the …

I just finished a marathon round with Christmas books. Not that I minded. I especially love this time of year for books. All my…

The Book Review picks the best works from the last year.

A collection of notable comics is dominated by tales of woe: lonely girls, angst-ridden boys, death, drama, dysfunction.