Wednesday, July 08, 2009 - Posts
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Four trade magazines, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist, and Library Journal, offer short reviews of many thousands of books. Of particular interest to editors are those that receive a "star" for unusual merit. This regular feature highlights new titles with stars from at least three of the four publications.
Our second When Stars Align includes two mysteries, a children's book, a short story collection, a love story, and a nonfiction chronicle of life in Montana. None of these authors is new to the book world: Not only have they all published books before, but almost all of them have previously garnered starred reviews.
The only book to receive four stars this time around is Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me, a science-fiction book aimed at 'tweens. When 12-year-old Miranda receives a cryptic postcard that says "I'm coming to save your friend's life, and my own," she doesn't know what to think—until she realizes the note is from the future. Booklist warns that "if this book makes your head hurt, you're not alone" but Kirkus promises that "teen readers will circle back to the beginning and say, ‘Wow ... cool.'" Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly.
2008 Man Booker Prize Winner Adiga Aravind's collection of short stories, Between the Assassinations, received great press when it was released in mid-June (just after our first roundup). The stories are set in Kittur, India between the assassinations of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and Rajiv Ghandi in 1991. Publisher's Weekly says that "the small epiphanies" in the stories "hit like bricks from heaven." Kirkus, Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly.
In Reggie Nadelson's Londongrad: An Artie Cohen Mystery, a New York City police detective attempts to avenge the gruesome murder of his love, Valentina Sverdloff. Kirkus says this is the story that Nadelson was "born to tell." Kirkus, Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly.
The recently deceased Donald E. Westlake's 15th and final book, Get Real, takes its title from a reality-show production company that tries to stage a televised robbery. Publisher's Weekly promises that the book will "rouse chuckles from even jaded readers" and Booklist toasts "Here's to crime: how sweet it is!" Booklist, Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly.
Dai Sijie's Once on a Moonless Night, received rave reviews from Britain and France, where it has already been released. An unnamed Western student in China falls in love with a greengrocer, Tumchooq, who tells her the story of a lost Buddhist sutra written in a forgotten language. The novel, according to Booklist, proves "that language is transcendent; books are precious; translation is a noble art; stories are the key to freedom; and truth prevails." Booklist, Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly.
Rich Bass' The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in Montana records his seasonal observations of nature in a remote corner of Montana. Library Journal calls it "a walk through the author's soul." Kirkus, Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly.
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If we are what we Google, then Google Hot Trends—an hourly rundown of search terms "that experience sudden surges in popularity"—is the Web's best cultural barometer. Here's a sampling of today's top searches. (Rankings on Hot Trends list current as of 9 a.m.)
No. 4: "google operating system." A day after finally taking Gmail out of beta, Google announced its newest project, the Chrome Operating System. Chrome OS (not to be confused with the Google browser of the same name), will be targeted at "people who spend most of their time on the web," according to Google's official blog. Since this statement describes an increasing number of mainstream computer users, the Google system could end up in direct competition with Windows: "The Internet is Everything," writes TechCrunch.com's Michael Arrington, "all the OS has to do is boot the damn computer."
No. 28: "sevin nyne." "civil conspiracy" and "theft of trade secrets" could be the newest addition to Lindsay Lohan's impressive rap sheet: The 23-year-old embodiment of the phrase "hot mess" is being sued by a Florida chemist for allegedly filching her artificial tanner formula and passing it off as her own designer line, Sevin Nyne. The product's provenance might not be its biggest problem if this Amazon review is accurate: "It turned me orange. Enough said."
No. 68: "4chan down." 4chan.org, possibly the fourth-largest bulletin board on the Internet, has been brought down by a sustained denial of service (DoS) attack. It's just desserts for the site, probably best known as the unruly spawning ground of some of the Web's oddest pranks: In May, 4chan users bombarded Youtube with porn, and they were probably to blame when "#gorillapenis" appeared at the top of the Twitter trends list on Sunday. (An unrelated DoS attack linked to North Korean hackers was launched yesterday against the Washington Post.)
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Take a look at this great Kenneth Koch poem, rendered in kinetic typography:
Can you have love, work, and friends? Koch maintains that only 2 out of 3 are possible to have. I can't argue with that, though Facebook can help a bit.