Books in brief
FICTION (Updated: 11/01/09 6:45 AM )
Best Sellers
Compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide. (Updated: 11/01/09 6:45 AM )
Editor’s Choice
Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writing of Manny Farber, edited by Robert Polito; Library of America, 824 pages ($40) (Updated: 11/01/09 6:45 AM )
Patricia Cornwell gets a Q&A third degree
Award-winning, international best-selling author Patricia Cornwell has seen her meticulously researched crime novels translated into 36 languages across more than 50 countries. The former police beat reporter scuba dives, rides motorcycles and flies helicopters –just like her characters do. (Updated: 11/01/09 7:59 AM )
Marv Levy opens the Bills' play book
Marv Levy, the former Buffalo Bills coach and general manager, has a new book out that he wrote with NFL researcher and author Jeff Miller of Springville, "Game Changers: The Greatest Plays in Buffalo Bills Football History" (Triumph Books, $24.95). (Updated: 10/29/09 1:26 AM )
Translator, artist shed new light on sacred texts
Here, from the same publisher and officially published a week apart, are two of the most important books of 2009. Willis Barnstone’s “Restored New Testament” is the Samson attempt of one great scholar and translator to knock down ancient pillars of error, injustice and persecution. In that endeavor alone, it may be the most important book of the year. (Updated: 10/26/09 2:47 PM )
Ted Kennedy failed to dig deep enough in ‘True Compass ’
As he worked on his memoir in the final years of his life, Ted Kennedy reportedly told people, “I’ve got to get this right for history.” I wish he had written it more out of passion than obligation. (Updated: 10/31/09 11:55 AM )
Ackroyd’s weak rehash fails to reanimate ‘Frankenstein’
If you’re going to attempt to rewrite a classic, you darn well better have a fresh perspective and not a hacky, overwrought “surprise” ending tacked on in the final two pages. (Updated: 10/25/09 7:27 AM )
Best Sellers
Compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide. (Updated: 10/25/09 7:27 AM )
Editor’s Choice
The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History by John Ortved; Faber and Faber, 333 pages ($27). (Updated: 10/25/09 7:27 AM )
Ames girls teach a lesson in friendship
As a lifestyles columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Jeffrey Zaslow chronicles the business of living itself in “Moving On,” a column about transitions. (Updated: 10/25/09 7:27 AM )
Books in brief
CHILDREN’S (Updated: 10/25/09 7:27 AM )
Poetry: Between Season Insomnia by Theresa Wyatt
Between Season Insomnia
(Updated: 10/22/09 3:46 PM )
(Updated: 10/22/09 3:46 PM )
Fascination with fate of Earhart still soars
SEATTLE—Nearly a century ago at a fair in Toronto, a young nurse’s aide watched an exhibition of stunt flying, as a pilot began diving at the crowd. “I remember the mingled fear and pleasure which surged over me as I watched that small plane at the top of its earthward swoop,” she would write, years later. “I did not understand it at the time, but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by.” (Updated: 10/22/09 7:01 AM )
Poetry and Literature Calendar
MONDAY, 7 p. m.: Reading to celebrate the release of “Beyond Bones,” a new annual anthology featuring writers from Western New York, featuring editors Jennifer Campbell, Perry Nicholas and Verneice Turner with contributors Amrutansh (Amol Salunkhe), Kenneth J. Feltges, Loren Keller, Marge Merrill, Jane Sadowski and Bill Sylvester. Hallwalls Cinema, 341 Delaware Ave. (Updated: 10/18/09 6:42 AM )
‘Blame’s’ tale penetrates alcoholism’s blurry spiral
Michelle Huneven takes a road rarely traveled in her new novel, “Blame.” (Updated: 10/18/09 6:42 AM )
Good premise, poor execution
One hates to see a silver lining in economic collapse, but perhaps some small — very small — consolation can be taken from its effect on art? Okay, so cultural organizations are often the first to lose funding, and wallet-tightening among the average man and woman can mean fewer visits to the theater or a gallery. But the art itself, the art that directly comments or comes from the devastation, can be extraordinary. (Updated: 10/18/09 6:42 AM )
New books explore the rise and impact of the Cold War
Here we are, more than two decades since the implosion of the once-feared Soviet Union. Most of to-day’s college undergraduates have no memory of a time when Russian Communism represented a grave threat to the United States. (Updated: 10/18/09 6:42 AM )
Books in brief
CHILDREN’S (Updated: 10/18/09 6:42 AM )
Best Sellers
Compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide. (Updated: 10/18/09 6:42 AM )
Editor’s Choice
The Complete Fairy Tales by Charles Perreault, a new translation by Christopher Betts, with illustrations by Gustave Dore (Oxford University Press, 204 pages, $22.95). He wrote “Little Red Riding Hood,” “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood” (better known as simply “Sleeping Beauty”), “Puss in Boots” and “Cinderella.” And yet one of the greatest oddities in all of Western literature is the total absence of Charles Perreault from the ranks of writers who are household words everywhere, the way his fellow fairy tale masters Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm are. (Updated: 10/18/09 6:42 AM )
Jewish Book Fair starts today
Everyone from a member of Peter, Paul and Mary to the country’s leading crusader for the salvation of Jewish deli cuisine will be part of the Jewish Book Fair which begins today at 7:30 p. m. in the Jewish Community Center, 2640 North Forest Road in Getzville with the appearance of Rich Cohen, author of “Israel Is Real: An Obsessive Quest to Understand the Jewish Nation and Its History.” Cohen is also the author of “Tough Jews” and “The Record Men.” (Updated: 10/17/09 6:51 AM )
‘John the Revelator’ has some identity issues
In a famous call-and-response blues tune, Blind Willie Johnson asks, “Well, who’s that writin’?” And the answer is his song’s title, along with that of Irish music journalist Peter Murphy’s contemporary first-person coming-of-age novel. (Updated: 10/11/09 7:19 AM )
Styron echoes fidelity to Corps
William Styron (1925— 2006), the Pulitzer Prize-winning author who wrote “Sophie’s Choice” and a memoir of his madness, “Darkness Visible,” was a Marine at the end of World War II, and as the saying goes and these stories attest, “once a Marine, always a Marine.” Hence, these stories. (Updated: 10/11/09 7:19 AM )
White’s anecdotal memoir is a paean to daring gay life in ’70s New York
Edmund White is no one-trick pony. (Updated: 10/11/09 7:19 AM )
Books in brief
SUSPENSE (Updated: 10/11/09 7:19 AM )
Best Sellers
Compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide. (Updated: 10/11/09 7:19 AM )
Editor’s Choice
American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny: From Poe to the Pulps, edited by Peter Straub (Library of America, 746 pages, $35); From the 1940s to Now, edited by Peter Straub (Library of America, 713 pages, $35). The Library of America, bless its pluralist heart, refuses to behave with the decorum and probity you might expect from American publishing’s corporate headmaster of literary heritage. Anyone who expects tweedy obeisance to the old snobberies was long ago put on notice to search elsewhere. Even so, you don’t expect 1,400 pages of American “Tales of Terror and the Uncanny” to be chosen by Peter Straub and full of the likes of Robert Bloch, Stephen King, August Derleth, Harlan Ellison and Richard Matheson, among other writers who would never have been allowed into the chambered nautilus of literary reputation half a century ago. (Updated: 10/11/09 7:19 AM )
Poetry and Literature Calendar/ A list of readings and workshops
MONDAY, 3:30p.m.:“Pierre Alferi and the Poetics of Dissolve,” a UB Poetics Program lecture by Michael Sheringham, professor of French literature at All Souls College, Oxford University. UB Poetry Collection, 420 Capen Hall, North Campus. (Updated: 10/11/09 7:19 AM )
Poetry: Geneaology by Ansie Baird
Genealogy
By Ansie Baird
(Updated: 10/08/09 3:53 PM )
By Ansie Baird
(Updated: 10/08/09 3:53 PM )
