NYTBR: Marilyn Stasio reviews new crime offerings from Charlie Huston, Andrew Martin, Jack Fredrickson and Michael McGarrity; the Wednesday night book talk at the Tribeca B&N' is immortalized, more or less, in podcast format; and wow, this piece on websites and book trailers is positively 2005.
WaPo Book World: Balakian winner Ron Charles expresses his admiration for Jayne Anne Phillips' LARK AND TERMITE; Jeff Vandermeer has his say on the new Victorian horror offering from Jonathan Barnes; and Joseph Kennedy's Hollywood days get their due in a new book by Cari Beauchamp.
LA Times: Joe Mathews on California's current state of crisis; Richard Rayner gets carried along by the pace of THE ASSOCIATE; Ed Park re-examines Joan Aiken's THE SERIAL GARDEN; and a new book re-evaluates Mary Austin and her contributions to the American West.
G&M: Susan Catto looks at Jane Austen's literary contemporaries; Nigel Beale ponders the relationship between music and prose; and Paul Quarrington highlights a Thomas McGuane novel as a buried treasure to read.
Guardian Review: Emma Brockes meets Dennis Lehane at his current home in St. Petersburg, FL; the first three chapters of John Mortimer's final, unfinished RUMPOLE novel; and Nicholas Blincoe finds current resonance in Matt Rees' Palestinian-set mystery novels, even if the tone of his review is weirdly off-base - I mean, "casual racism"? WTF??
Observer: Tobias Jones is bowled over by THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE; Philip Ball ponders Darwin's evolution; and Joshua Rozenberg gets deja vu reading the new John Grisham.
The Times: Douglas Kennedy rings positive about THE GIVEN DAY; Peter Kemp does the same for Yiyun Li's debut novel; I must get my hand on Chloe Hooper's true crime account of a wrongful death; and Lynne Truss approves of a tome showing you how NOT to write a novel.
The Scotsman: Norah Vincent on the impetus for her new book VOLUNTARY MADNESS; Stuart Kelly looks at bad ways to celebrate the Bard; and David Robinson remembers John Mortimer.
The Rest:
Oline Cogdill has her say on David Fulmer's new New Orleans-set historical mystery, LOST RIVER and T. Jefferson Parker's new thriller THE RENEGADES.
Tom & Enid Schantz review new offerings from Louise Penny, Joe Gores and C.J. Sansom in the Denver Post.
Rege Behe talks with Charlie Huston about the "happy accident" that is his new novel, THE MYSTIC ARTS OF ERASING ALL SIGNS OF DEATH.
Nancy Pickard's THE VIRGIN OF SMALL PLAINS is the 2009 "Kansas Reads" choice by the Kansas Center of the Book.
Crain's on the early adopters to e-book readers like Amazon's Kindle and the Sony Reader.
Your 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award finalists.
Finally, words fail me.
Wanted to read that article about ebooks, but Crain's requires one to purchase a subscription.
Posted by: Eric Rosenfield | January 25, 2009 at 10:36 AM
From Richard Rayner's review: "He fights back, picking up tradecraft by reading spy novels (a detail that owes something, surely, to the Sydney Pollack spy thriller 'Three Days of the Condor')..." Not only did Sydney Pollack not write the film "Three Days of the Condor" (that honor belongs to Lorenzo Semple Jr. and David Rayfiel), he certainly didn't pen the source novel "Six Days of the Condor," written by the inestimable James Grady. If a literary critic must use a cinematic reference to make his point (which seems questionable to begin with, when the film was based on a book), couldn't he at least credit the reference to the writers in question, rather than the director?
Posted by: Leonard T. Carruthers | January 25, 2009 at 02:10 PM
You raise an interesting point, Leonard, though I don't necessarily come to the same conclusion. There's a scene in one of my books that owes a small debt to the Lee Marvin version of "The Killers", but to attribute it to the Hemingway story upon which the film is based would be wrong because I've never read that story. And most of us see more films than we read books.
As an aside here, I don't remember Redford's character in "Condor" learning his tradecraft from books. His job is to study books, but if memory serves, he has a background in signals work for the military. So in that respect the reviewer is wrong.
The interesting point, though, is about authorship. It's common shorthand to attribute authorship of a film to a director, and sometimes to an actor. In the case of "Three Days of the Condor", I think it's acceptable to describe it as Pollack's film, just as it's normal to talk about Coppola's "Godfather", not Puzo's.
But it is odd the way author's get airbrushed out of the picture. In the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay, the author of the source material doesn't get a mention and yet surely contributes enough that he/she should get a co-writer's credit and perhaps get to pick up a statuette with the scriptwriter.
Posted by: Kevin Wignall | January 25, 2009 at 03:22 PM
About the last story - no one ever suspects the goat...
Posted by: Steven Torres | January 25, 2009 at 04:50 PM