In the foreword to The Best American Short Stories 2009, series editor Heidi Pitlor asks, "Does anyone still read fiction?" The question chills the spine, and leaves the silent room in which it's read seeming a little quieter still. What is the sound of a storyless world, whose literary canon lies long forgotten somewhere in the distant past? Read more.

Photo credit: Houghton Mifflin

Today, Nielsen Business Media announced that they will be closing Kirkus Reviews, long a significant player in the book publishing industry.

Anyone who browses books online has seen Kirkus' book reviews - often they are one of a couple short critiques of a book on Amazon.com and other online venues. But Kirkus was around well before Amazon came along, before the Internet even. Kirkus has been reviewing books since 1933 and publishes about 400 pre-pub reviews a month. The publication has been a reliable voice to which countless readers have turned for book advice over the years. I have frequently based reading decisions on their pre-release feedback, so it's startling to me to hear they will be no more.

Nielson will also be closing Editor & Publisher, which covers the newspaper industry much as Kirkus covers books, as well as selling some of its othe properties as the company extracts itself from the trade publication business.

Kurt Vonnegut fans can revel in fourteen previously unpublished short stories each sparkling with the wit, the sarcasm, and the dark observations that only Kurt Vonnegut can offer. Read more.

_{Photo credit: Delacorte}

Once again John Irving fluently demonstrates his considerable literary merits and superb story-telling ability. Drawing on the lives of an unforgettable cast of characters, he has given us first an entertaining history of logging in the wilds of New Hampshire in the early 1950s, a subject that is to recur throughout the novel, and a remarkable description of the emergence of a writer. Read more.

_{Photo credit: Random House}