For Remarkable Creatures, Tracy Chevalier dug up the skeleton of a story, cleaned the scattered pieces, and rearranged them in just the right order. In doing so, she has revealed a stunning of account two amazing women in early 19th Century England, a time when many believed that Bishop James Ussher had "proved" the world was created on October 23, 4004 BC.

^{Photo credit: Dutton}

You may or may not have noticed, but a bit of a skirmish has errupted over the past week between Amazon.com and publishing giant, Macmillan, which has resulted in some bad news for e-book, and particularly Kindle e-book, consumers.

A brief and drastically-telescoped reccount of the events:
When Macmillan Publishing (among others) suggested that the Amazon's $9.99 price for Kindle books was devaluing to e-books and that the enormous online reseller should consider raising the price (to around $15), Amazon balked (told the publisher to get stuffed). Read more...

A lacuna is a gap, a space, the thing you don't know - like an underwater cave or a missing piece of history. In The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver imagines a historical space and seamlessly fills it with Harrison William Shepherd.

_{Photo credit: Harper}

J.D. Salinger died today in his New Hampshire home at the age of 91.

I was never assigned to read The Catcher in the Rye, but I did so. I was in college, and I'd picked up a copy of the book at The Skylight Exchange, a gritty Chapel Hill coffee shop that boasted a used book and record store in the back. I was renting a closet-sized room in a small house that my landlord, a men's formalwear salesman named Skip, had filled with fine, Victorian furnishings. I brought the slim novel home with me and plopped down on the expensive couch in our well-appointed living room. I don't know that the book necessarily changed me, but I know that I was transfixed throughout. It remains the only book I've ever read cover to cover in one sitting.

J.D. Salinger published The Catcher in the Rye in 1951, after which he wrote short stories and a handful of novellas, the most well known of which was Franny and Zooey (1961). The Catcher in the Rye, which has sold more than 65 million copies and continues to be taught widely in high schools and colleges, will continue to arrest readers with the brutally honest voice of its 16-year-old narrator, Holden Caufield, who had this to say about death:

"I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody."

Amen, brother.