Contemporary Literature

Ron Rash (Serena) returns to the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina to tell the riveting story of Laurel Shelton, presumed to be a witch by the townsfolk of Mars Hill, and an itinerant stranger who arrives in Mars Hill with a silver flute.

Review of The Cove by Ron Rash

_{Photo: HarperCollins}

Like an Israeli Kafka who embodies the notion of brevity as the soul of wit, Etgar Keret (The Nimrod Flipout) spins stories about men - men who have recently been left by their wives or girlfriends, men who are insecure in their current relationships, men who want to be loved.

Suddenly, a Knock on the Door is a slim book of only 188 pages, but it contains 36 of Keret's gems, each of which combines humor with human frailty to great effect.

Review of Suddenly, a Knock on the Door by Etgar Keret

_{Photo: Farrar, Straus and Giroux}

Karen Russell won the New York Public Library's 2012 Young Lions Fiction award last night for Swamplandia, her debut novel about an average, everyday family and their alligator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades.

Written in 1998 and published this year, Lionel Shriver's The New Republic is a surprisingly timely and insightful satire hitched to the old quip, "What if they threw a war and know one came?" Shriver's reporter protagonist, Edgar E. Kellogg travels on assignment to the Southern tip of Portugal to cover a fictitious terrorist group and, while there, finds something else entirely.

Review of The New Republic by Lionel Shriver

_{Photo: HarperCollins}

Award-winning author and illustrator Maurice Sendak died of a stroke today at the age of 83. Most widely known for Where the Wild Things Are, which he both wrote and illustrated and for which he won the Caldecott Medal in 1964, Sendak both wrote and illustrated numerous other works including In the Night Kitchen (1970) and Outside Over There (1981).

And when he came to the place where the wild things are
they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth
and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws
till Max said "BE STILL!"
and tamed them with the magic trick
of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once
and they were frightened and called him the most wild thing of all
and made him king of all wild things
"And now," cried Max, "let the wild rumpus start!"

_{Photo: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak}

A clockmaker by the name of Joe Spork teams up with an octogenarian secret agent to do battle with a murderous Asian drug lord and a rogue sect of Ruskinite monks while a doomsday device ticks inexorably toward the world's end. In Angelmaker, Nick Harkaway has crafted an intricate and hilarious send-up of the British spy novel.

Review of Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway

_{Photo: Knopf}

Ridiculously awesome poster courtesy of the non-profit reading advocacy group Burning Through Pages. You can donate to them.

Edouard Levé's Autoportrait is a revelatory autobiography composed of thousands of simple statements, each of which reveals something about its author. Here's an example:

"I couldn't say whether I'd prefer to have my left arm amputated or my right leg. When I read psychiatric manuals, I often find I have one symptom of the illnesses they describe, sometimes more than one, sometimes every symptom. I do not write in order to give pleasure to those who read me, but I would not be displeased if that is what they felt ...Often I think I know nothing about myself."

Read the full review of Autoportrait.

_{Photo: Dalkey Archive}

This evening, my daughter was handed a book - The Hunger Games
"For free?" She asked in wonderment.

How great it is to grow up in a world where strangers press books on you for the cost of a smile. That's not to say that this is an everyday occurance in our world, but on World Book Night... well, it can happen.

World Book Night, which actually lasted all day today, is an international effort to encourage the love of reading by giving away books. This devious plot to make readers out of non readers was successful in Britain last year - the boost in book sales convinced publishers this year to join in the giveaway here in the U.S. And it's not just publishers who are contributing, but bookstores - both chains and independents - as well as libraries and individuals.

Just for the record, my daughter has read The Hunger Games series a couple of times already; she's read Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson books several times over also; and she's read the Harry Potter books more times than I can count. Handing her a book tonight is a bit of preaching to the choir. Still, she thought it was the best thing ever. So do I.

Here are the books being given away as part of World Book Night:

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (Ballantine)
Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger (Da Capo)
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler (Beacon Press)
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (Tor)
Little Bee by Chris Cleave (Simon & Schuster)
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic)
Blood Work by Michael Connelly (Grand Central)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (Riverhead)
Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick)
Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (Vintage)
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger (Grove Atlantic)
A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick (Algonquin)
Q Is for Quarry by Sue Grafton (Berkley)
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead)
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (Ballantine)
The Stand by Stephen King (Anchor)
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (Perennial)
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (W.W. Norton)
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (Mariner)
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (Mariner)
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (Perennial)
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult (Atria)
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (Picador)
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (Back Bay)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (Broadway)
Just Kids by Patti Smith (Ecco)
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (Scribner)
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (Knopf Books for Young Readers)

Adam Levin, whose sprawling debut novel The Instructions knocked our socks off in 2010, is back with Hot Pink, a collection of ten short stories, "shaken snow-globes of overweight romantics, legless prodigies, quixotic dollmakers, Chicagoland thugs, dirty old men, protective fathers, balloon-laden dumptrucks, and walls that ooze gels."

Review of Hot Pink by Adam Levin

_{Photo: McSweeney's}