“Many thought that One Thousand and One Nights were folklore, tales, and that’s it—not a treasure. These stories were told so people could learn lessons about humanity, even from bad deeds or omens.”
Q&A: Nigella Lawson | April 15, 2013
By on April 19, 2013 Leave a Comment
Nigella Lawson is a British food writer (Nigella Kitchen) and television personality (Nigella Bites; The Taste) whose warm, personal writing style and obvious delight in the pleasures of the table have made her an international star. Her ninth book, Nigellissima, is a celebration of Italian food and flavors. In your introduction to Nigellissima, you mention [...]
Q & A: Jessica Soffer
By on March 20, 2013 1 Comment
LJ talks to Jessica Soffer about her debut, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots.
Before Richard III: Author Interview with Dan Jones, The Plantagenets
By on February 7, 2013 8 Comments
If the recent identification of King Richard III, buried ignominiously in Leicester, awakens interest in the pre-Tudor British monarchy, and gives readers an appetite for understanding the armored world that led to the Wars of the Roses, culminating in Richard III’s 1485 death in battle, they must turn to Dan Jones and his rousing history, The [...]
Update: Sniper/Author Chris Kyle Murdered by Fellow Vet
By on February 6, 2013 Leave a Comment
In a twist of absurd irony, Chris Kyle, the most decorated U.S. military sniper in history, was murdered on Saturday in his home state of Texas by a fellow war veteran. The New York Times reports that Kyle and his friend, Chad Littlefield, were scheduled to meet suspect Eddie Ray Routh, a Marine combat vet, [...]
Best Acknowledgments of 2012
By on January 23, 2013 2 Comments
Over a year ago, with LJ posting its various “Best of…” lists of 2011, I added one of my own, “Best Acknowledgments of 2011,” for which I looked in lots of that year’s history and biography books (the genres that most often entail library and archives research) to find authors who fully thanked—by name—the library [...]
A Tribute to Louise Glück | Poetry in Context
By on January 3, 2013 2 Comments
On December 14, the Academy of American Poets hosted a tribute reading to former poet laureate Louise Glück, celebrating the November 2012 publication of Poems 1962–2012 (Farrar. ISBN 9780374126087. $40). Poets Frank Bidart, Dana Levin, Robert Pinsky, Peter Streckfus, and Ellen Bryant Voigt read poems by Glück, capturing the aura of the woman with a [...]
Author Q&A: Randall Sullivan’s Untouchable
By on January 1, 2013 Leave a Comment
By Robert Morast Randall Sullivan’s Untouchable is a delayed and dutiful response to a brilliant pop star’s perceived identity. This hefty book gets to the heart of the most perplexing mysterious surrounding Michael Jackson’s most perplexing mysteries: what were the sources of his idiosyncrasies and his addiction to plastic surgery, and was this gifted entertainer [...]
Friday Ebook Freebies from Our Reviewers!
By on December 7, 2012 Leave a Comment
My reviewers are a talented bunch. When they are not reviewing books, they are writing them! Take Ron Terpening, a professor of Italian at the University of Arizona, Tucson. A fiction reviewer for more than ten years, he also has published six adult and YA suspense novels as well as several academic tomes. Now two [...]
Author Q&A: Drawn Together by Art with Aline Crumb
By on December 3, 2012 1 Comment
Cartooning couple Aline and Robert Crumb have made their bed together, literally, throughout 35 years of marriage while supporting each other in individual and conjoint artistic careers. Intensely private yet disarmingly public, Aline has become a mistress of satiric confessional comedy, both in solo comics and in the comics of Drawn Together (Liveright: Norton. 2012. [...]
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