Art

Wither Independent Bookstores?

By Bruce Jacobs

In the heart of Silicon Valley with the campuses of the digital giants surrounding them, booksellers spent a day learning about the technology, marketing, and distribution of eBooks. Apple had just announced its iPad, Amazon was duking it out with MacMillan over eBook pricing, and Barnes & Noble’s Nook was back in production and gaining market traction. It was hard for independent booksellers even to feel like players in the $20 billion book business, much less winners… MORE...

BOOKS: The Godfather of Kathmandu

By Bruce Jacobs

Sonchai Jitpleecheep is the introspective half-breed cop who stars in John Burdett’s four novels of crime in Bangkok. MORE...

BOOKS: The Privileges

By Bruce Jacobs

“I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Rich is better.” So goes the old vaudeville line attributed to everyone from Mae West to Gertrude Stein. MORE...

BOOKS: The Unnamed

By Bruce Jacobs

Does it seem that things have been especially nasty this last decade? Nature threw us mass destruction and death from hurricane, tsunami, wildfire, flood, freeze, drought, pandemic, and now earthquake. When nature wasn’t interested, we created our own devastation and terror with suicide bombings and subsequent wars of revenge, revolution, and redress. Yet only a very small percentage of the world’s population actually directly experienced this pain and suffering. MORE...

Noah’s Compass

By Bruce Jacobs

Near the end of Anne Tyler’s new novel “Noah’s Compass,” the hapless, laid-off fifth grade teacher Liam Pennywell finds himself listening to his new pre-school co-teacher Miss Sarah read from A.A. Milne’s “Now We Are Six:” MORE...

BOOKS: “Generosity: An Enhancement”

By Bruce Jacobs

What is more annoying than the perpetually smiley girl staffing the towel desk at the gym every morning at 6 am? How about a world full of these happy, generous sorts whose genomes have been modified to breed ebullience? MORE...

Happy Thanksgiving

By The Editors

BOOKS: Juliet, Naked

By Bruce Jacobs

The cover of Nick Hornby’s new novel, “Juliet, Naked,” simply shows a set of ear buds tangled in the silhouette shape of a kissing couple. MORE...

Meet Me at the 7-Eleven

By Bruce Jacobs

Jess Walter’s new novel is a very funny book. It’s too bad it has such an odd title, “The Financial Lives of the Poets,” which in only the smallest way has anything really to do with it. No matter. The book is way better than the title. MORE...

Cultural Roulette

By Bruce Jacobs

“How are 75 at-least-half-decent books going to receive serious and discriminating reviews in the few important places remaining for serious reviews every week?” Daniel Menaker, the former Editor-in-Chief of Random House wrote recently. “They're not. They're simply not. These statistical circumstances make publishing into a kind of grand cultural roulette, in which your chances of winning any significant pot are very, very small.” MORE...