Literature is literally "acquaintance with letters" as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary (from the Latin littera meaning "an individual written character (letter)"). The term has generally come to identify a collection of texts, which in Western culture are mainly prose, both fiction and non-fiction, drama and poetry. In much, if not all of the world, texts can be oral as well, and include such genres as epic, legend, myth, ballad, other forms of oral poetry, and the folktale.

Introduction

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Nations can have literatures, as can corporations, philosophical schools or historical periods. Popular belief commonly holds that the literature of a nation, for example, comprises the collection of texts which make it a whole nation. The Hebrew Bible, Persian Shahnama, Thirukural, Beowulf, the Iliad and the Odyssey and the Constitution of the United States, all fall within this definition of a kind of literature.

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L.A. Times - Books & Talks

'The Second Plane' by Martin Amis
Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700
September 11: Terror and Boredom IT would be too easy to read Martin Amis' slim book on Sept. 11 in a day and to dismiss it with a politically correct glare. The dozen essays, columns and reviews and two short stories in "The Second Plane: September 11, Terror and Boredom" are more illuminating than that, though deeply, sometimes self-indulgently flawed.
'The House of Widows' by Askold Melnyczuk
Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700
Family secrets lie at the end of a dark and twisted path FROM its puzzling opening line ("The most common grammatical error is the lie"), there's an ominous vibe to Askold Melnyczuk's third novel, "The House of Widows," and the sense of unease lingers until the final sentence. It's a mysterious, masterfully taut story in which dread plays a prominent role.
'Marco Polo' by Laurence Bergreen
Wed, 24 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0700
An account of the adventures of the celebrated 13th century world traveler. MARCO POLO was only 17 when he departed for China in 1271 with his father, Niccolò, and his uncle, Maffeo. Those two merchants of Venice were known to the boy primarily as storytellers of their fabulous exploits, writes award-winning biographer and historian Laurence Bergreen, for they had been absent more than 16 years, Marco's entire childhood. The pair had followed trade routes east, encountered exotic countries and customs and survived many perils; they had even lived for a time at the court of Kublai Khan, the leader of the Mongol Empire. Eventually they agreed to accompany his emissary west to the pope, vowing to return to Cambulac (Beijing) with several items the Great Khan had requested.

NYT > Books

Books of The Times: Limelight Lives, Burned by Booze
By JANET MASLIN Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:34:25 -0000
A rowdy collection of riotous tales about four of the British Isles’ most stylish drunken actors: Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole and Oliver Reed.
From Footnote to Fame in Civil Rights History
By BROOKS BARNES Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:25:35 -0000
Claudette Colvin, who resisted unfair treatment on a Montgomery, Ala., bus nine months before Rosa Parks, lived an unheralded life until a recent book highlighted her story.
Waldo Hunt, King of the Pop-Up Book, Dies at 88
By MARGALIT FOX Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:14:40 -0000
An advertising man turned novelty-book packager, Mr. Hunt was almost single-handedly responsible for the postwar revival of the pop-up book in the United States.

Fiction & Poetry

Sarah Arvio: "Wood"
Sarah Arvio Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:00:00 -0000
The last thing I ever wanted was to write again about grief did you think I would your grief this time not mine oh good grief enough is enough in my life that is enough was enough I had all those grievances all those griefs all engraved into the wood . . .
Philip Schultz: "The Big Sleep"
Philip Schultz Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:00:00 -0000
The only thing that consoles us for our miseries isdiversion, and yet it is the greatest of our miseries.—Pascal. On Turner Classic Movies Philip Marlowe is grimacing at the slinky beauty of the woman who will become the wife of the actor playing him. The man playing me . . .
Don DeLillo: "Midnight in Dostoevsky"
Don DeLillo Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:00:00 -0000
We were two sombre boys hunched in our coats, grim winter settling in. The college was at the edge of a small town way upstate, barely a town, maybe a hamlet, we said, or just a whistle stop, and we took walks all the time, getting out, going nowhere, low . . .

Books news, reviews and author interviews | guardian.co.uk

The digested classic
John Crace Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:46:50 -0000
'"Sorry I'm a bit late," Newland said, though both he and Ellen knew that what he was really saying was that he loved her deeply, yet did not want to compromise her by making her his mistress.'When Newland Archer opened the door at the back of the box, the curtain had just gone up on the garden scene. "Darn it," he thought. "I have arrived 10 seconds unfashionably early. All New York knows you are not supposed to make your entrance until Marguerite is two bars into her aria." Newland's annoyance dissipated when he realised that no one who was anyone in New York society had witnessed his horrendous faux pas. During the interval he turned his gaze towards his beloved, the divine May Welland, seated in the Mingott box opposite, and frowned when he saw that her cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska, was in her party. How very awkward! What would New York think of the reintroduction of the scarlet woman into society? Yet how typical of the Mingotts to be so brazenly protective of their own! No matter! He would rise above New York's pettiness and his reputation would be unstained!Archer made his way to the Mingott box and sat down next to May. They looked into one another's eyes and felt no need to speak. Their thoughts were as one. Newland knew that May had understood he wished their betrothal to be announced that very night at the Beauforts' party.The engagement would normally have been quite the talk of New York, yet it was the return of Mrs Mingott's other grand-daughter, the Countess Ellen, that dominated the conversation of the finest salons."I hear she left her husband and hid with his secretary for a year before returning to New York," said Mr Sillerton Jackson. "Quelle scandale! How racy these Europeans are!""How dare you, sir!" Newland exclaimed. "You will find she left her husband to escape his beatings.""No matter," replied Mr Sillerton Jackson. "A New York wife would take a beating in private. I find myself most compromised by our acquaintance as you are to be married into the Mingott family."Mr Sillerton Jackson's sentiments were echoed throughout New York society and for several weeks it appeared as if no one would attend the Mingott ball, until Mrs Archer, sensing the shame that might accrue to her own family by her son's impending engagement to a Mingott, persuaded her cousins, the van der Luydens, New York's most powerful family, to invite the Countess to tea."Thank goodness for that," New York society sighed. "We can go to the Mingotts' party after all." Sitting in his office some months later, Newland was irritated to be summoned to see his employer, Mr Letterblair. Although nominally engaged as a lawyer, Newland had far better things to occupy his mind than the grubbiness of commerce; there was the compelling question whether New York was wearing its waistcoats with one or two buttons undone this season. "Mrs Mingott has requested your assistance," said Mr Letterblair. "It appears that the Countess Olenska is seeking a divorce. The family find that most embarrassing."Archer understood the gravity and delicacy of the situation and took a carriage to the Countess's residence. "You must realise that New York will expel the Mingotts from society if you pursue this action," he said, "and that my engagement to May will also make me an outcast."The Countess looked down, a maelstrom of emotion racing through her bosom. "Very well," she said. Newland sensed the passion beating in his own breast. "I must see you again soon," he implored."Come and see me for 10 minutes in a few months' time when I am staying in Skuytercliff," she whispered, overwhelmed by feelings that could not be expressed in New York society. "And now I have a party to attend."Newland urged his horses on as the carriage raced along the coast road. "Sorry I'm a bit late," he said, though both he and Ellen knew that what he was really saying was that he loved her deeply, yet did not want to compromise her by making her his mistress."I've got to go now," Ellen replied, "I have to fend off Beaufort's unwanted attentions", though both she and Newland knew that what she was really saying was that she loved him deeply, yet did not want to compromise him by becoming his mistress.Rocked by the intolerability of the situation, Newland took a few more weeks off work to go to Florida to see May. "We must get married this year," he begged her. "You only want to do that because you are frightened you may go off me," May replied. "Don't think I am unaware that you once had feelings for a Mrs Rushworth. If you have any outstanding obligations to her, then I am happy to release you from your promise to me."Newland felt a surge of love for May. Particularly as she didn't seem to have guessed the true nature of his feelings for the Countess. "No, my darling," he declared. "It is you whom I adore.""Why do we have to honeymoon in Europe?" May enquired, as they docked in London. "Because it is our Henry James moment," Newland replied. "Well, I shall be quite glad when we are back in America".Locked in the loveless marriage decreed by New York, Newland was tormented by his passion for Ellen, a passion made still more tormented by New York having turned its back on her once more for refusing her husband's offer of a reconciliation. "We should not see quite so much of Ellen now," said May. Had she sensed his true feelings for Ellen, Newland wondered. How strange that the emancipation he admired so much in Ellen he should seek to deny to May!Newland hurried to Boston. "It's been two years since I last saw you and I wanted us to spend another five minutes together," he cried, touching Ellen's hand. They kissed, a kiss that announced both of them accepted they might have intercourse some time in the next few years."I will throw off the shackles of New York and elope with Ellen," Newland boldly wondered. "I'm pregnant," said May, having secretly been aware of her husband's feelings for Ellen all along. "Maybe I won't be going anywhere after all," Newland muttered."I am returning to Europe," Ellen announced, and all New York breathed a sigh of relief at such a satisfactory conclusion to the affair.Twenty-six years later, Newland stood outside Ellen's Paris apartment with his son, Dallas. May had died some years earlier and Dallas had suggested they make the visit now that New York society was so much more casual in its mores."Come on up," said Dallas."I don't think I will, after all," said Newland. "The imagined love is so much more real. And besides she's probably a right minger now."Edith WhartonClassicsFictionJohn Craceguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Buy! Buy! Buy!
Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:12:17 -0000
From Tom Wolfe to JK Galbraith, the banker-turned-novelist gives the inside deal on the best investments you can make in financial readingDavid Charters is a former diplomat and investment banker, who left the City after 12 years of working on many large international flotations and privatisations. He has published six novels and is best known for his best-selling Dave Hart series of satires, set in the fictional world of "Grossbank". Where Egos Dare is the fourth instalment, published on 14 September. Buy David Charters books at the Guardian bookshop"What's different about the City is the numbers. They all have a lot more zeros on the end. This means that when things go well – and sometimes when they don't – the people who work there can demand bonuses which also have a lot of zeros on the end. And the people who determine the bonuses (the bosses) are happy to go along with it because it means that they, in turn, will have to be paid more. Granted, the work is stressful, difficult and demanding, and the hours can be very long, and of course it's highly competitive. But so are a lot of other jobs. The difference is in those zeros. There's also almost no job security, however big the firm."So with huge rewards on the one hand and sudden death on the other, it's hardly surprising when the City brutally exposes the fault lines in human nature. Greed, fear, ruthlessness and impatience are a lethal cocktail. And of course people behaving badly make for great fiction and wonderful villains. They may not be attractive, but they are rarely dull. And, as we have all learnt to our cost, the City matters. When things go wrong in the Square Mile we all get to pick up the tab. So here are my top 10 picks to educate and entertain you about what really goes on there." 1. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom WolfeFor my money, the "Big Daddy" of financial fiction, a truly gripping tale of the slow, systematic tearing apart of the opulent facade that a New York investment banker calls his life. 2. Liar's Poker by Michael LewisA superbly written, City perennial that shows you the inside workings of a high octane investment bank at the peak of its power, complete with rampant egos. 3. Free to Trade by Michael RidpathFinancial fiction definitely does not need to be dull, and Ridpath is a master storyteller. Coincidentally, along the way it is surprising how much you pick up about how the City works (and sometimes doesn't). 4. Black Cabs by John McLarenWhen investment bankers travel in cabs, they assume the driver hears nothing, sees nothing, spots nothing – to their cost, in this tale of the little guys getting one over on the men in suits. 5. Freud in the City by David FreudBankers are human, or at least some of them can be. David Freud's account of his City career is delightfully self-deprecating but at the same time illuminating. 6. The Great Crash, 1929, by JK GalbraithThe naked emperors waltzing down Wall Street and along Threadneedle Street might have been given shorter shrift if more of our politicians and regulators had read this book. The similarities to recent events will surprise and probably horrify you. Will we ever learn? 7. The Ascent of Money by Niall FergusonA very readable account of the evolutionary history of money and financial systems, made accessible and interesting without being patronising. And yes, it really is a jungle out there. 8. Simple But Not Easy: An Autobiographical and Biased Book About Investing by Richard OldfieldOldfield is something of an anomaly in the City: an investment guru with a great track record, who is also a thoroughly decent bloke with his feet firmly on the ground and a lot of common sense – or at least that is how he comes across in this excellent Plain Man's Guide to investing. 9. The Long and the Short Of It: A Guide to Finance and Investment for Normally Intelligent People Who Aren't in the Industry by John KayDoes what it says on the cover, rather brilliantly, and wins my award for the book I'd most like to have written myself. 10. Free Lunch: Easily Digestible Economics by David SmithIf you only ever read one book about economics – for which I could easily forgive you – make it this one. Smith for Chancellor!Best booksBusiness and financeFictionguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Eyeless in Gaza
Rachel Cooke Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:07:13 -0000
Colleagues laughed when a young journalist in Palestine announced his intention to tell the story of that region though cartoons. Twenty years later, Joe Sacco is one of the world's leading exponents of the graphic novel form…In his books, Joe Sacco always draws himself the same way: neat and compact, a small bag slung across his body, a notebook invariably in his hand. At a single glance, the reader understands that he is both reporter and innocent abroad, an unlikely combination that propels him not only to ask difficult questions, but to go on asking them long after all the other hacks have given up and gone home. You sense in this black-and-white outline, too, a certain taut, physical alertness. Should there be trouble, he is, it seems, ready to run.The expression on his face, however, is more difficult to read. Sacco keeps his eyes permanently hidden behind the shine of his owlish spectacles; anyone wishing to gauge his deeper emotions must rely instead on his bottom lip. Basically, this lip has two modes. When he is frustrated, bewildered or angry, it moves stubbornly forward and its corners droop. When he is happy, contentedly drinking beer, say, or mildly flirting, it peels back to reveal his teeth, which are big and rabbity and exceedingly un-American, as if crafted from a piece of old orange peel. Is his eyelessness intended to send some kind of subtle message regarding the reliability of the reporter-narrator? Sacco, who in real life has elfin features and brown eyes, and is sitting next to me at a gleaming white table in the offices of his London publisher, winces. "It is deliberate now," he says. "But it certainly wasn't in the beginning. If you look at the first few pages of [my first book] Palestine, you'll see that I didn't used to be able to draw at all! Also, back then, I really was more like a tourist than a reporter and I suppose the way I drew myself reflected that. I was this naive person who didn't know where he was going or what he was doing. Since then, I've learned how to behave; nowadays, it would be a lie to make myself seem too bumbling."But some people have told me that hiding my eyes makes it easier for them to put themselves in my shoes, so I've kind of stuck with it. I'm a nondescript figure; on some level, I'm a cipher. The thing is: I don't want to emote too much when I draw myself. The stories are about other people, not me. I'd rather emphasise their feelings. If I do show mine – let's say I'm shaking [with fear] more than the people I'm with – it's only ever to throw their situation into starker relief."Thanks to publishing hyperbole, writers often get called "unique". But Sacco's work truly is, combining as it does oral history, memoir and reportage with cartoons in a way that, when he started out, most people – himself included, at times – considered utterly preposterous.Twenty years on, though, and the American cartoonist is widely regarded as the author of two masterpieces: Palestine, in which he reported on the lives of the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza in the early 1990s, with flashbacks to 1948, the beginning of the first Intifada, and the first Gulf War; and Safe Area Gorazde, which describes his experiences in Bosnia in 1994-95. Palestine won an American Book Award, and has sold 30,000 copies in the UK alone (this is a huge figure for a comic book, let alone a political comic book)."With the exception of one or two novelists and poets, no one has ever rendered this terrible state of affairs better than Joe Sacco," wrote Edward Said in his foreword to the complete edition of Palestine (it was originally published as a series of nine comics). Safe Area Gorazde, following ecstatic reviews in which Sacco was named Art Spiegelman's heir apparent and tipped to win a Pulitzer, won the 2001 Eisner Award for best original graphic novel. Footnotes in Gaza, his new book and his first long narrative for six years, returns Sacco to Palestine and, being rooted as much in the past as in the present, is perhaps his most ambitious work to date. But why go back? Aren't there plenty of crises to report elsewhere?He shrugs. All he knows is that, a few years ago, he felt a fresh "compulsion" to write about Gaza; events in the territory had left him feeling "agitated". So in 2001, he and journalist Chris Hedges travelled there on assignment for Harper's magazine. The idea was that they would go to one city and focus on its history alone. Sacco suggested Khan Younis. In the back of his mind, he dimly remembered something he had read in Noam Chomsky's book, The Fateful Triangle, about an incident during the Suez crisis in 1956 in which a large number of Palestinian refugees were killed by Israeli soldiers."We asked around, people confirmed the story, and we thought it important for the history of the town," says Sacco. "But when Chris's piece was published, they cut Khan Younis out. Well, that further agitated me. I know the big picture is important but the big picture is made up of a lot of smaller things. It's a shame when those things get lost. It seems… unfair. I wanted to look at it myself. According to the UN, 275 people died in Khan Younis: why did that figure deserve to return to obscurity?" In 2003, he went back. But once there, Sacco found himself becoming increasingly interested in another incident that had occurred around the same time – November 1956 – in the neighbouring town of Rafah. According to a couple of sentences in a UN report, scores of Palestinian civilians had also been shot by Israeli forces there during a procedure that should have been standard (the Israeli soldiers were screening Rafah's men in the hope of finding terrorists). Sacco wanted to know what had happened. Had the Israelis, as the UN report surmised, simply "panicked and opened fire on the running crowd"? Or was it more complicated than that?Moreover, what effect had this incident had on the collective memory of Rafah, now once again in brutal conflict with the Israeli army?In Rafah, almost all men of military age had reputedly been caught up in the incident so there were likely to be survivors still living whom he could interview at length. As a result, Footnotes in Gaza is divided in two. A first, shorter section investigates the killings at Khan Younis, and a second, longer section is devoted to events in Rafah."Both towns stand in for all those places, all those things, that are more widely left out of history. They're footnotes, but these were also an important day in some people's lives."Footnotes in Gaza features all Sacco's trademarks. For a start, there is the author himself, one minute infuriated beyond all endurance by checkpoint bureaucracy, the next delightedly scoffing honeyed Arab pastries; unlike many reporters, Sacco is as interested in the process of getting the story as in the story itself, a fact which only serves to remind you of how highly filtered and polished most "news" is.Then there are the people he meets. Sacco's ear for the way Palestinian men talk is as sharp as ever (as Edward Said has put it, they exchange their tales of suffering the way fishermen compare the size of their catch). Ditto his nose for lies and embellishments. As usual, his fixer – this time, his right-hand man is called Abed – takes a starring role, his tenacity seeming to surprise even his employer at times. Best of all, there are the moments when Sacco covers a page with one or two large frames, these bigger, more panoramic drawings capturing not only the claustrophobic scrum of a single, 21st-century Rafah street, from aerials on corrugated tin roofs down, but also the way it might have looked when Palestinian refugees arrived there in 1948 (he used old photographs as the basis for these drawings and has rendered the land dry, empty and bleakly forbidding). But Footnotes is also a darker, less humorous book than Palestine; Sacco calls it "sombre". It's not only that the old men and women he interviews are describing such painful events. Footnotes is punctuated by a sense of history repeating itself or,  perhaps, of history failing ever to stop, not even for the merest breather. As someone in Gaza tells Sacco: "Events are continuous."You look at his drawings of hundreds of men sitting in a pen one day in 1956, under armed guard, no food, no water, their hands on their heads, and you could be looking at an equivalent atrocity at almost any time before or since, and in any number of places. "There are only so many ways you can skin a cat when it comes to screening people so you can kill them," says Sacco. "It was a horrific incident in and of itself but it is also representative of any number of other incidents, even if I'm reluctant to make direct comparisons myself."Meanwhile, life in present-day Gaza grinds on. We see Sacco and his room-mate, Abed, listening to mortar fire, braving the curfew (the book is set before the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza) and witnessing the demolition of homes. The book is haunted by a ghostly presence called Khaled, a man wanted by the Israelis. Always on the move, he has not had a proper night's sleep for several years. In Sacco's drawings, Khaled's features – his hawkish nose and long chin – cast impossibly long shadows over the rest of his face, leaving the reader unnervingly unsure whether he is to be feared or pitied. Joe Sacco was born in Malta in 1960. His family emigrated, first to Australia and then, finally, to America when he was just a boy; his parents, who were socialists, were worried about the influence of the Catholic church on Maltese life. Sacco believes that the experiences of his parents had a big impact on his career. "In Australia, there were a lot of Europeans and they would all meet up and the commonality was the war. You heard a lot about it. I guess I realised conflict was just a part of life."He decided to be a reporter and did a journalism degree at the University of Oregon (he still lives in Portland). His early jobs, however, were so indescribably boring – he worked initially for the journal of the National Notary Association – that he soon decided he'd be better off working for himself. First, he set up his own comics magazine. Later, he had a staff job on the Comics Journal. As far as his own drawing and writing goes, his influences include George Orwell and  – this makes such perfect sense – Bruegel. It was in the early 1990s, while he was living in Berlin, that he became interested in the Middle East. "I didn't have some grand plan. I just felt like I needed to go there and see for myself. It's so under-reported in America. At the time, I was trying to make a living as a cartoonist. I thought to myself: I can't just be some adventure tourist but maybe it is conceivable that I could do a comic about it. But I didn't even know if I would have the guts to go into the West Bank! This is how naive I was: I was bumbling around in East Jerusalem for a few days and I met a tourist who'd been to Nablus in a taxi. Oh, I thought: I could just get a taxi! I was pretty sheepish about telling people what I was doing. If I met a journalist or someone from an NGO, I was always afraid they would laugh – and one or two did."Did he seriously believe he could make a living from this kind of work? "I'll be honest. I thought it was commercial suicide, writing about Palestine. I was cutting my own throat! It came out in nine issues and each one sold progressively worse. The last one sold under 2,000 copies in the US. That's when I thought: OK, I really made a mistake. When I did the next book [Safe Area Gorazde], I decided to do it as a single volume, simply so I wouldn't get demoralised as I went along."It was Safe Area Gorazde that changed his fortunes. "Most American journalists agreed with my position on Bosnia and it was incredibly warmly received. The New York Times named it a notable book of the year and I received a Guggenheim fellowship, which really helped me financially. So when Palestine came out in a single volume, it had a new life. It sold 60,000 copies in America and it was widely translated. It has long since outsold Safe Area Gorazde. I think it'll be the book I'm remembered for." In the years since, Sacco has published several more tales from Bosnia, among them the brilliant The Fixer: A Story From Sarajevo, and he has reported from Iraq and Ingushetia for newspapers and magazines. He is now at work on two projects: a 48-page comic for the Virginia Quarterly Review about African migrants who attempt to get into Europe via Malta, and a story for Harper's about Camden, New Jersey, currently the poorest city in the US.When he's not travelling, he treats his work "exactly like a proper job… I have to: Footnotes in Gaza took me four years. I have to produce at a certain rate and stick to a rigid two pages every five days. I don't story-board. I hardly even sketch anything out. I draw directly on to the board with my pencil. It's all hand-drawn. If I make a mistake, I cut out the panel and cut and paste the old-fashioned way". Nevertheless, he is often away from home for long periods. In his books, he sometimes depicts himself gazing dreamily at a pretty girl in a bar. Has his career played havoc with his private life? "It played havoc with my life until I was almost 40. I have a girlfriend now and a mortgage, which feels pretty odd, but for about a 10-year period I was just so broke. I had to ask friends and my parents for money. It's difficult to have a personal life when you're broke because you can't afford to go out, and it isn't that attractive, either; people get fed up pretty quickly." It seems to me, though, that Sacco must be quite tough; even when things are at their most difficult in Gaza or Bosnia, they never really seem to get him down. "Well, I know I'm going to leave," he says. "If I knew I was trapped the way people in Gaza are trapped, their lives simply closed down, maybe I would go insane. That's not to say that my stomach doesn't get a little twisted up as I'm going in and as I'm leaving. I love Gaza. I wouldn't say I see physical beauty in it. It's more to do with its people and my experiences with them: that physical closeness that you can't really avoid. Things are so hard there but – wow! – they always feed me the most amazing food." Still, for the "sake of my own sanity" he is planning on stepping away from war reporting in the near future. He is planning a graphic memoir about the Rolling Stones. Will he one day return to Gaza for a third time? Or perhaps he could look at the conflict from Sderot or some other town on the Israeli side. "It depends on what I feel in my gut. There are lots of places in the world where things are pretty bad. When I read about them, though, I have to wait for the story to work on me. With Bosnia, it took a full year for that to happen. But I do feel Palestinians have been misrepresented in the America media over a long time; we've internalised all sorts of things about them."With Footnotes, I want people to appreciate the lost molecules of conflict: the details and sideshows that only exist until the people who remember them die. But I also want them to remember, when they're watching the news, that it comes to them out of context and that history always comes back to haunt you. An incident can resonate for a whole century or even longer."As he considers the weight of all those years, his eyes narrow and I think to myself how good it is to be able to see them at last. ComicsGazaPalestinian territoriesRachel Cookeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

NPR Topics: Books

A Cape Cod Connection In 'The Outermost House'
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 08:09:00 -0500
When she needs inspiration for writing about the natural world, author Lucinda Fleeson opens Henry Beston's 1929 classic: The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod.
Tales Of Scrappy Michiganders In 'American Salvage'
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:00:00 -0500
In the second installment of our book series, "Backstory," Steve Inskeep talks with author Bonnie Jo Campbell. Her latest book, American Salvage, is a short story collection that explores the lives of people at the bottom of American society.
The 11 Best Cookbooks Of 2009
Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:41:00 -0500
If you're the kind of person who's always believed that a book can teach you to do anything, this year's crop of cookbooks will prove you right. Cooks lacking confidence will find comfort in detailed instructions and comprehensive how-tos.

Slashdot: Book Reviews

Magento Beginner's Guide
samzenpus Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:10:00 -0000
Michael J. Ross writes "The shopping cart systems that power online stores have evolved from simple homebrew solutions in the CGI era to far more powerful open source packages, such as osCommerce. But even the later systems are frequently criticized as suffering from poorly-written code and inadequate documentation — as well as for being difficult to install and administer, and nearly impossible to enhance with new functionality and improved site styling, at least without hiring outside help. These problems alone would explain the rapidly growing interest in the latest generation of shopping cart systems, such as Magento, purported to be outpacing all others in adoption. In turn, technical publishers are making available books to help developers and site owners get started with this e-commerce alternative, such as Magento: Beginner's Guide, written by William Rice." Read on for the rest of Michael's review.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Writing For Video Game Genres
samzenpus Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:05:00 -0000
Aeonite writes "The third book in a pseudo-trilogy, Writing for Video Game Genres: From FPS to RPG, offers advice from 21 experts in the field of video game writing, pulled from the ranks of the IGDA's Game Writers Special Interest Group and wrangled together by editor Wendy Despain. It follows in the footsteps of Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing and Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames, and in keeping with the trend, offers the most specific, targeted advice for how to write for an assortment of game genres." Read below for the rest of Michael's review.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Drupal 6 Social Networking
samzenpus Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:10:00 -0000
dag writes "Drupal 6 Social Networking is an interesting book about how to build social networks and why Drupal is a good choice as a platform for building communities. Even if you don't have any Drupal experience yet, this book explains what is needed when you start from scratch and looks at the different facets of a social network." Keep reading for the rest of Dag's review.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Books

Classic review: Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
[This review from the Monitor's archives originally ran on July 9, 1982.] Despite the pervading gloom of Anne Tyler's ninth novel, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is a joy to read in much the same way that any beautifully written tragedy is not just for entertainment, but for enlightenment, ...
A Strong West Wind
A Strong West Wind, Gail Caldwell's memoir of growing up in Amarillo, Texas, in the 1950s and '60s makes one ponder who we are as a people and where we are going. The book demands attention for its humanity and is food for thought.
Too Much Happiness
If there’s a better short story writer working today than Alice Munro, I haven’t read her. In story after story, Munro manages to compress whole lives and emotional arcs into 20 or so shapely pages, long enough to engage us in their world but short enough to absorb in a ...

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