Lists
June 17, 2009
The ABCs of Amazon 5
by C. Max Magee
You may have noticed that the search box on Amazon recently added an “auto-complete” feature. So if you start typing in letters, it starts suggesting things that begin with those letters. It’s probably safe to assume that it suggests the most frequently searched words, so, if we look at Amazon’s book section we can type [...]
June 15, 2009
The Prizewinners 2008/2009 8
by C. Max Magee
With the awarding of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award last week, the 2008/2009 literary award season is now over, which gives us the opportunity to update our list of prizewinners. Though literary prizes are arbitrary in many ways, our prizewinners post is compiled in the same spirit that one might tally up batting titles [...]
June 3, 2009
The Best Books… Squared 1
by C. Max Magee
You may have heard of Google Squared. It’s a new service in development from Google that, as Wikipedia puts it, “extracts structured data from across the web and presents its results in spreadsheet-like format.” Basically, it returns your results in a list-like format with some additional descriptive columns. Trying it out, we naturally entered some [...]
April 15, 2009
Family Ties: Childhood, Motherhood, and Fatherhood in Literature 10
by Kevin Hartnett
In advance of Mother’s and and Father’s Day (May 10 and June 21 respectively) I am putting together a catalog of the best representations of Childhood, Motherhood, and Fatherhood in literature. There is a long list of great childhood memoirs, many of which pivot around either a mother or a father. So far I’ve got: [...]
February 23, 2009
Ask a Book Question: #71 (Non-Fiction for Kids) 4
by Editor
Betsy recently wrote in with this question: I’m looking for some good non-fiction titles about “People and Places That Interest Us” for a 7th grade reading unit at my school. I plan to introduce Three Cups of Tea and Chasing Lincoln’s Killer. Do you have any other recommendations for page turners that 13 year olds [...]
February 17, 2009
Literature in Lieu of the Tour Guide: Fiction (and Non) to Take on Vacation 21
by Kevin Hartnett
On the last Sunday in November, book critic Adam Begley scooped Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd for the top spot in the New York Times most emailed list. Not with a review though. Instead, he wrote an excellent piece about Florence for the travel section, in which he recommended E.M. Forster’s Room with a View [...]
