Bookworm

Blake's Therapy (7 Stories Press) Ariel Dorfman describes his goal: to subvert the techniques of melodrama and thriller-writing in order to penetrate illusion and arrive at reality with a capital R.

The Tether (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); Pastoral (Gray Wolf) Strongly influenced by the Metaphysical poets, Carl Phillips writes a mixture of erotic and devotional poetry...

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (Harper Collins) Louise Erdrich mixes elements of her German and Native American ancestry to create a collage of history, mythology and good old-fashioned storytelling....

Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan (Norton) John Felstiner has produced a superb translation of works by the great Holocaust poet Paul Celan...

Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (Random House)Nicholson Baker has been on a crusade to preserve intact our books and newspapers. In Double Fold, he exposes the efforts of some of the greatest enemies of paper.

Spring Essence: The Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong (Copper Canyon Press) Ho Xuan Huong was an 18th century Vietnamese poet and concubine. Poet John Balaban served as a conscientious objector in Vietnam during the war. We explore the complex destinies that led him to learn Vietnamese and to translate Ho's complex, erotic poems.

The Best of Jackson Payne (Knopf) A conversation with author Jack Fuller, who happens to be the president of the Tribune Publishing Company, and Steve Wasserman, editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review, about concern journalistic ethics, conflicts of interest, and art.

The Glass Palace (Random House)Amitav Ghosh's ambitions are Tolstoyan. He chronicles the tragedies of the British Empire in India and Burma. His mission: to reconcile large historical themes with his novelistic interest in the intimate details of personal destiny.

Woodcuts of Women (Grove) Dagoberto Gilb's stories have enormous poetic vitality, yet he feels that he suffers from a lack of recognition. Has his status as a Latino inhibited his acceptance by the literary establishment?

Father of the Four Passages (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) In this novel, the distance between autobiography and fiction is minimal. Lois-Ann Yamanaka is living with the problems of raising an autistic child; she has written about the struggle. Does writing help?