Bookworm

Rising Up and Rising Down (McSweeney's; abridged, Harper Collins) William Vollmann's mammoth inquiry is a study of the history of violence, which fills seven large volumes...

You Remind Me of Me (Ballantine) However close Dan Chaon's characters come, they can't quite connect. Disconnection rules: in families, in dreams. Even fortunate coincidences subside into spiritless accidents...

Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America (Algonquin) The author traveled our country visiting the stalwart independent manufacturers of classic candies. His beautifully written, wacky essay provokes this melancholy conversation about America's sweet tooth.

Evidence of Things Unseen (Simon & Schuster) Marianne Wiggins returned to live in America after many years in England. Having written two turbulent, disturbing books, her new one, set in American between the world wars, is a surprise...

Czeslaw Milosz, the great Polish Nobel Prize-winning poet, died in August. He was a great humanist who believed in the power of poetry to affect the world and whose own work left an imprint on his century. 

A New Theory of American Poetry: Democracy, the Environment, and the Future of Imagination (Harvard University Press) Angus Fletcher, the literary critic as seer, carefully discerns the difference between American poetry and its more bombastic British forbears. Fletcher demonstrates how, true to the spirit of democracy, Whitman devised an anti-hierarchical style, altering poetry forever.

The Coma (Riverhead) Alex Garland explores the metaphysical underpinning of his pared-down skeletal novel. He feels he took a big risk and expects to be attacked. We offer him, instead, the possibility of being understood.

Cruisers (Shaye Areheart Books) The dark precisions of Craig Nova's Cruisers provoke anxiety. Tension mounts; the book feels like a thriller, but one of a very high order...

The Jane Austen Book Club (Putnam) Karen Joy Fowler's comic romance is filled with sly references to Jane Austen's novels. Is Fowler paying homage or challenging Jane with this look at contemporary attitudes toward love and sex among a group of Janeites?

Natasha and Other Stories (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) David Bezmozgis captures the lives of Jewish immigrants in Canada. The difficulty of starting a new life in a new place is reflected by the prose style, which is tough, spiky and even belligerent...