• 2

• 2666 – Roberto Bolaño. Part 1: The Part About the Critics
• 2666 – Roberto Bolaño. Part 2: The Part About Amalfitano
• 2666 – Roberto Bolaño. Part 3: The Part About Fate
• 2666 – Roberto Bolaño. Part 4: The Part About the Crimes
• 2666 – Roberto Bolaño. Part 5: The Part About Archimboldi

• A

• A Conspiracy of Violence – Susanna Gregory
• A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
• A Month in the Country – J. L. Carr
• A Secret Alchemy – Emma Darwin
• A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini
• Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
• An Equal Stillness – Francesca Kay

• B

• Believers – Zoe Heller
• Beloved – Toni Morrison
• Best Intentions – Emily Listfield
• Bitter Fruit – Achmat Dangor
• Blackmoor – Edward Hogan
• Bleeding Heart Square – Andrew Taylor
• Blindness – José Saramago
• Boy in the Striped Pyjamas – John Boyne
• Brooklyn – Colm Tóibín
• Brothers – Yu Hua
• Burnt Shadows – Kamila Shamsie

• C

• Catching Fire – Suzanne Collins
• Child 44 – Tom Rob Smith (Audio Book)
• Cloudstreet – Tim Winton
• Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
• Corduroy Mansions – Alexander McCall Smith

• D

• Darkmans – Nicola Barker
• De Niro’s Game – Rawi Hage
• December – Elizabeth Winthrop
• Delicate Edible Birds – Lauren Groff
• Digging to America – Anne Tyler
• Dirty Little Angels – Chris Tusa
• Dracula – Bram Stoker

• E

• Eating Air – Pauline Melville
• Equator – Miguel Sousa Tavares

• F

• Fall on Your Knees – Ann-Marie MacDonald
• Far North – Marcel Theroux
• Fasting, Feasting – Anita Desai
• Fathers and Sons – Richard Madeley
• Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
• Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes
• Flu – Gina Kolata
• Flying to Nowhere – John Fuller
• For One More Day – Mitch Albom
• Foundation – Isaac Asimov
• Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
• Fun Home – Alison Bechdel

• G

• G by John Berger
• Getting Rid of Matthew – Jane Fallon (Audio Book)
• Gilead – Marilynne Robinson
• Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
• Gone with the Wind – Volume One
• Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood
• Grotesque – Natsuo Kirino

• H

• Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Read-along Complete!
• Half of a Yellow Sun – Thoughts at the half way point
• Headlong by Michael Frayn
• Heliopolis – James Scudamore
• Her Fearful Symmetry – Audrey Niffenegger
• Home – Marilynne Robinson
• Hotel du Lac – Anita Brookner
• How to Paint a Dead Man – Sarah Hall

• I

• I Served the King of England – Bohumil Hrabal (Book and DVD)
• Indignation – Philip Roth
• Invisible Monsters – Chuck Palahniuk

• K

• Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
• Kill-Grief – Caroline Rance

• L

• Labyrinth – Kate Mosse
• Lanterns on Their Horns – Radhika Jha
• Legend of a Suicide – David Vann
• Little Face – Sophie Hannah
• Love and Summer – William Trevor

• M

• Me Cheeta – James Lever
• Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
• Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
• Modern Delight – Various
• Molly Fox’s Birthday – Deirdre Madden
• Mr Icky from ‘Tales of the Jazz Age’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Mr Toppit – Charles Elton
• Mudbound – Hillary Jordan

• N

• Netherland – Joseph O’Neill
• Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) – George Orwell
• Nocturnes – Kazuo Ishiguro
• Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami
• Not Untrue and Not Unkind – Ed O’Loughlin

• O

• Offshore – Penelope Fitzgerald
• Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Stroud
• One Morning Like a Bird – Andrew Miller
• Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
• Out – Natsuo Kirino
• Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
• Outlander (Cross Stitch) – Diana Gabaldon

• P

• Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha – Roddy Doyle
• Paperchase – Marcel Theroux
• Perdido Street Station – China Miéville
• Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi (Book and Film)
• Purple Hibiscus – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

• Q

• Q & A – Vikas Swarup

• R

• Random Acts of Heroic Love – Danny Scheinmann
• Reading in the Dark – Seamus Deane
• Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
• Rhett Butler’s People – Donald McCaig
• Right to Die – Hazel McHaffie

• S

• Salmon Fishing in the Yemen – Paul Torday (Audio Book)
• Scottsboro – Ellen Feldman
• Sea of Poppies – Amitav Ghosh
• Six Suspects – Vikas Swarup
• Stalking Richard & Judy – Valentine Honeyman
• Stone’s Fall – Iain Pears
• Sugar Cage – Connie May Fowler
• Summertime – J.M. Coetzee

• T

• Testimony – Anita Shreve (Audio Book)
• The 19th Wife – David Ebershoff
• The Accidental – Ali Smith
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon
• The Arcanum by Janet Gleeson
• The Beautifull Cassandra – Jane Austen
• The Behaviour of Moths (The Sister) – Poppy Adams
• The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
• The Best Books of 2010? Part 2: Debut/Lesser Known Authors
• The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
• The Blind Owl – Sadegh Hedayat
• The Bolter – Frances Osbourne
• The Bone People – Keri Hulme
• The Boy Who Kicked Pigs – Tom Baker
• The Bride From Odessa – Edgardo Cozarinsky
• The Brutal Art – Jesse Kellerman
• The Brutal Telling – Louise Penny
• The Cellist of Sarajevo – Steven Galloway
• The Children’s Book – A. S. Byatt
• The Clan of the Cave Bear – Jean Auel
• The Dog who Came in from the Cold – Alexander McCall Smith (Chapters 1 – 23)
• The Double – José Saramago
• The Dwarf – Pär Lagerkvist
• The Elected Member – Bernice Rubens
• The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas
• The Essence of the Thing – Madeleine St John
• The Fifth Child – Doris Lessing
• The Gargoyle – Andrew Davidson
• The Ghost – Robert Harris
• The Ghosts of Eden – Andrew Sharp
• The Giver – Lois Lowry
• The Glass Room – Simon Mawer
• The Graveyard Book – Neil Gaiman (Audio Book)
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – Mary Ann Shaffer (Audio Book)
• The Halo Effect by M.J. Rose
• The Help – Kathryn Stockett
• The House at Riverton – Kate Morton
• The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
• The Inner Circle – T.C. Boyle
• The Invention of Everything Else – Samantha Hunt
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
• The Invisible Mountain – Carolina De Robertis
• The Island at the End of the World – Sam Taylor
• The Knife of Never Letting Go – Patrick Ness
• The Late, Lamented Molly Marx – Sally Koslow
• The Little Stranger – Sarah Waters
• The Lost Book of Salem – Katherine Howe
• The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes) – Alain Fournier
• The Lottery – Shirley Jackson
• The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite/The Glimmer Palace – Beatrice Colin
• The Magicians – Lev Grossman
• The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
• The Monsters of Templeton – Lauren Groff
• The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
• The Mosquito Coast – Paul Theroux
• The Moving Toyshop – Edmund Crispin
• The Necklace – Guy de Maupassant (Short Story)
• The Nutmeg Tree – Margery Sharp
• The Other Hand – Chris Cleave
• The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
• The Post-Birthday World – Lionel Shriver
• The Quickening Maze – Adam Foulds
• The Rebel Angels – Robertson Davies
• The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist – Mohsin Hamid
• The Road Home – Rose Tremain
• The Room of Lost Things – Stella Duffy
• The Seance – John Harwood
• The Secret River – Kate Grenville
• The Slap – Christos Tsiolkas
• The Strain – Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan
• The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher – Kate Summerscale
• The Tale of Genji – First Impressions
• The Tale of Genji: Chapters 10 – 13
• The Tale of Genji: Chapters 14 – 17
• The Tale of Genji: Chapters 5 – 9
• The Thing Around Your Neck – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenger (Film)
• The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
• The Victorian Chaise-Longue – Marghanita Laski
• The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam – Lauren Liebenberg
• The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga
• The Wilderness – Samantha Harvey
• The Winner Stands Alone – Paulo Coelho
• Theory of War – Joan Brady
• Three Men in a Boat – Jerome K Jerome
• To Say Nothing of the Dog – Connie Willis
• Tragedy At Law – Cyril Hare

• U

• Ulysses, Part I: The Telemachiad, Telemachus

• V

• Voice Over – Celine Curiol

• W

• Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen
• We Need to Talk about Kevin – Lionel Shriver
• What Was Lost – Catherine O’Flynn
• When Will There Be Good News? – Kate Atkinson
• Whit by Iain Banks
• Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
• Wuthering Heights – Discussion on chapters 16 – 34
• Wuthering Heights – Discussion on the first 15 chapters
• http://www.farmlanebooks.co.uk/?page_id=636

Each week, Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, talks to authors, editors and critics about new books, the literary scene and current best sellers. The program is available as a podcast on NYTimes.com and iTunes, and is broadcast as “Inside The New York Times Book Review” on Fridays at 6:05pm in New York on WQXR 96.3 FM. The downloadable audio files are in mp3 format; instructions for subscribing to the podcast are below.

December 11, 2009
This week: George Packer, the author of “Interesting Times”; Deborah Solomon on three books about the Pop Art era; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

December 4, 2009
This week: The editors of the Book Review on the 10 Best Books of 2009; Caroline Weber on fashion photography; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

November 27, 2009
This week: The short story master Alice Munro; Clyde Haberman on Capt. C. B. Sullenberger’s miracle landing on the Hudson River; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

November 20, 2009
This week: Andre Agassi on his memoir, “Open”; Stephen King on a new biography of the short story writer Raymond Carver; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

November 13, 2009
This week: Susan Cheever discusses Mary Karr’s new memoir, “Lit”; Motoko Rich has notes from the field; David Carr tells us about the life and times of British journalist, Harry Evans; and Jennifer Schuessler has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

November 6, 2009
This week: A special look at our fall children’s books issue with Adam Gopnik, Julie Just and Ryan Southerland; the pro wrestler Hulk Hogan on his memoir, “My Life Outside the Ring”; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

October 30, 2009
This week: Anne C. Heller, author of “Ayn Rand and the World She Made”; The Times’s William Grimes, author of “Appetite City,” a culinary history of New York; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

October 23, 2009
This week: Jonathan Lethem, author of “Chronic City”; Frank Bruni on a new biography of Elizabeth Taylor; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Gregory Cowles with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

October 16, 2009
This week: The Times’s Gail Collins, author of “How Everything Changed”; James Traub on Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s new book about genocide; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Gregory Cowles with bestseller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

October 9, 2009
This week: Maureen Dowd on Dan Brown’s “Lost Symbol”; The Times’s Peter Goodman on his new book about the economy, “Past Due”; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

October 2, 2009
This week: Edmund White on his new memoir, “City Boy”; Pamela Paul on “NurtureShock” and the science of child rearing; Motoko Rich has notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

September 25, 2009
This week: Lorrie Moore on her new novel, “A Gate at the Stairs”; Joe Klein on Taylor Branch’s “Clinton Tapes”; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the book review, is the host.

September 18, 2009
This week: Nicholas D. Kristof on his new book, “Half the Sky”; literary funnyman Paul Rudnick, author of “I Shudder”; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host.

September 11, 2009
This week: E. L. Doctorow, author of “Homer & Langley”; Leonard S. Marcus on Eden Ross Lipson’s “Applesauce Season”; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best- seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host.

September 4, 2009
This week: Nick McDonell, author of “An Expensive Education”; Dwight Garner on the novelist Paul Bowles; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host.

August 28, 2009
This week: Ron Suskind on Tracy Kidder’s “Strength in What Remains”; Elsa Dixler on “The Sixties,” by Jenny Diski; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host.

August 21, 2009
This week: Frank Bruni, author of “Born Round”; Harold Evans on the future of the news industry; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host.

August 14, 2009
This week: a conversation with the novelist Richard Russo; Mary Jo Murphy on the 2008 Federer-Nadal Wimbledon final; Patricia Cohen on a new publishing controversy; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host.

August 7, 2009
This week: Jonathan Rosen on Douglas Brinkley’s conservation-focused biography of Theodore Roosevelt; The Times’s columnist Gail Collins on Woodstock; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the book review, is the host.

July 31, 2009
This week: Christopher Caldwell, author of “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe”; Colum McCann, author of “Let the Great World Spin”; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host.

July 24, 2009
This week: Touré on the New York Yankees and their many scandals; Ed Park on literature’s “invisible library”; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

July 17, 2009
This week: The best-selling mystery writer Janet Evanovich; Rafael Yglesias, author of “A Happy Marriage”; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host.

July 10, 2009
This week: Arianne Cohen, author of “The Tall Book”; Howard Blum on Richard Rayner’s “Bright and Guilty Place”; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

July 3, 2009
This week: The Times’s Neil MacFarquhar on life in the Middle East; Caitlin Macy on Jill Ciment’s new novel, “Heroic Measures”; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

June 26, 2009
This week: Robert Wright, author of “The Evolution of God”; Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, on the two wars in Iraq; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

June 19, 2009
This week: Katie Roiphe on Cristina Nehring’s “Vindication of Love”; Ross Douthat on Mark Helprin’s “Digital Barbarism”; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host.

June 12, 2009
This week: Kate Walbert, author of the novel “A Short History of Women”; Paul Barrett on the Wall Street implosion; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

June 5, 2009
This week: the novelists John Irving and Danielle Steel; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

May 29, 2009
This week: Jonathan Miles on W.P.A. food writing; Christine Muhlke on food-themed memoirs; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

May 22, 2009
This week: Walter Kirn, author of the memoir “Lost in the Meritocracy”; Robert Sullivan on the natural history of Manhattan; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host.

May 15, 2009
This week: Jeffrey Eugenides, author of “The Virgin Suicides” and “Middlesex”; Helene Cooper on a memoir by Africa’s first female president; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host.

May 8, 2009
This week: Laurie Halse Anderson, author of the young adult novel “Wintergirls”; Peter Brown, author and illustrator of the picture book “The Curious Garden”; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host.

May 1, 2009
This week: Colson Whitehead, author of “Sag Harbor”; Charles McGrath on reading the poetry of John Updike aloud; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host.

April 24, 2009
This week: Jay McInerney, author of “How It Ended”; Joe Queenan, author of the memoir “Closing Time”; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host.

April 17, 2009
This week: Joanna Scott, author of “Follow Me”; Michael Agger on “Stealing MySpace”; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host.

April 10, 2009
This week: Arthur Phillips on his new novel, “The Song is You”; Liesl Schillinger on Joanna Smith Rakoff’s “A Fortunate Age”; Motoko Rich with Notes From the Field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Charles McGrath is the host, filling in for Sam Tanenhaus.

April 3, 2009
This week: The Times’s columnist Susan Dominus on New York’s long history of sex and sin; the critic Adam Kirsch on the life of Judas; Motoko Rich with Notes From the Field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

March 27, 2009
This week: Wells Tower, author of “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned”; Charles McGrath on two of the great British theatrical dynasties; Motoko Rich with Notes From the Field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

March 20, 2009
This week: the biographer Tracy Daugherty on the life of Donald Barthelme; James Glanz on a new memoir of the Iraq war; Motoko Rich with Notes From the Field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

March 13, 2009
This week: the biographer Blake Bailey on the tortured life of John Cheever; Rachel Kauder Nalebuff on her anthology of anecdotes about first periods; Motoko Rich with Notes From the Field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

March 6, 2009
This week: Yiyun Li, author of “The Vagrants”; Laura Miller on Eric Kraft; Motoko Rich with Notes From the Field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

February 27, 2009
This week: Brad Gooch on the life of Flannery O’Connor; Motoko Rich with Notes From the Field; Jim Holt on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s dysfunctional family; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

February 20, 2009
This week: Steven Gaines on the high life in South Beach; Kevin Baker on “The Day Wall Street Exploded”; Motoko Rich with Notes From the Field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

February 13, 2009
This week: a conversation with the novelist T. C. Boyle; Motoko Rich with Notes From the Field; Carl Hiaasen on his newest novel for young adults; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

February 6, 2009
This week: Jennifer Baszile, author of the memoir “The Black Girl Next Door”; Motoko Rich with Notes From the Field; Dalia Sofer on a new Pakistani writer; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

January 30, 2009
This week: Charles McGrath on the late John Updike; Motoko Rich with Notes From the Field; Adam Kirsch on his biography of Benjamin Disraeli; Marilyn Stasio on an 18th century crime novel; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

January 23, 2009
This week: a conversation with Joseph O’Neill, author of “Netherland”; Dwight Garner, a Times book critic; and Liesl Schillinger, a frequent Book Review contributor. Jennifer Schuessler has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host. (This program was recorded live during a public Book Review event in New York at Barnes & Noble Tribeca. You can download the full 39-minute discussionhere.)

January 16, 2009
This week: Newsweek’s Evan Thomas discusses the 2008 presidential campaigns; Motoko Rich has Notes From the Field; Gary Hart talks about the foreign policy challenges facing Barack Obama; and Jennifer Schuessler has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

January 9, 2009
This week: Stacey D’Erasmo discusses her new novel, “The Sky Below”; Motoko Rich has Notes From the Field; Bill Morgan talks about the letters of Allen Ginsberg; and Jennifer Schuessler has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

January 2, 2009
This week: Dominique Browning on a new book about Brooke Astor, Motoko Rich with Notes From the Field, Jeremy McCarter on the life of Marlon Brando, and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

December 26, 2008
This week: The Times’s David Carr on a new biography of Rupert Murdoch; Motoko Rich with Notes From the Field; Dana Canedy discusses her memoir, “A Journal for Jordan”; and Jennifer Schuessler has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

December 19, 2008
This week: Alex Witchel on Christopher Plummer’s memoir; Motoko Rich with Notes From the Field; Bruce Jay Friedman, the author of “Three Balconies”; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

December 12, 2008
This week: Bob Harris, the Book Review’s Deputy Editor, on the 10 Best Books of 2008; Motoko Rich with Notes From the Field; Lorraine Adams on “The Jewel of Medina”; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

December 5, 2008
This week: Caroline Weber on portraits from Vanity Fair magazine; Motoko Rich with Notes From the Field; Charles McGrath on newly-discovered verse by Bob Dylan; and bestseller news from Jennifer Schuessler. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

November 28, 2008
This week: an extended conversation with Toni Morrison, Motoko Rich with Notes From the Field and best-seller news from Jennifer Schuessler. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

November 21, 2008
This week: George Packer on the strange life of V. S. Naipaul; Motoko Rich reports on the National Book Awards; Charles Isherwood talks about Ziegfeld’s Follies; and Jennifer Schuessler has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

November 14, 2008
This week: Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter on the life of George Plimpton; Motoko Rich with Notes from the Field; Roy Blount Jr. takes listeners through the alphabet; and Jennifer Schuessler has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

November 7, 2008
This week: the novelist Jonathan Lethem on Roberto Bolaño; Motoko Rich with Notes from the Field; Julie Just on children’s books; and best-seller news from Jennifer Schuessler. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

October 31, 2008
This week: An extended conversation with John Updike; Motoko Rich on the Google Books settlement; and best-seller news from Dwight Garner. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

October 24, 2008
This week: Stacy Schiff on the career of Emily Post; Motoko Rich with Notes from the Field; Steven Heller reviews some new design books; and best-seller news from Dwight Garner. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

October 17, 2008
This Week: Cartoonist Jules Feiffer recalls his Village Voice years; Motoko Rich calls in from the Frankfurt Book Fair; James McPherson discusses President Lincoln’s war powers; and Dwight Garner has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

October 10, 2008
This week: Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey lead a tour of all 50 states; Motoko Rich with news on the book world; Bruce Handy on campaign biographies for kids; and Dwight Garner with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

October 3, 2008
This week: Alex Kuczynski on Alec Baldwin’s memoir of divorce; Charles McGrath on a Nobel Prize controversy; James Traub on Gen. David Petraeus; and Dwight Garner with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

September 26, 2008
This week: Rachel Donadio on Michael Greenberg’s memoir, “Hurry Down Sunshine”; Charles McGrath on the 2008 MacArthur Fellows; John Leland on Mark Richardson’s “Zen and Now”; and Dwight Garner with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

September 19, 2008
This week: Bernard-Henri Lévy, author of “Left in Dark Times”; A. O. Scott on David Foster Wallace; David Gates on Philip Roth.

September 12, 2008
This week: Dexter Filkins, author of “The Forever War”; Mick Sussman on the oddities of online bookselling; Patricia Cohen on Maurice Sendak.

September 5, 2008
This week: Christopher Buckley, author of “Supreme Courtship”; Wesley Yang on “Guyland”; Motoko Rich on the children’s author Rick Riordan.

August 29, 2008
This week: The Times columnist Maureen Dowd on the politics of Curtis Sittenfeld’s new novel; Dave Itzkoff on Daniel J. Levitin’s “World in Six Songs.”

August 22, 2008
This week: Brenda Wineapple, the author of a new book on Emily Dickinson; Paul Berman on Norman Mailer and the 1968 party conventions.

August 15, 2008
This week: Bill Keller, The Times’s executive editor, on Nelson Mandela, race and rugby in South Africa; Stacey D’Erasmo on Linn Ullmann’s novel “A Blessed Child.”

August 8, 2008
This week: This week: David Carr, author of “The Night of the Gun”; Tom Vanderbilt, author of “Traffic.”

August 1, 2008
This week: Jane Mayer, author of “The Dark Side”; Steven Heller, author of “Iron Fists.”

July 25, 2008
Jess Winfield, author of “My Name Is Will”; Charles McGrath on Miranda Seymour’s memoir.

July 18, 2008
Virginia Heffernan on self-help books; David Orr on Frances Richey’s new poetry collection, “The Warrior.”

July 11, 2008
Rivka Galchen, author of “Atmospheric Disturbances”; Stephanie Zacharek on a new biography of Jean-Luc Godard.

July 4, 2008
Julie Salamon, author of “Hospital”; Kate Sekules on Michael Meyer’s “Last Days of Old Beijing.”

June 27, 2008
Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, the authors of “Grand New Party”; Alessandra Stanley on Alan Furst’s latest spy thriller.

June 20, 2008
Joe Nocera, the author of “Good Guys and Bad Guys”; Marie Winn, the author of “Central Park in the Dark.”

June 13, 2008
The novelist Jackie Collins; Elizabeth Royte, the author of “Bottlemania.”

June 6, 2008
Kathryn Harrison, the author of “While They Slept”; Augusten Burroughs, the author of “A Wolf at the Table.”

June 1, 2008
Jonathan Miles, author of “Dear American Airlines”; Marisha Pessl on Bob Dylan’s sketches and paintings.

May 25, 2008
Victor S. Navasky on William F. Buckley Jr.; Jennifer Balderama on the dancer Carlos Acosta.

May 18, 2008
Joseph O’Neill, the author of “Netherland”; Christine Muhlke on gray-market luxury goods.

May 11, 2008
Fareed Zakaria, author of “The Post-American World”; the children’s book author Walter Dean Myers.

May 5, 2008
Roger Lowenstein on the coming pension crisis; Liesl Schillinger on “Serve the People!” by Yan Lianke; Rachel Donadio on Vladimir Nabokov.

April 27, 2008
The novelist Alexander McCall Smith; Katie Roiphe on Germaine Greer; Rachel Donadio on American graphomania.

April 20, 2008
George Packer on Michael Hastings’s Baghdad memoir; Brenda Wineapple on Joyce Carol Oates.

April 13, 2008
Philip Bobbitt, author of “Terror and Consent”; Jacques Steinberg on Clear Channel; Stephen Koch on Noël Coward’s wartime espionage.

April 6, 2008
Fareed Zakaria on Benazir Bhutto; Pamela Paul, author of “Parenting, Inc.”; Dave Itzkoff on Ceridwen Dovey’s “Blood Kin.”

March 30, 2008
Evan Thomas on Max Hastings’s World War II history, “Retribution”; Mary Roach, author of “Bonk”; Rachel Donadio on love and literary taste.

March 23, 2008
A conversation with Tom Wolfe; Nicholas D. Kristof on the dark side of population control; Alex Berenson, author of “The Ghost War.”

March 16, 2008
Richard Price, author of “Lush Life”; the novelist Tessa Hadley; Keith Gessen on the college admissions rat race.

March 9, 2008
Antonio Skármeta, author of “The Dancer and the Thief”; Jennifer 8. Lee, author of “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles”; Rachel Donadio on Martin Amis. Bob Harris is the host.

March 2, 2008
James Collins, author of “Beginner’s Greek”; the novelist Anne Enright; Stacey D’Erasmo on Roberto Bolaño.

February 24, 2008
Robin Wright, author of “Dreams and Shadows”; Jacob Weisberg, author of “The Bush Tragedy” and David Michaelis on Bill Mauldin.

February 17, 2008
Bill Keller on Nelson Mandela; Elizabeth Royte on “The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw”; Rachel Donadio on Harold L. Humes.

February 10, 2008
The Book Review’s Elsa Dixler and David Kelly discussing the special issue on politics; Susan Morrison, editor of “Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary”; David Greenberg on Jesse Helms and modern conservatism.

February 3, 2008
Charles Bock, author of “Beautiful Children”; Katie Roiphe on David Rieff and Susan Sontag; Rachel Donadio on why it still takes so long to publish a book.

January 27, 2008
Drew Gilpin Faust, author of “This Republic of Suffering”; Charles McGrath on Ezra Pound; Chris Suellentrop on Patrick J. Buchanan.

January 20, 2008
William Logan on Geoffrey Hill’s poetry; Jacob Heilbrunn on neoconservatives; Rachel Donadio on Elie Wiesel.

January 13, 2008
Anthony Lewis, author of “Freedom for the Thought That We Hate”; Charles Taylor on “Sway,” by Zachary Lazar; J. D. Biersdorfer on “The Encyclopedia of Immaturity.”

January 6, 2008
Barry Gewen introduces the Islam Issue; Irshad Manji on reforming Islam; Tom Reiss on “Napoleon’s Egypt.” Dwight Garner is the host.

December 30, 2007
Joseph Weisberg, author of “An Ordinary Spy”; Lee Siegel on Peter Gay’s “Modernism”; Jennifer Schuessler on “The Hidden Persuaders.”

December 23, 2007
Will Self, author of “Psychogeography”; Liesl Schillinger on Yannick Murphy; David Kelly on Antony Flew and atheism.

December 16, 2007
Edward Hirsch on “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”; science fiction columnist Dave Itzkoff; Rachel Donadio on J.M. Coetzee.

December 9, 2007
Conversations with two authors from the Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year list: Mildred Armstrong Kalish and Joshua Ferris; also, Graham Robb, author of “The Discovery of France.”

December 2, 2007
Conversations with Umberto Eco and Jim Shepard; the editors of the Book Review discuss the 10 Best Books of the Year.

November 25, 2007
Barry Day on Noël Coward; Brad Stone on Fake Steve Jobs; Rachel Donadio on the Naples Mafia.

November 18, 2007
Eric Lax on Woody Allen; Rich Cohen on the Mafia; Emily Bazelon on the imperial presidency.

November 11, 2007
Jed Perl on Picasso; Kathryn Harrison on Judith Thurman; Julie Just on the best illustrated children’s books of the year.

November 4, 2007
Elizabeth D. Samet, author of “Soldier’s Heart”; Dan Barry, author of “City Lights”; Caroline Weber on “The Discovery of France”; Rex Reed on Bette Davis.

October 28, 2007
Alex Ross, the author of “The Rest Is Noise”; Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky on translating Tolstoy; Stephanie Zacharek on Pattie Boyd.

October 21, 2007
Tom Perrotta, the author of “The Abstinence Teacher”; Bliss Boyard, the author of “One Drop”; Lee Siegel on Alice Sebold.

October 14, 2007
David Michaelis, the author of “Schulz and Peanuts”; Kathryn Harrison on Mario Vargas Llosa; Julie Just on children’s books.

October 7, 2007
Maureen Dowd on Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.; Brian C. Anderson, the author of “Democratic Capitalism and Its Discontents”; Rachel Donadio on libel law.

September 30, 2007
Francisco Goldman, the author of “The Art of Political Murder”; A. O. Scott on Junot Díaz; Neil Genzlinger on “How Starbucks Saved My Life.”

September 23, 2007
Jeffrey Toobin, the author of “The Nine”; Leslie H. Gelb on “The Israel Lobby”; Dale Peck on “The Outsiders,” by S. E. Hinton.

September 16, 2007
Nell Freudenberger on David Leavitt; Mark Lilla, the author of “The Stillborn God”; Rachel Donadio on the canon wars.

September 9, 2007
Peter Beinart on Norman Podhoretz and Michael Ledeen; Steven Heller on graphic design; Dawn Drzal on Helen Slavin.

September 2, 2007
Alan Weisman, the author of “The World Without Us”; Matt Bai, the author of “The Argument”; Pagan Kennedy on MySpace’s literary communities.

August 26, 2007
Mary Gordon, the author of “Circling My Mother”; Dave Itzkoff on William Gibson; Caroline Weber on Dana Thomas.

August 19, 2007
Clive James, the author of “Cultural Amnesia”; Matthew Weiland on Jack Kerouac; and Margalit Fox, the author of “Talking Hands.”

August 12, 2007
Julie Just on Harry Potter; Lucette Lagnado, the author of “The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit”; Paul Greenberg on Hemingway as big-game fisherman.

August 5, 2007
Dalia Sofer, the author of “The Septembers of Shiraz”; Liesl Schillinger on Tessa Hadley; Stephen Metcalf on political conversions.

July 29, 2007
Helen Epstein, the author of “The Invisible Cure”; Jonathan Mahler on torture; the poetry columnist David Orr.

July 22, 2007
Tim Weiner, the author of “Legacy of Ashes”; Touré on tennis books; James Ryerson on Richard Rorty.

July 15, 2007
Jennifer Senior on books about Hillary Rodham Clinton; David Margolick on “1967,” by Tom Segev; Julie Just on children’s books.

July 8, 2007
Stephen L. Carter, the author of “New England White”; David Leonhardt on “More Sex Is Safer Sex”; John Leland on “Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy.”

July 1, 2007
Elizabeth Gilbert on Mildred Armstrong Kalish; Martha Southgate on black writers; Liesl Schillinger on Min Jin Lee.

June 24, 2007
Bill Geist, the author of “Way Off the Road”; Katie Roiphe, the author of “Uncommon Arrangements”; Dave Itzkoff on science fiction.

June 17, 2007
Lee Siegel on Joyce Carol Oates; Pete Hamill on “Taxi!”; Julie Just on children’s books.

June 10, 2007
Tina Brown, the author of “The Diana Chronicles”; Marilyn Stasio on crime fiction; Rachel Donadio on technology and the novel.

June 3, 2007
Ian McEwan, the author of “On Chesil Beach”; Amanda Hesser on cookbooks; and Steven Heller on graphic design books.

May 27, 2007
Frank Rich on Don DeLillo; Marco Pierre White, the author of “The Devil in the Kitchen”; and Jonathan Rosen on Primo Levi.

May 20, 2007
Brent Staples on Ralph Ellison; Debby Applegate on “The Clarks of Cooperstown”; and Ihsan Taylor on “7: The Mickey Mantle Novel”.

May 13, 2007
Christopher Hitchens, the author of “God Is Not Great”; Julie Just on children’s books; and Tim Weiner on E. Howard Hunt.

May 6, 2007
Robert R. Harris, the deputy editor of the Book Review, on “The Joy of Drinking,” David Shipley, the co-author of “Send”; and Jon Savage, the author of “Teenage.”

April 29, 2007
Meghan O’Rourke, the author of “Halflife”; James Traub on George Kennan; and Steve Coates on “The Day of the Barbarians.”

April 22, 2007
Darcey Steinke, the author of “Easter Everywhere”; Jennifer Senior on Dorothy Schiff; Tobin Harshaw on “The Last Mughal.”

April 15, 2007
Edith Grossman on translation; Joel Agee on Elfriede Jelinek; Dave Itzkoff on science fiction.

April 8, 2007
Katie Roiphe on A. M. Homes; Alex Kuczynski on Paulina Porizkova; John Rockwell on Columbia Records.

April 1, 2007
Caroline Weber on “Nancy Cunard”; David Leonhardt on “Radicals for Capitalism”; Jeremy McCarter on Thornton Wilder.

March 25, 2007
Rachel Donadio on the book dealer Glenn Horowitz; Liesl Schillinger on Trezza Azzopardi; Christopher Benfey on “Tales From the Torrid Zone.”

March 18, 2007
Joshua Ferris, the author of “Then We Came to the End”; Scott Stossel on biographies; John Leland on Larry McMurtry.

March 11, 2007
Kurt Andersen, the author of “Heyday”; Brian Selznick, the author of “The Invention of Hugo Cabret”; David Orr on poetry in The New Yorker.

March 4, 2007
Lorraine Adams on Hisham Matar; A. O. Scott on Jane Smiley; Jacob Heilbrunn on President Bush’s critics.

February 25, 2007
Liesl Schillinger on Tom McCarthy; Peter Keepnews on George Gershwin; J. D. Biersdorfer on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

February 18, 2007
Mayra Montero, the author of “Dancing to ‘Almendra’”; Joan Acocella, the author of “Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints”; Jim Holt on Michael Frayn.

February 11, 2007
Stephen Metcalf on James Fenton; Jay Jennings on Pete Maravich; Ben Schoen on Harry Potter.

February 4, 2007
Michael Thomas, the author of “Man Gone Down”; David Orr on poetry; Sam Tanenhaus on Saul Bellow.

January 28, 2007
Thomas Mallon on Thomas Hardy; Jim Harrison on Karl Shapiro; Dave Marsh on “Something in the Air”

January 21, 2007
Lee Siegel on Norman Mailer; Alan Wolfe on Dinesh D’Souza; Liesl Schillinger on Roddy Doyle.

January 14, 2007
Calvin Trillin, the author of “About Alice”; Liesl Schillinger on Martin Amis; Neil Genzlinger on Tim Sandlin

January 7, 2007
Robert Stone, the author of “Prime Green”; Allan Sloan on P. J. O’Rourke; Dave Itzkoff on Michael Crichton.

December 31, 2006
Vendela Vida, the author of “Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name”; Stacy Schiff on George III; Steven Coates on the Roman Empire; Rachel Donadio on Nadine Gordimer.

December 24, 2006
Dave Eggers, the author of “What Is the What”; Gary Hart on Barack Obama; Caroline Weber on the Marquise Du Châtelet; Dave Itzkoff on science fiction.

December 17, 2006
Barry Gewen and Rachel Donadio on war books; Julie Just on children’s books.

December 10, 2006
James Traub, the author of “The Best of Intentions”; Rachel Donadio on Helen Vendler.

December 3, 2006
How the Notable Books list was chosen; Dave Itzkoff on music books; Neil Genzlinger on “Presidential Doodles.”

November 26, 2006
Liesl Schillinger on Thomas Pynchon; Nicolai Ouroussoff on Frank Lloyd Wright; Dennis Overbye on Einstein.

November 19, 2006
John Waters on Tennessee Williams; Steven Heller on Al Goldstein; Rachel Donadio on literary feuds.

November 12, 2006
Maurice Sendak, the author of “Mommy?”; Jim Windolf on Stephen King; Jonathan Mahler on Rudy Giuliani.

November 5, 2006
David Margolick on David Mamet; Emily Nussbaum on Heidi Julavits; science fiction columnist Dave Itzkoff.

October 29, 2006
A. O. Scott on Richard Ford; Amy Sedaris, the author of “I Like You”; David Leonhardt on Jacob S. Hacker.

October 22, 2006
Lemony Snicket, the author of “The End”; Alex Kuczynski, the author of “Beauty Junkies”; Jim Holt on Richard Dawkins.

October 15, 2006
Caroline Weber, the author of “Queen of Fashion”; John Leland on Adam Gopnik; Virginia Heffernan on National Lampoon.

October 8, 2006
Ron Rosenbaum, the author of “The Shakespeare Wars”; Tom Reiss on Fritz Stern.

October 1, 2006
David Kamp, the author of “The United States of Arugula”; James Barron, the author of “Piano.”

September 24, 2006
Daniel Mendelsohn, the author of “The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million”; science fiction columnist Dave Itzkoff on “Dune”; Rachel Donadio on the “Dummies” books.

September 17, 2006
Frank Rich, the author of “The Greatest Story Ever Sold”; Lawrence Levi on Nicole Kidman.

September 10, 2006
Nicholas Lemann, the author of “Redemption”; Stanley Crouch on the Black Panthers.

September 3, 2006
David Friend, the author of “Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11″; Stephen Metcalf on Thomas McGuane.

August 27, 2006
Meghan O’Rourke on Claire Messud; Rachel Donadio on the mystery of the missing novel.

August 20, 2006
Dave Itzkoff on James Tiptree, Jr.; Liesl Schillinger on Nora Ephron; Rachel Donadio on writers’ colonies.

August 13, 2006
Marisha Pessl, the author of “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”; Julie Just on children’s books.

August 6, 2006
Joe Queenan on reading many books at once; Rachel Donadio on Silvio Berlusconi.

July 30, 2006
Jennifer Egan, the author of “The Keep”; Jennifer Schuessler on the maverick economist Deirdre McCloskey.

July 23, 2006
William C. Rhoden, the author of “$40 Million Slaves.”; David Margolick on “Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz,” by Jan T. Gross.

July 16, 2006
Laura Secor on Shirin Ebadi; Barry Gewen on “Überpower: The Imperial Temptation of America,” by Josef Joffe.

July 9, 2006
David Kelly on Hurricane Katrina books; Dave Itzkoff on science fiction books.

July 2, 2006
Robert Sullivan, the author of “Cross Country”; Dwight Garner on Ishmael Reed.

June 24, 2006
David Kelly on Timothy Leary; Barry Gewen on Noam Chomsky.

June 17, 2006
David Kelly on Daniel Okrent; Robert R. Harris on John McPhee.

June 10, 2006
Stephen Metcalf on Michel Houellebecq; Stephanie Zacharek on Bette Davis.

June 3, 2006
Brent Staples on “Rough Crossings,” by Simon Schama; David Kelly on “American Movie Critics.”

May 28, 2006
Bruce Handy on Anthony Bourdain; Amanda Hesser on cookbooks.

May 21, 2006
A. O. Scott on the best American fiction of the last 25 years; Rachel Donadio on the book business.

May 14, 2006
Robert R. Harris on “Strange Piece of Paradise,” by Terri Jentz; Julie Just on children’s books.

May 7, 2006
David Kelly on Roberto Clemente; Henry Alford on selling books on a street corner.

April 30, 2006
Gary Shteyngart, the author of “Absurdistan”; Jennifer Schuessler on lost books.

You might not know it to look at him, but Clint Eastwood likes ice cream. It was the great ice-cream issue that drove him into politics in 1985 when his hometown of Carmel in California passed a law forbidding the storefront sale of ice-cream cones. Eastwood successfully ran for mayor and duly reversed the anti-ice-cream law.

In this uninspired biography, Marc Eliot argues that Eastwood’s time as mayor of Carmel, from 1986 to 1988, is proof of the blurring of “the lines between his roles and his real life”. Eliot’s thesis is that both in real life and on screen this Hollywood veteran has been “an American rebel”. “Perhaps more than for any other Hollywood star,” he writes, in a typical piece of overwrought prose, “the double helix that is Clint’s creative and real-life DNA is so intertwined it is nearly impossible to separate the off-screen person from the on-screen persona.”

Really? Almost all the details of Eastwood’s life that emerge from this book suggest the opposite: that Eastwood’s brutally rebellious screen persona was in contrast to his rather grumpy and conventional character in real life. The films make us believe that his magnificent squinting frown is a sign of his manly nihilism: we are meant to think he is frowning because he is staring into the abyss. This is the scowl of the Man with No Name from his early spaghetti westerns; or of the rule-breaking cop, Dirty Harry, pointing a gun in a man’s face and asking him if he feels lucky — “Well, do ya, punk?” In real life, however, the things that made Eastwood frown were rather less dramatic: palimony suits, illegitimate children, petty planning disputes, annoying film critics and a man’s right to eat ice cream in public.

Eastwood, writes Eliot, was the child of “two good-looking California kids”. He was born in 1930 during the depression, and his father, Clinton Sr, travelled around taking whatever dead-end jobs he could find: selling fridges, working in a gas station. Eastwood inherited his looks and drifting temperament. After a stint in the army (where he was a swimming instructor, fond of wearing tiny trunks to attract girls), he, too, became a gas-station attendant. But in 1954, he discovered acting and was signed by Universal Studios. A big television part came in 1958 with the serial Rawhide, where, Eliot says, Eastwood played a “mostly silent” but ridiculously handsome cowboy, with “a fast gun and faster fists”. He has been playing variants of the same part ever since.

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For more than 50 years, Eastwood has managed to parlay a career of astonishing longevity and success, both as an actor and a director. With a terrific run of films over the past decade, including Gran Torino, Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima and Mystic River, his cachet is probably higher now than it ever has been. The film critic David Thomson has described Eastwood as “modern royalty” among the “few Americans admired and respected at home and abroad, without qualification or irony”.

Eliot gives a sense of just how hard Eastwood has fought to keep this pre-eminence. He has never been averse to the trappings of stardom, despite his carefully cultivated image as a down-home kinda guy who drives to work in a pickup. For a couple of his early films, he asked to be part paid in Ferraris. He was “never a big sharer of anything — money, credits, stardom”. He has usually been careful to ensure that his films were cast with “lesser names than himself”. In 1977, Warner studios wanted to put Barbra Streisand opposite him in the latest Dirty Harry film. He objected, on the absurd grounds that she was too old (at 35 to his 47). As usual, Eastwood got his way and the studio cast Sondra Locke, his then girlfriend. Locke, who later sued Eastwood for palimony when the relationship soured, was the latest in a dizzying number of women in his life (although he is now happily married to his second wife, Dina Ruiz, who shares his love of pets, apparently). When he was with his first wife he described himself as a “married bachelor”, which essentially meant he could sleep with anyone he felt like, whenever he wanted. His affairs resulted in at least four children (in addition to the three he had in wedlock), including two born to flight attendant Jacklyn Reeves, during the same period that he was seeing Locke.

His 1971 film Play Misty for Me depicts his character, a DJ, as the victim of an obsessive female fan. In order to stay heroic on screen, he had to present himself as the pursued rather than the pursuer. But the jilted Locke painted him as a far less attractive figure: a philanderer obsessed with his figure, snacking on boiled potatoes and taking vast doses of vitamins, including “so much carotene that his hands turned orange”.

None of this can detract, though, from Eastwood’s glorious presence on screen. When you see him ride into town, squinting into the sunlight, you forget about the girlfriends and the ice cream. Eliot’s attempt to portray the life and the roles as of a piece is futile and misconceived. This is cinema, the world of make-believe, where Eastwood rules supreme.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article6949961.ece

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A book review (or book report) is a form of literary criticism in which a book is analyzed based on content, style, and merit. It is often carried out in periodicals, as school work, or online. Its length may vary from a single paragraph to a substantial essay. Such a review often contains evaluations of the book on the basis of personal taste. Reviewers, in literary periodicals, often use the occasion of a book review for a display of learning or to promulgate their own ideas on the topic of a fiction or non-fiction work. At the other end of the spectrum, some book reviews resemble simple plot summaries.
Contents [hide]
1 As a teaching tool
1.1 Textbooks
2 As professional work
3 Finding reviews
4 Problems
5 See also
6 Literature
7 External links
[edit]As a teaching tool

The book review is assigned to secondary and post-secondary students to help them to develop analytical skills. First, the reviewer has to summarize the content, regardless of the type of novel, a historical or critical book. In the subsequent narration, the goal of the book reviewer is to discuss the content of the book and provide analysis of what he/she had read, and deduce if the author managed to reveal the core, whether he/she kept to the thesis or properly achieved the purpose of the book. The last thing the reviewer has to do is to speculate on the topic him/herself. The book reviewer should also undertake through their own research to discuss the theme, assess the authors ability to express and explore this theme, and provide an opinion of the novel.
The determination of the book review is to communicate to the reader’s mind the ideas and sensations the reviewer experienced while researching the content. In this way, the reader knows what the author sought to transmit, or what the reviewer experienced while reading. The reviewer, then, takes three roles: reporter, in informing the third party of the events; analyst, in making judgments based on experience; and sideline observer, in pretending to act as the reader should by expressing their own opinion, desires and expectations.
[edit]Textbooks
In reviewing a textbook, the reviewer has a different set of considerations. Unlike the language in a monograph, that in a textbook must not be technical and jargon must be avoided. The reader will be a student, not a peer of the scientist who wrote the book. Technical terms will be used, of course, but each should be carefully defined at first use. The function of the book reviewer is to determine whether the subject of the text is treated clearly, in a way that is likely to enable students to grasp and to appreciate the knowledge presented. The textbook reviewer has one additional responsibility. If other texts on the same subject exist, which is usually the case; the reviewer should provide appropriate comparisons.
[edit]As professional work

Book reviews require special skills and oblige the reviewer with precise responsibilities. The professional reviewer does not just have to read and scrutinize the text, but to realize concealed, implied meaning the author obviously had dropped hints about. Skilled book reviewers’ explanations make the reader feel confident in their perception of the book or change it entirely. The reviewer must also state the main points of the reviewed book. While some aspects are less meaningful, others have to be marked out as prerogative issues. The task is even more complicated as the writer could unintentionally imply the idea the reviewer of the book can notice.
Then, the book reviewer has to decide upon authors points validity. The reviewer has to be the judge and say “did the writer persuade the audience, or were his/her evidences not sufficient and weak.” The reviewer here makes a judgment on the adequacy of the book topic to the content. The book review is also the expertise of the contents authenticity. By comparing the reviewed book to other materials in the given category the reviewer work implies potential danger for those writers, who admit plagiarism. If the reviewer finds the book authentic and, perhaps, unique, the points and attitudes of the reviewer are discussed.
[edit]Finding reviews

There are many special journals devoted to book reviews and they are indexed in special databases such as Book Review Index, but many more book reviews can be found in newspaper databases and in scholarly databases such as Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index and discipline specific databases. Some book reviews are available online.
[edit]Problems

Principally book reviews are good sources for evaluating the quality of books. Sometimes, however, the amount and content of book reviews have been considered problematic. Katz (1985-1986) found that there are too few critical book reviews. This is also documentated by Novick (1988) in the field of history. Typically are book reviews in scholarly journals of a much higher quality than book reviews in newspapers. Nielsen (2009) proposes a theoretical and practical framework for scholarly or academic reviews of dictionaries that is intended to improve the quality of reviews in terms of academic standards.
[edit]See also

Book report
[edit]Literature

Chen, C. C. (1976), Biomedical, Scientific and Technical Book Reviewing, Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ.
Ingram, H. & Mills, P. B. (1989), “Reviewing the book reviews”, PS: Political science and Politics, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 627-634.
Katz, Bill (1985-1986). The sunny book review. Technical Services Quarterly, 3(1/2), 17-25
Lindholm-Romantschuk, Y. (1998). Scholarly book reviewing in the social sciences and humanities. The flow of ideas within and among disciplines. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
Miranda, E. O. (1996), “On book reviewing”, Journal of Educational Thought, Vol. 30 No. 2, pp. 191-202.
Motta-Roth, D. (1998), “Discourse analysis and academic book reviews: a study of text and disciplinary cultures”, in Fortanet, I. (Ed), Genre Studies in English for Academic Purposes, Universitat Jaume, Castelló de la Plana, pp. 29-58.
Nicolaisen, J. (2002a), “Structure-based interpretation of scholarly book reviews: a new research technique”, Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science, pp. 123-135. Available: http://www.db.dk/jni/Articles/Abstract_Colis4.htm
Nicolaisen, J. (2002b). The scholarliness of published peer reviews: A bibliometric study of book reviews in selected social science fields. Research Evaluation, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 129-140. Available: http://www.db.dk/jni/Articles/Nicolaisen(2002c).htm
Nielsen, S. (2009), “Reviewing printed and electronic dictionaries: A theoretical and practical framework”, in S. Nielsen/S. Tarp (eds.): Lexicography in the 21st Century. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins 2009, 23-41.
Novick, Peter (1988). That noble dream. The “objectivity question” and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Riley, L. E. & Spreitzer, E. A. (1970), “Book reviewing in the social sciences“, The American Sociologist, Vol. 5 (November), pp. 358-363.
Sabosik, P. E. (1988), ”Scholarly reviewing and the role of Choice in the postpublication review process”, Book Research Quarterly, Summer, pp.10-18.
Sarton, G. (1960), “Notes on the reviewing of learned books”, Science, Vol. 131 (April 22.), pp. 1182-1187.
Schubert, A. et al. (1984), ”Quantitative analysis of a visible tip of the peer review iceberg: book reviews in chemistry”, Scientometrics, Vol. 6 No. 6, pp.433-443.
Snizek, W. E. & Fuhrman, E. R. (1979), ”Some factors affecting the evaluative content of book reviews in sociology“, The American Sociologist, Vol. 14 (May), pp. 108-114.
Spink, A., Robins, D. & Schamber, L. (1998), “Use of scholarly book reviews: implications for electronic publishing and scholarly communication”, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Vol. 49 No. 4, pp. 364-374.

Writing a Book Review

Book reviews typically evaluate recently-written works. They offer a brief description of the text’s key points and often provide a short appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of the work.

Readers sometimes confuse book reviews with book reports, but the two are not identical. Book reports commonly describe what happens in a work; their focus is primarily on giving an account of the major plot, characters, and/or main idea of the work. Most often, book reports are a K-12 assignment and range from 250 to 500 words. If you are looking to write a book report, please see the OWL resource, Writing a Book Report.

By contrast, book reviews are most often a college assignment, but they also appear in many professional works: magazines, newspapers, and academic journals. They typically range from 500-750 words, but may be longer or shorter. A book review gives readers a sneak peak at what a book is like, whether or not the reviewer enjoyed it, and details on purchasing the book.

Before You Read

Before you begin to read, consider the elements you will need to included in your review. The following items may help:

• Author: Who is the author? What else has s/he written? Has this author won any awards? What is the author’s typical style?
• Genre: What type of book is this: fiction, nonfiction, romance, poetry, youth fiction, etc.? Who is the intended audience for this work? What is the purpose of the work?
• Title: Where does the title fit in? How is it applied in the work? Does it adequately encapsulate the message of the text? Is it interesting? Uninteresting?
• Preface/Introduction/Table of Contents: Does the author provide any revealing information about the text in the preface/introduction? Does a “guest author” provide the introduction? What judgments or preconceptions do the author and/or “guest author” provide? How is the book arranged: sections, chapters?
• Book Jacket/Cover/Printing: Book jackets are like mini-reviews. Does the book jacket provide any interesting details or spark your interest in some way? Are there pictures, maps, or graphs? Do the binding, page cut, or typescript contribute or take away from the work?

As You Read

As you read, determine how you will structure the summary portion or background structure of your review. Be ready to take notes on the book’s key points, characters, and/or themes.

• Characters: Are there characters in the work? Who are the principle characters? How do they affect the story? Do you empathize with them?
• Themes/Motifs/Style: What themes or motifs stand out? How do they contribute to the work? Are they effective or not? How would you describe this author’s particular style? Is it accessible to all readers or just some?
• Argument: How is the work’s argument set up? What support does the author give for her/findings? Does the work fulfill its purpose/support its argument?
• Key Ideas: What is main idea of the work? What makes it good, different, or groundbreaking?
• Quotes: What quotes stand out? How can you demonstrate the author’s talent or the feel of the book through a quote?

When You Are Ready to Write

Begin with a short summary or background of the work, but do not give too much away. Many reviews limit themselves only to the first couple of chapters or lead the reader up to the rising action of the work. Reviewers of nonfiction texts will provide the basic idea of the book’s argument without too much detailed.

The final portion of your review will detail your opinion of the work. When you are ready to begin your review, consider the following:

• Establish a Background, Remember your Audience:Remember that your audience has not read the work; with this in mind, be sure to introduce characters and principles carefully and deliberately. What kind of summary can you provide of the main points or main characters that will help your readers gauge their interest? Does the author’s text adequately reach the intended audience? Will some readers be lost or find the text too easy?
• Minor principles/characters: Deal only with the most pressing issues in the book. You will not be able to cover every character or idea. What principles/characters did you agree or disagree with? What other things might the author have researched or considered?
• Organize: The purpose of the review is to critically evaluate the text, not just inform the readers about it. Leave plenty room for your evaluation by ensuring that your summary is brief. Determine what kind of balance to strike between your summary information and your evaluation. If you are writing your review for a class, ask your instructor. Often the ratio is half and half.
• Your Evaluation: Choose one or a few points to discuss about the book. What worked well for you? How does this work compare with others by the same author or other books in the same genre? What major themes, motifs, or terms does the book introduce, and how effective are they? Did the book appeal to you on an emotional or logical way?
• Publisher/Price: Most book reviews include the publisher and price of the book at the end of the article. Some reviews also include the year published and ISBN.

Revising

When making the final touches to your review, carefully verify the following:

• Double-check the spelling of the author name(s), character names, special terms, and publisher.
• Try to read from the vantage point of your audience. Is there too much/enough summary? Does your argument about the text make sense?
• Should you include direct quotes from the reading? Do they help support your arguments? Double-check your quotes for accuracy.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/704/01/

A book review is both a description and an evaluation of a book. It should focus on the book’s purpose, contents, and authority.

Scan the Book’s Preliminaries

Before beginning to read, consider the following:

1. Title – What does it suggest?
2. Preface – Provides important information on the author’s purpose in writing the book and will help you to determine the success of the work.
3. Table of Contents – Tells you how the book is organized and will aid in determining the author’s main ideas and how they are developed – chronologically, topically, etc.

Read the Text

Record impressions as you read and note effective passages for quoting. Keep these questions in mind:

1. What is the general field or genre, and how does the book fit into it? (Use outside sources to familiarize yourself with the field, if necessary.)
2. From what point of view is the work written?
3. What is the author’s style? Is it formal or informal? Does it suit the intended audience? If a work of fiction, what literary devices does the author use?
4. Are concepts clearly defined? How well are the author’s ideas developed? What areas are covered/not covered? Why? This helps to establish the book’s authority.
5. If a work of fiction, make notes on such elements as character, plot, and setting, and how they relate to thetheme of the book. How does the author delineate his characters? How do they develop? What is the plot structure?
6. How accurate is the information in the book? Check outside sources if necessary.
7. If relevant, make note of the book’s format – layout, binding, typography, etc. Are there maps, illustrations? Do they aid understanding?
8. Check the back matter. Is the index accurate? What sources did the author use – primary or secondary? How does he make use of them? Make note of important omissions.
9. Finally, what has the book accomplished? Is further work needed? Compare the book to others by this author or by others. (Use the listing in the bibliography.)

Consult Additional Sources

Try to find further information about the author – his/her reputation, qualifications, influences, etc. – any information that is relevant to the book being reviewed and that would help to establish the author’s authority. Knowledge of theliterary period and of critical theories can also be helpful to your review. Your professor and/or reference librarian will be able to suggest sources to use.

Prepare an Outline

Carefully review your notes and attempt to unify your impressions into a statement that will describe the purpose orthesis of your review. Then, outline the arguments that support your thesis. Your arguments should develop the thesis in a logical manner.

Write the Draft

Skim your notes again; then, using the outline as a guide and referring to notes when necessary, begin writing. Your book review should include the following:

1. Preliminary Information – the complete bibliographic citation for the work ie. title in full, author, place, publisher, date of publication, edition statement, pages, special features (maps, colour plates, etc.), price and ISBN.
   Example: Rory Maclean
   Under the Dragon
   Travels in a betrayed land
   London: Harper Collins, 1998
   224pp. $37.50
   0 00 257013 0
2. Introduction – Try to capture the reader’s attention with your opening sentence. The introduction should state your central thesis, and set the tone of the review.
3. Development – Develop your thesis using supporting arguments as set out in your outline. Use description, evaluation, and if possible explanation of why the author wrote as he/she did. Use quotations to illustrate important points or peculiarities.
4. Conclusion – If your thesis has been well argued, the conclusion should follow naturally. It can include a final assessment or simply restate your thesis. Do not introduce new material at this point.

Revise the Draft

1. Allow some time to elapse before going over your review, to gain perspective.
2. Carefully read through the text, looking for clarity and coherence.
3. Correct grammar and spelling.
4. Verify quotes for proper foot-noting. http://library.queensu.ca/research/guide/book-reviews/how-write

A book review is usually reviewed in the year that it was published or the next year. To find book reviews, you will need the following information.

• Author
• Title of the book
• The year in which the book was first published.

Once you have this information, you will need to search the most appropriate database or print index. Allow about 2-3 years after the book was published, and then choose an index (or database) which covers this period.

Book reviews can be found in popular publications (daily newspapers and general magazines). These reviews usually appear soon after the book has been published. Book reviews can also be found in academic publications. Because these are more detailed and evaluative in nature, they may appear months or years later.

After selecting the appropriate index, find citations to your review. Each citation will list the name of the publication (journal, newspaper, or magazine), volume number, date and page. Search the publication title in the library catalogue (QCAT) to determine if we subscribe to the desired publication and to find all the formats we have for that publication.

Every book makes different demands on the reviewer. No single approach is right for all books. The suggestions that follow are just that; suggestions. Use as many of them as seem pertinent, but remain responsive to the book under consideration.

1. Reading the book

When you read, your critical faculty should be alert, but that doesn’t mean you are poised for attack. You can do your best if you read in a spirit that is at once critical and sympathetic.

Read the whole book thoroughly and carefully. Reread what you don’t understand. Don’t skip forewords, prefaces, and other parts that may not appear integral to the text. What you learn here might help you to understand the book better. If possible, it’s best to read the book twice, the first time to get an overview, the second time to test your impressions and gather detailed evidence.

Take notes as you read. The list that follows will give you an idea of what to watch for. Taking notes also helps you stay alert as you read, and gives you the opportunity to mark effective passages for quoting.

2. Questions to ask as you read

What are the author’s subject and the broad field into which the work fits?

What approach does the author take to the subject? What is the central thesis? What are the author’s assumptions? What methodology is used?

What are the author’s primary sources? How comprehensive is the research?

For whom is the book written? Fellow scholars? Non-academics? Is the book appropriate to its audience?

How is the book structured? Is its development orderly and logical? Is it clear?

Is the author’s prose readable? Exceptionally good? Does the author have an intrusive style?

Does the book have illustrations? An index? Bibliography? What other features does it have? Are they effective and useful?

How appropriate is the book’s title? Does it promise essentially what the book delivers?

Are you aware of factual errors in the book? Oversights? Faulty assumptions?

Why was the book written? Has the author met these objectives?

What is your personal response to the book? Is it satisfying to read? Is it enjoyable? Convincing? Why? If it isn’t, why not?

3. Writing the review

Writing a book review is much like writing any other short essay. There is no universal formula, but following a few basic guidelines can simplify the task.

Review your notes and list the points you’d like to make.

Arrange those points in a logical order. Time spent now on organization not only produces a strong, clear structure, but also allows you to concentrate on phrasing during the writing of the first draft. One possible way of setting up the essay is like this:

1. A brief description of the subject, aim, and scope of the book
2. An outline of its thesis and its bias
3. A detailed assessment of the author’s main contentions
4. An evaluation of the book’s major strengths and weaknesses
5. A survey of topics not yet covered (sources, illustrations, indexes, etc.)
6. An assessment of the book’s place in the literature of its subject

Write the first draft, not stopping to fine tune the phrasing, but aiming to get onto the paper all that you have to say.

After some time has elapsed, read the draft critically, noting where it is ambiguous, incomplete, overwritten, etc.

Read the second draft, checking for errors in grammar and punctuation, and making sure that you have said just what you meant.

Type the final draft.

Proofread the typed copy, and correct as necessary to ensure that it is free from errors.

Gary Draper

For assistance enquire at the one of the Information Desks or consult the Ask a Librarian web page at: http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/asklib/

A book review is a description, critical analysis, and an evaluation on the quality, meaning, and significance of a book, not a retelling. It should focus on the book’s purpose, content, and authority. A critical book review is not a book report or a summary. It is a reaction paper in which strengths and weaknesses of the material are analyzed. It should include a statement of what the author has tried to do, evaluates how well (in the opinion of the reviewer) the author has succeeded, and presents evidence to support this evaluation.

There is no right way to write a book review. Book reviews are highly personal and reflect the opinions of the reviewer. A review can be as short as 50-100 words, or as long as 1500 words, depending on the purpose of the review.

The following are standard procedures for writing book reviews; they are suggestions, not formulae that must be used.

1. Write a statement giving essential information about the book: title, author, first copyright date, type of book, general subject matter, special features (maps, color plates, etc.), price and ISBN.

2. State the author’s purpose in writing the book. Sometimes authors state their purpose in the preface or the first chapter. When they do not, you may arrive at an understanding of the book’s purpose by asking yourself these questions:

a. Why did the author write on this subject rather than on some other subject?

b. From what point of view is the work written?

c. Was the author trying to give information, to explain something technical, to convince the reader of a belief’s validity by dramatizing it in action?

d. What is the general field or genre, and how does the book fit into it? (Use outside sources to familiarize yourself with the field, if necessary.) Knowledge of the genre means understanding the art form. and how it functions.

e. Who is the intended audience?

f. What is the author’s style? Is it formal or informal? Evaluate the quality of the writing style by using some of the following standards: coherence, clarity, originality, forcefulness, correct use of technical words, conciseness, fullness of development, fluidity. Does it suit the intended audience?

g. Scan the Table of Contents, it can help understand how the book is organized and will aid in determining the author’s main ideas and how they are developed – chronologically, topically, etc.

g. How did the book affect you? Were any previous ideas you had on the subject changed, abandoned, or reinforced due to this book? How is the book related to your own course or personal agenda? What personal experiences you’ve had relate to the subject?

h. How well has the book achieved its goal?

i. Would you recommend this book or article to others? Why?

3. State the theme and the thesis of the book.

a. Theme: The theme is the subject or topic. It is not necessarily the title, and it is usually not expressed in a complete sentence. It expresses a specific phase of the general subject matter.

b. Thesis: The thesis is an author’s generalization about the theme, the author’s beliefs about something important, the book’s philosophical conclusion, or the proposition the author means to prove. Express it without metaphor or other figurative language, in one declarative sentence.

Example

Title: We Had it Made

General Subject Matter: Religious Intolerance

Theme: The effects of religious intolerance on a small town

Thesis: Religious intolerance, a sickness of individuals, contaminates an entire social group

4. Explain the method of development-the way the author supports the thesis. Illustrate your remarks with specific references and quotations. In general, authors tend to use the following methods, exclusively or in combination.

a. Description: The author presents word-pictures of scenes and events by giving specific details that appeal to the five senses, or to the reader’s imagination. Description presents background and setting. Its primary purpose is to help the reader realize, through as many sensuous details as possible, the way things (and people) are, in the episodes being described.

b. Narration: The author tells the story of a series of events, usually presented in chronological order. In a novel however, chronological order may be violated for the sake of the plot. The emphasis in narration, in both fiction and non-fiction, is on the events. Narration tells what has happened. Its primary purpose is to tell a story.

c. Exposition: The author uses explanation and analysis to present a subject or to clarify an idea. Exposition presents the facts about a subject or an issue as clearly and impartially as possible. Its primary purpose is to explain.

d. Argument: The author uses the techniques of persuasion to establish the truth of a statement or to convince the reader of its falsity. The purpose is to persuade the reader to believe something and perhaps to act on that belief. Argument takes sides on an issue. Its primary purpose is to convince.

5. Evaluate the book for interest, accuracy, objectivity, importance, thoroughness, and usefulness to its intended audience. Show whether the author’s main arguments are true. Respond to the author’s opinions. What do you agree or disagree with? And why? Illustrate whether or not any conclusions drawn are derived logically from the evidence. Explore issues the book raises. What possibilities does the book suggest? What has the author omitted or what problems were left unsolved? What specific points are not convincing? Compare it with other books on similar subjects or other books by the same as well as different authors. Is it only a reworking of earlier books; a refutation of previous positions? Have newly uncovered sources justified a new approach by the author? Comment on parts of particular interest, and point out anything that seems to give the book literary merit. Relate the book to larger issues.

6. Try to find further information about the author – reputation, qualifications, influences, biographical, etc. – any information that is relevant to the book being reviewed and that would help to establish the author’s authority. Can you discern any connections between the author’s philosophy, life experience and the reviewed book?

7. If relevant, make note of the book’s format – layout, binding, typography, etc. Are there maps, illustrations? Do they aid understanding?

8. Check the back matter. Is the index accurate? Check any end notes or footnotes as you read from chapter to chapter. Do they provide important additional information? Do they clarify or extend points made in the body of the text? Check any bibliography the author may provide. What kinds of sources, primary or secondary, appear in the bibliography? How does the author make use of them? Make note of important omissions.

9. Summarize (briefly), analyze, and comment on the book’s content. State your general conclusions. Pay particular attention to the author’s concluding chapter. Is the summary convincing? List the principal topics, and briefly summarize the author’s ideas about these topics, main points, and conclusions. Use specific references and quotations to support your statements. If your thesis has been well argued, the conclusion should follow naturally. It can include a final assessment or simply restate your thesis. Do not introduce new material at this point.

Some Considerations When Reviewing specific genres:

Fiction (above all, do not give away the story)

Character

1.From what sources are the characters drawn?

2.What is the author’s attitude toward his characters?

3.Are the characters flat or three-dimensional?

4.Does character development occur?

5.Is character delineation direct or indirect?

Theme

1.What is/are the major theme(s)?

2.How are they revealed and developed?

3.Is the theme traditional and familiar, or new and original?

4.Is the theme didactic, psychological, social, entertaining, escapist, etc. in purpose or intent?

Plot

1.How are the various elements of plot (eg, introduction, suspense, climax, conclusion) handled?

2.What is the relationship of plot to character delineation?

3.To what extent, and how, is accident employed as a complicating and/or resolving force?

4.What are the elements of mystery and suspense?

5.What other devices of plot complication and resolution are employed?

6.Is there a sub-plot and how is it related to the main plot?

7.Is the plot primary or secondary to some of the other essential elements of the story (character, setting, style, etc.)?

Style

1.What are the “intellectual qualities” of the writing (e.g., simplicity, clarity)?

2.What are the “emotional qualities” of the writing (e.g., humour, wit, satire)?

3..What are the “aesthetic qualities” of the writing (e.g., harmony, rhythm)?

4.What stylistic devices are employed (e.g., symbolism, motifs, parody, allegory)?

5.How effective is dialogue?

Setting

1.What is the setting and does it play a significant role in the work?

2.Is a sense of atmosphere evoked, and how?

3.What scenic effects are used and how important and effective are they?

4.Does the setting influence or impinge on the characters and/or plot?

Biography

1.Does the book give a “full-length” picture of the subject?

2.What phases of the subject’s life receive greatest treatment and is this treatment justified?

3.What is the point of view of the author?

4.How is the subject matter organized: chronologically, retrospectively, etc.?

5.Is the treatment superficial or does the author show extensive study into the subject’s life?

6.What source materials were used in the preparation of the biography?

7.Is the work documented?

8.Does the author attempt to get at the subject’s hidden motives?

9.What important new facts about the subject’s life are revealed in the book?

10.What is the relationship of the subject’s career to contemporary history?

11.How does the biography compare with others about the same person?

12.How does it compare with other works by the same author?

History and other Nonfiction

1.With what particular subject or period does the book deal?

2.How thorough is the treatment?

3.What were the sources used?

4.Is the account given in broad outline or in detail?

5.Is the style that of reportorial writing, or is there an effort at interpretive writing?

6.What is the point of view or thesis of the author?

7.Is the treatment superficial or profound?

8.For what group is the book intended (textbook, popular, scholarly, etc.)?

9.What part does biographical writing play in the book?

10.Is social history or political history emphasized?

11.Are dates used extensively, and if so, are they used intelligently?

12.Is the book a revision? How does it compare with earlier editions?

13.Are maps, illustrations, charts, etc. used and how are these to be evaluated?

Poetry

1.Is this a work of power, originality, individuality?

2.What kind of poetry is under review (epic, lyrical, elegiac, etc.)?

3.What poetical devices have been used (rhyme, rhythm, figures of speech, imagery, etc.), and to what effect?

4.What is the central concern of the poem and is it effectively expressed?

Subject headings used in the catalog:

Book reviewing                                             Criticism

Related books:

Book reviewing : a guide to writing book reviews for newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. Boston. The Writer, 1978 PN98.B7 B6

Drewry, John. Writing Book Reviews. Boston: The Writer, 1974. PN98.B7 D7 1974

Teitelbaum, Harry. How to Write Book Reports. New York: Monarch Press, 1975. LB2369 .T4

Miller, Walter James. How to write book reports : — analyzing and evaluating fiction, drama, poetry, and non-fiction New York. Arco Pub., 1984. LB2369 .M46 1984

Sources of Book Reviews

Book Review Digest 1985+ INDEX Z1219 .C96

Book Review Index 1965+ INDEX Z1035.A1 B6

Contemporary Authors REFERENCE Z1224 .C5

http://www.lavc.edu/Library/bookreview.htm