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PW Picks: The Best New Books for the Week of December 10, 2012
This week: a British variation on A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a moving book on our own extinction, and a book all Cloud Atlas lovers need to read.
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Books I Love: Ken Jennings
Jeopardy! master Ken Jennings hates writing "favorite books" lists. We made him do it anyway.
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PW Picks: The Best New Books for the Week of December 3, 2012
This week, a neglected novel from a master, the definitive biography of The Smiths, and the letters of William Styron. Plus: what happens when you get locked in a trunk with a strange man.
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William Styron's Letter to Robert Penn Warren
In this 1967 letter to Robert Penn Warren, published in the excellent Selected Letters from William Styron, the novelist explains his inspiration for The Confessions of Nat Turner.
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The Top 10 Charles Dickens Books
The 10 best from one of literature's great masters.
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PW Picks: The Best New Books for the Week of November 26, 2012
This week: famous fraternal sagas, a brilliantly constructed whodunit, and why 1776 is overrated.
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The Most Expensive Books of the Season
Looking for a good gift? We have some expensive options for you.
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5 Writing Tips from Laini Taylor
Laini Taylor's Days of Blood & Starlight (the follow-up to Daughter of Smoke & Bone) is filled with dazzling writing, not to mention fantasy, suspense, and a page-turning story. Take notes, because Taylor's sharing her 5 writing tips.
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Picture Books for Adults: PW Talks to Victoria Roberts
While picture books for adults aren’t unheard of, their writing and illustrating requires two sets of talent, something that New Yorker cartoonist Victoria Roberts, born in New York City, raised in Mexico and Australia, knows a thing or two about. Both talents are on display in After the Fall (Nov.), a book 25 years in the making.
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The Dark Side of the Elizabethan Era
The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I is Stephen Alford's page-turning history of assassination plots, torture, and espionage. Here, he gives us a primer on the dark side of the reign of Elizabeth.
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5 Books Inspired by Beethoven's Fifth
Nietzsche, Sartre, Chinese Maoists, Nazis and their Allied opponents all attached meaning to the Fifth. What writers were inspired to write about it?
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Nate Silver's Big Week
For bookstores, elections are seldom good for business. But for author Nate Silver, the blogger behind fiveeightythree, the election has given his book a boost, at least at Amazon.
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3-Minute Reads: 'Crazy' by Ron Hansen
3-Minute Reads is a series featuring very short writing you can enjoy instantly. This week, "Crazy" by Ron Hansen, featured in the new collection She Loves Me Not. Hansen is the author of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Nebraska.
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The Top 10 Cities in Literature
Madrid, New York, and Tulsa (!) make the list. What other cities have been given the best portraits in literature?
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PW Picks: The Best New Books for the Week of November 12, 2012
This week, a go-for-the-jugular noir, the new Alice Munro book, and the dark underside of the Elizabethan golden age.
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PW Picks: The Best New Books for the Week of November 5, 2012
This week: books from Oliver Sacks, Barbara Kingsolver, and Virginia Woolf. Plus: an outstanding graphic memoir on bipolar disorder.
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The State of the Short Story
Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review, tells us that if you think short stories are dead, you aren't paying close enough attention.
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PW Picks: The Best New Books for the Week of October 29, 2012
This week: the sequel to The Wind in the Willows, a must read essay collection from James Wood, and the definitive Springsteen biography. Plus, another masterful WWII book from Alex Kershaw.
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The 13 Worst Reviews of Classic Books
Ralph Waldo Emerson was once called "a hoary-headed and toothless baboon" by Thomas Carlyle. Here are 13 other scathing reviews of classic writers and their books.
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Why 'Frankenstein' Is the Greatest Horror Novel Ever
The greatest horror novel was written 200 years ago by a 19-year-old. Susan J. Wolfson and Ronald Levao, the team behind the notes in the spectacular new The Annotated Frankenstein, tell us why.