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January 29, 2013 Two couples — two brothers and their wives — meet for a meal in Herman Koch's new novel The Dinner, and it's anything but a convivial family gathering. Both couples have teenage sons, and they're meeting to discuss a ghastly crime the boys have committed.

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January 29, 2013 Jonathan Reichert, professor emeritus at the State University of New York at Buffalo, has donated a rare collection of Robert Frost's letters, photographs and audio files to the school. The materials chronicle the decades-long friendship between the poet and Reichert's father, rabbi and poet Victor Reichert.

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January 28, 2013 Data is being collected about your reading habits — what kind of books you read, whether or not you finish them. Publishers say the information could improve how books are written, but some novelists are skeptical.

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January 27, 2013 This week marks an important milestone for anyone who swoons at the very mention of Mr. Darcy. Pride and Prejudice is turning 200, and to celebrate its bicentennial, cartoonist Jen Sorensen drew up an illustrated version of the classic.

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January 26, 2013 Written and Illustrated by Jon Klassen, This Is Not My Hat tells the story of a little fish on the run after stealing a small, blue hat from a slumbering big fish. Runners-up for the medal included a tribute to the color green and a tale of colorful yarn in a black-and-white world.

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January 22, 2013 Born from a deadly underground train crash, Manhattan's historic transit hub is credited with inventing the ramp and bringing electricity to both train tracks and terminal. Author Sam Roberts marks its centennial in Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America.

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January 22, 2013 Writer and psychoanalyst Adam Phillips explores the paradox of dissatisfaction: Although not getting what we want may cause us pain, Phillips concedes, we should think of frustration as a natural part of existence, and one that can provide us pleasure if we let it.

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January 20, 2013 George Saunders has long been praised in literary circles for his short stories that deftly combine the absurd with the mundane. But now the author has caught mainstream attention with his newest collection, Tenth of December.

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January 19, 2013 Almost the entire country has signed onto the Common Core Standards Initiative. The standards incorporate more nonfiction texts across all subjects to improve reading scores. But some fear the push for nonfiction reading could lead students away from passionate engagement with literature.

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January 19, 2013 Poetry By Heart is a new program in which students memorize two of 130 poems and recite them in a contest. Poet Jean Sprackland, who helped compile the list, says memorizing a poem makes it "something that lives with you forever."

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January 16, 2013 The outspoken Whole Foods founder tells us why he hates "Obamacare" and why we have trouble cutting the sugar, fat and salt out of our diets. But now he's told CBS he used a poor choice of words when referring to the health law as fascism.

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January 15, 2013 Imagine a library without books — only computers and gadgets. That's the vision of one Texas county that plans to launch a digital-only public library. Despite the project's cost-efficiency, one librarian argues that the plan may be too ambitious.

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January 15, 2013 Dav Pilkey has just released his 10th Captain Underpants book. The series, packed with potty humor and goofy illustrations, delights reluctant readers and horrifies many grown-ups. Pilkey says he wanted to create books that would appeal even to readers who struggle, the way he did as a child.

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January 14, 2013 Though former MI5 director Stella Rimington knows better than anyone that Ian Fleming's From Russia With Love is not a realistic portrayal of life in the intelligence services, she still loves this tale of sex and violence. Which is your favorite Bond book? Tell us in the comments.

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January 12, 2013 In Sonia Sotomayor's new memoir, My Beloved World, the associate Supreme Court justice opens up about her childhood in the Bronx. NPR's Nina Totenberg calls it a moving and unexpectedly personal look at the court's first Hispanic justice.

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