NPR: Book Reviews : NPR

Book Review: 'I Am The Beggar Of The World'

May 30, 2014 • Poet Tess Taylor reviews I Am the Beggar of the World, a new poetry collection that offers a rare glimpse into Afghan lives.

Book Review: 'I Am The Beggar Of The World'

Listen · 3:48 3:48

Download
Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/317426021/317426022" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
Transcript

Digging Deep To Find The Goodness In 'Acts Of God'

May 29, 2014 • Ellen Gilchrist's bittersweet new story collection is filled with good people who stay strong in the worst of situations — a refreshingly warm-hearted view of humanity that only occasionally cloys.

Magic From The Margins In Long-Awaited 'Long Hidden'

May 29, 2014 • A new fantasy anthology collects stories from places and voices often overlooked by mainstream authors, from a Qing Dynasty courtesan in China to the Igbo rebels of Nigeria's 1929 "Women's War."

'Gottland': A Short Book About Stalin's Long Shadow

May 28, 2014 • Polish journalist Mariusz Szczygieł's compilation of short vignettes about Czechoslovakia centers on Prague's infamous Stalin monument, a giant edifice that lingers despite its destruction in 1962.

McMurtry Takes Aim At A Legend In 'Last Kind Words Saloon'

May 27, 2014 • The famed writer of Westerns uses his first novel in five years to blow a few holes in the myths surrounding the shootout at the OK Corral. Reviewer Alan Cheuse calls it "a peach of a book."

McMurtry Takes Aim At A Legend In 'Last Kind Words Saloon'

Listen · 2:14 2:14

Download
Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/314614737/316460573" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
Transcript

Book News: U.K. Plan To Cut American Lit From Tests Prompts Fierce Backlash

Britain's Education Secretary Michael Gove, seen here in 2013, has been forced to respond to critics of his plan to pull classic American novels from a major British standardized test. Alastair Grant/AP hide caption

toggle caption

Alastair Grant/AP

The Two-Way

Book News: U.K. Plan To Cut American Lit From Tests Prompts Fierce Backlash

May 27, 2014 • A push to protect To Kill A Mockingbird. Also: Notable books coming out this week include a wildly original collection of poetry and a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thriller.

'Delicious!' ... Isn't

May 27, 2014 • Legendary food writer Ruth Reichl stumbles on her first foray into fiction, with a novel about food, love and redemption that critic Heller McAlpin calls "as predictably sweet as packaged cakes."

Tom Robbins Takes A Bite Out Of Life In 'Peach Pie'

May 27, 2014 • Robbins applies his signature verbal gusto to his own life in a new memoir — and reviewer Jason Sheehan says your enjoyment may depend on how much you really want to hear about Robbins himself.

Books

Stories Of Loss, Brightened By Luminous Language

May 26, 2014 • The nine tales in Elizabeth McCracken's Thunderstruck deal with death, tragedy and darkness, but the collection shines due to the mesmerizing strangeness of its extraordinary images.

At Home In The Strange Latitudes Of 'Man With The Compound Eyes'

May 25, 2014 • Taiwanese author Wu Ming-Yi's new book, his first to receive an English translation, is a haunting tale of love, loss, millet wine and whales that walks a fine line between sci-fi and magical realism.

Before She Was 'Girl, Interrupted' She Was A Girl From Cambridge

May 24, 2014 • Two decades after Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen is back with Cambridge, an unflinching, elegiac, quasi-autobiographical novel that takes us back to her childhood in the 1950s.

In Cunningham's Latest, Powerful Language Makes Up For Weak Plot

Author Michael Cunningham Richard Phibbs / Courtesy FSG hide caption

toggle caption

Richard Phibbs / Courtesy FSG

In Cunningham's Latest, Powerful Language Makes Up For Weak Plot

May 22, 2014 • Michael Cunningham's newest novel is named after a fairy tale. But this is no Disney fantasy. Instead The Snow Queen is a story of death, drugs and aging (not always gracefully).

In Cunningham's Latest, Powerful Language Makes Up For Weak Plot

Listen · 2:45 2:45

Download
Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/314925051/314925066" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
Transcript

A Second Posthumous Collection From Rock Critic Ellen Willis

May 22, 2014 • The Essential Ellen Willis focuses on the writer's explicitly feminist culture criticism. It was edited by Willis' daughter, who published an earlier collection of her mother's essays in 2011.

A Second Posthumous Collection From Rock Critic Ellen Willis

Listen · 6:07 6:07

Download
Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/314914009/314927788" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
Transcript