Thirty Fine Books
that also deserve your
Interest and Attention.
Skin Deep:
Tattoos, the Disappearing West, Very Bad Men,
and My Deep Love for them All

Karol Griffin
(Harcourt)
Tattooing and Raw Love
Go to the complete
review


Popular Music from Vittula
Mikael Niemi
(Seven Stories Press)
The Beatles and Elvis in Finland
Go to the complete
review


The American People
In the Great Depression

Freedom from Fear
David M. Kennedy

(Oxford)
The Depression Made Real
Go to the complete
review


Family Reunion:
Poems about Parenting Grown Children
Sondra Zeidenstein, Editor

(Chicory Blue)
Sixty-Five Poems about Children
(Who Should No Longer Be Children)

Go to the complete
review
Arrogance
Joanna Scott
(Picador)
The Strange Life of Painter Egon Schiele
Go to the complete
review


Frontiers of Heaven
A Journey to the End of China
Stanley Stewart

(Lyons Press)
3,500 Miles Along the Old Silk Road
Go to the complete
review


The Gods Drink Whiskey
Stumbling Towards Enlightenment
In the Land of the
Tattered Buddhas

Stephen T. Asma

(Harper San Francisco)
Nibbana for Those Who Want to Live It Up
Go to the complete
review
Lost Christianities
The Battles for Scriptures and the Faiths We Never Knew
Bart D. Ehrman

(Oxford)
The Real Story of Christianity

Go to the complete
review


Don't Look Back
Karin Fossum
(Harcourt)
A Norwegian Murder Mystery

Go to the complete
review


Some Church
David Romtvedt
(Milkweed Editions)
The Poet Laureate of Wyoming Revealed

Go to the complete
review


A Passage to India
E. M. Forster
Sam Dastor,
Reader

(Audio Partners)
The Classic Tale of the Raj

Go to the complete
review
Living Everyday Zen
Charlotte Joko Beck
(Sounds True Disks)
Thoughts from the San Diego Zen Master
Go to the complete
review


An Episode in
The Life of a
Landscape Painter

César Aria
Chris Andrews,
Translator

(New Directions)
A Painter in the Andes 150 Years Ago

Go to the complete
review


Ooga-Booga
Frederick Seidel
(Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Discordant Poetry for the Modern Ear

Go to the complete
review


Empire:
The Rise and Demise of the British World Order
and the Lessons for Global Power

Niall Ferguson

(Basic Books)
A Comprehensive Look at
the British Empire

Go to the complete
review


Salamina
Rockwell Kent
(Wesleyan University Press)
An American in Greenland, 1932 - 1933

Go to the complete
review


Television
Jean-Philippe Toussaint
(Dalkey Archive)
Contemporary French Novel

Go to the complete
review


The Double
José Saramago
(Harcourt)
A Novel on Misapprehension
by the Nobel Prize Winner

Go to the complete
review
The Same Sea
Amos Oz
(Harcourt)
Old Love, New Love in the Desert of Israel

Go to the complete
review


Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson
(Picador)
A Novel of New
American Realism & Despair

Go to the complete
review


When All the World
Was Young

A Memoir
Barbara Holland

(Bloomsbury)
Reminiscences of Growing Up
In 1940s and 1950s America

Go to the complete
review


The Manor and the Estate
Isaac Bashevis Singer
(Terrace Books/University of Wisconsin)
Novel about Late 19th Century
Jewish Life in Poland

Go to the complete
review


The Mammy
Brendan O'Carroll
(Plume)
Novel on Laughter and Tragedy
and the Family, Dublin --- 1976

Go to the complete
review


Tigerland:
And Other Unintended Destinations
Eric Dinerstein

(Island/Shearwater)
A Charming Retelling
of the Events in the Life
of a Bat-Catching Naturalist

Go to the complete
review

The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Michael Chabon
(Harper Audio/Recorded Books)
A Dark Detective Story about
"The Frozen Chosen"

Go to the complete
review


The Farther Shore
Matthew Eck
(Milkweed)
Story of an Unknown War in an Unnamed Country

Go to the complete
review


In a Prominent
Bar in Secaucus

New and Selected Poems, 1955 - 2007
X. J. Kennedy

(Johns Hopkins)
A Captivating Collection of Verse
by the American poet

Go to the complete
review
Amulet
Roberto Bolaño
(New Directions)
Street-Life and Lives of the Poets,
Mexico City, 1968

Go to the complete
review


The Love of
Impermanent Things:

A Threshold Ecology
Mary Rose O'Reilley

(Milkweed)
Taking Care of Animals,
Husbands, and the World as a
Would-Be Saint

Go to the complete
review


Intercourse
Stories
Robert Olen Butler

(Chronicle Books)
The Nighttimes of the Greats of
History and Romance

Go to the complete
review
Bertha Alyce:
Mother exPosed
Gay Block

(University of New Mexico Press)
Tale of a True and Unusual
Mother/Daughter Relationship

Go to the complete
review


Freeman Walker
A Novel
David Allan Cates

(Unbridled)
A Picaresque Trip through
Post-Bellum United States

Go to the complete
review


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