Geoffrey Philp's Blog Spot (Free subscription) | 11/01/2009
Book lovers, get ready to celebrate because the 26th edition of the nation’s finest and largest literary gathering, Miami Book Fair International (Fair), is just around the corner. Presented by the Florida Center for the Literary Arts at Miami Dade College (MDC), the Fair will take place Nov. 8 – 15 at the college’s Wolfson Campus, 300 N.E. Second Ave., in downtown Miami. The Fair...
NewsBusters (Free subscription) | 10/17/2009
As proof that National Public Radio can't call anyone a liberal, when they decided to review Ralph Nader's new novel "Only the Super-rich Can Save Us!" on Monday evening's All Things Considered, anchor Michele Norris described him only as a "perennial presidential candidate and social critic." Book critic Alan Cheuse was not kind , calling the 700-page book a waste of forest: America,...
Geoffrey Philp's Blog Spot (Free subscription) | 09/24/2009
Last week Wednesday, my wife and I attended the unveiling of the official poster and program of authors and activities for the Miami Book Fair International presented by the Florida Center for the Literary Arts at ECCO Pizzateca and Lounge in downtown Miami. Created by Jeff Kinney , author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, the poster's subtle visual humor was a welcome addition to the array from...
the Literary Saloon (Free subscription) | 08/09/2009
Most reviewers thought more highly of The Girl who Played with Fire than I did, and I'm not convinced by their reasoning. The reaction that I found most curious, however, came in Alan Cheuse's review in the San Francisco Chronicle . He actually wrote: The books are so good, in fact, that I have to keep reminding myself that they are genre novels, not mainstream fiction, so I shouldn't think about...
Ghost Word (Free subscription) | 08/05/2009
So I am up at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Conference, the land of so many dreams. This is the place were aspiring writers come to workshop their short stories, novel excerpts and essay. They listen to the encouraging/discouraging words of editors, publishers, agents and other writers. Some of the big names this year include Michael Pietsch, publisher of Little Brown, Jack Shoemaker , longtime...
KyiMayKaung (Free subscription) | 07/19/2009
NPR -- Alan Cheuse's top picks. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97536391
University of Nebraska Press (Free subscription) | 06/16/2009
I was listening to NPR last night and heard a familiar name. Kurt Caswell’s essay collection, An Inside Passage, was reviewed on “All Things Considered.” Reviewer Alan Cheuse praised Caswell’s way of looking at – and writing about – nature,...
iCelebZ.com (Free subscription) | 05/27/2009
NPR knows most of its listeners happen to be diehard lovers of the written word. With that knowledge in hand, the network will launch its on-air and online summertime series of sizzling summer reads, recommendations and critic contributions on May 27. "Summer Books 2009" is sure to kindle literary passions among listeners and web users. The standard segments "You Must Read This"...
Blogcritics: Books (Free subscription) | 04/19/2009
We tag along as Cheuse travels in Mexico, Bali, New Zealand, and less exotic locales, full of shared insights. The best travel writing carries us along on a soul-journey. It dramatizes how the heart learns about itself in relation to the world, making the foreign familiar and the familiar slightly foreign. As author Alan Cheuse states: ... because along with extra shirts and underwear, we always bring...
MediaBistro.com (Free subscription) | 03/23/2009
GalleyCat senior editor Ron Hogan flew down to Charlottesville, Virginia, last Friday to take part in the 15th annual Festival of the Book , where he led a discussion on the state of the book review with Washington Post columnist Michael Dirda , NPR correspondent Alan Cheuse , novelist and former Salon columnist Louis Bayard , and Bethanne Patrick , host of WETA's " Author, Author! " and...
The Reading Experience (Free subscription) | 01/12/2009
In her Washington Post review of the book, Wendy Smith writes of Alan Cheuse's To Catch the Lightning: The sketch of [its protagonist's] early adulthood at the turn of the 20th century is a skillful but standard portrait of an...
Rhapsodyinbooks's Weblog (Free subscription) | 12/06/2008
NPR’s web site has a great list of “best books” for 2008, including: Best Graphic Novels Top Five Books on Migration and Memory Best Foreign Fiction Alan Cheuse’s Top Fiction Picks Best Political and Current Affairs Books Best Picture Gift Books Ten Best Cookbooks Top Five Crime and Mystery Novels 2008 National Book Award Winners Perfect Books to Give Loved Ones Access the lists...
Powell's Books: Overview (Free subscription) | 11/28/2008
It's a tricky business, writing about figures out of history. You don't want to betray any of the known truth about them, but at the same time you know, from living your own life, that so much of the deepest truths about life stay hidden from the eyes of researchers and historians and even friends, even wives and children. It's that part of the life of the actual figure that you can build fiction upon,...
Washington Post (Free subscription) | 11/25/2008
TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING A Novel of American Dreaming By Alan Cheuse Sourcebooks. 502 pp. $25.95 Best known as the lucid book reviewer on NPR's "All Things Considered," Alan Cheuse is also a veteran novelist who in such works as "The Bohemians: John Reed and His Friends Who Shook the World" and "Th...
Bookfoolery and Babble (Free subscription) | 11/02/2008
To Catch the Lightning by Alan Cheuse Copyright 2008 Sourcebooks - Fiction/Historical 502 pages Our mules are laden high with supplies, and the beasts we ride are weighted down with our bodies. The sun is rising up over the eastern walls of this great and glorious declivity, a monument to time so vast that none of us can any more imagine it whole than the mayfly can picture the turning pages of a calendar....
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