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Christian Science Monitor (Free subscription) | yesterday
HARDCOVER FICTION 1. The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver, Harper 2. The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam 3. The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown, Doubleday 4. Half Broke Horses, by Jeannette Walls, Scribner 5. Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro, Knopf 6. Under the Dome, by Stephen King, Scribner 7. Pirate Latitudes, by Michael Crichton, Harper 8. ...
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prairiemary (Free subscription) | 12/02/2009
The reasons that Canadian films don’t “catch fire” in the US are various and may include the idea that their films are too good for us to appreciate! But to be a little kinder, there are other factors. One of the more subtle and interesting is the “Wacousta Syndrome,” which is not much discussed on the States’ side. “Wacousta ” was a novel about a fort...
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Andrew's Book Club (Free subscription) | 12/01/2009
Kyle Minor, author of the compelling collection In the Devil’s Territory, writes in with some thoughts about Alice Munro’s new book. Let’s all respond in the comments section, shall we? Dear Andrew, On your recommendation, I just finished Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro. I’ve read it through twice now. I liked it. I even liked the [...]
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Sacramento Bee (Free subscription) | 11/30/2009
Animals take center stage in these titles, new on bookstore shelves. "Why Dogs Are Better Than Cats" by Bradley Trevor Greive, with photos by Rachel Hale (Andrews McMeel, $19.99, 224 pages): This teaming of clever text with wonderful photos will make dog lovers happy cat lovers maybe not so much. Backpedaling a bit, Greive "clarifies" that he is "pro-dog, not anti-cat."...
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New York Times (Free subscription) | 11/29/2009
Alice Munro’s latest collection features a high proportion of extreme situations and deeply troubled individuals.
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Miami Herald (Free subscription) | 11/29/2009
Call it the Eudora Welty Effect. Four years ago, when Alice Munro hinted that The View From Castle Rock might be the last of her short-story collections, she set the hearts of graduate students going pitty-pat through the carrels of all the English Lit departments. Thesis time! Lots of references, to Chekov, to regionalism, to outsiders and isolates. All earned but beside the point.
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Beattie's Book Blog (Free subscription) | 11/28/2009
Alice Munro’s Object Lessons By Leah Hager Cohen Published New York Times, November 27, 2009 TOO MUCH HAPPINESS By Alice Munro 304 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. US Chatto & Windus, UK The Germans must have a term for it. Doppelgedanken, perhaps: the sensation, when reading, that your own mind is giving birth to the words as they appear on the page. Such is the ego that in these rare instances...
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New York Times (Free subscription) | 11/27/2009
Alice Munro’s new stories take on pulp fiction’s sensational subjects, and episodes of murder, suicide and adultery turn out to have far-reaching thematic reverberations.
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The Banbury Man (Free subscription) | 11/26/2009
It is always nice to discover a new author, and a literary chum in the colonies suggested I would like this book. Alice Munro (England: Munroe) is a Canadian, and she has written many short stories. This is a collection of stories, together with a rather longer title story at the end. Munro reminds me of Carol Shields in the way she gets into the mind of the characters in her story. Quite simply, they...
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Perpetual Folly (Free subscription) | 11/26/2009
Here's the list of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year . Surprises? I'm happy to see Brad Leithauser's new book, The Art Student's War , but I didn't know it was out yet. The review will appear on Nov. 27. There are a bunch of short story collections, including those by Wells Tower, Jean Thompson, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Aleksandr Hemon, John Updike, Kazuo Ishiguro, Antonya Nelson, Paul Yoon,...
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Christian Science Monitor (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
If there’s a better short story writer working today than Alice Munro, I haven’t read her. In story after story, Munro manages to compress whole lives and emotional arcs into 20 or so shapely pages, long enough to engage us in their world but short enough to absorb in a ...
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Largehearted Boy (Free subscription) | 11/22/2009
The Independent profiles Florence Welch and her band, Florence and the Machine. The San Francisco Chronicle reviews Alice Munro's new short story collection, Too Much Happiness. Her canvas may be small, but her brush strokes are fine, her vision encompasses...
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Philadelphia Inquirer (Free subscription) | 11/22/2009
Like many of the characters in Too Much Happiness, the 11th collection of stories by Alice Munro, Bruce Crozier finds pleasure in unexpected places.
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San Fransisco Chronicle (Free subscription) | 11/22/2009
Too Much Happiness Stories By Alice Munro (Alfred A. Knopf; 304 pages; $25.95) Alice Munro has done it again. Now nearing 80, the Canadian author - winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize - keeps getting better. For five decades, Munro has written...