http://www.philly.com/r?19=960&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F Inquirer book news and reviews en-us Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT 2009-11-22T08:01:00Z en-us http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=70687037&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091121_Young-adult_nonfiction_and_novels.html Ah, fall. The season of spookiness, of football, and of leaf-peeping is about to give way to the interminable holidays, but readers of young adult books can hold onto autumn a little longer. The ever-growing genre continues to turn out interesting books, and this season gives us tons of new titles to be excited about: nonfiction on surprising topics, and novels nuanced enough to appeal to readers of any age. Here are just a few. Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT 054c77d934901407b7489e03479b7db8 2009-11-21T08:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=70613097&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091122_Writings_left_behind_by_Vonnegut.html When a renowned author dies, two critical processes begin: first, placing the writer in the pantheon; and second, digging out every jot, every piece of juvenilia, every previously unseen word the deceased wrote. Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT 26dced361557c1423cf8ce8d57b1b96c 2009-11-22T08:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=70613107&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091122_What_comes_before_happiness.html Like many of the characters in Too Much Happiness, the 11th collection of stories by Alice Munro, Bruce Crozier finds pleasure in unexpected places. Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT fee5ba18c07a8e5328858d679949b984 2009-11-22T08:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=70613027&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091122_A_life_sacrificed_to_obsessive__hopeless_love.html 'We all the know the joys of degradation," Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk wrote in an essay on Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Notes From Undergound included in Pamuk's 2007 collection of nonfiction, Other Colors. Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT eb4b6c9469cdfbbbeb991d7fec483281 2009-11-22T08:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=70613032&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091122_Philip_K__Dick_s_deconstruction_of_madness.html 'Horselover Fat's nervous breakdown began the day he got the phone call from Gloria asking if he had any Nembutals. He asked her why she wanted them and she said that she intended to kill herself." Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT 463cea7c6dba99ed365818bf8d703f6e 2009-11-22T08:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=70257832&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091117_Mavericky__but_more_lipstick_than_pit_bull.html There should be a feeling of palpable glee running through Sarah Palin's memoir: Now, finally, she gets to talk, unfiltered and unedited. Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT eda83b905e3f9342f210de816dfb5b9f 2009-11-17T08:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=69961362&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091115_Nonsense_about_Jews_and_liberalism.html Norman Podhoretz is baffled, bewildered, frustrated, mystified, indignant, infuriated. Why are Jews liberal? Why in national elections do they generally vote as much as 3-1 for the Democratic candidate for president even when the rest of the country is voting for the Republican? Why do they vote contrary to their own self-interest? If Jews are so smart, why are they so stupid? Why don't they agree with him? Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT 548f6148133d816e188ebcef4772a5db 2009-11-15T08:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=69961282&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091115_A_military_analyst_s_insights_on_Civil_War.html The American Civil War has been exhaustively researched and written about. Popular and scholarly historians from Alan Nevins and Shelby Foote to James McPherson and Stephen Sears, not to mention scores of others, have all rendered their rich portraits of America's pivotal tragedy. Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT 7811fbaaec9396c99bfae6b8fa51f963 2009-11-15T08:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=69961287&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091115_Why_must_software_be_so_hard_on_the_user_.html Try this: Go to the Web site of the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics - www.bls.gov - and find unemployment figures for Upper Darby. Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT 9dff8c08527fa1436d5b6c989d78cb19 2009-11-15T08:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=69961357&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091115_Economic_sci-fi_doesn_t_make_it.html If gadfly filmmaker Michael Moore is right, and a fed-up populace does eventually storm the Wall Street bastion, our country might look a lot like the one in Makers. Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT be66f6b8ac9e50b7334b6f7b583e0358 2009-11-15T08:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=69367717&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091108_Heaps_of_evolution_evidence.html If I believed in God, I would thank him for blessing us with Richard Dawkins. The British biologist has become renowned lately for denouncing religion, most recently in his 2006 best seller The God Delusion. But I prefer his explanations and celebrations of "eating, growing, rotting, swimming, walking, flying, burrowing, stalking, chasing, fleeing, outpacing, outwitting" creatures, as he describes them in The Greatest Show on Earth. Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT 6628efb5d4fda42ce94cbdd9221636bc 2009-11-08T08:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=69367722&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091108_A_jazz_great_who_played_what_he_felt.html In Manhattan in the late 1950s, it was great to be young and a jazz fan. The drinking age in New York state was 18, so a college student with a draft card and the price of a couple of beers could sit at the bar of a club and catch a full evening of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Bill Evans, or other greats. Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT 99e4486ee6bee71a73531364d336f28e 2009-11-08T08:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=69367662&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091108_The_year_of_living_without.html Enough about the toilet paper already. If people would just quit obsessing about it, Colin Beavan could get on with more important aspects of his year-long experiment in living with no - or, as it turned out, significantly less - impact on the planet. Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT c4d08f5cc0567751890ca8b76309d6e7 2009-11-08T08:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=69367652&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091108_Celebrating_love_in_society_s_underbelly.html Dark, often crushingly grim, Box 21 introduces us to a world of characters who hate what they do for a living. I count at least two police detectives, one junkie, one doctor, a welter of crooks, and at least one social servant who see the veneer peel off their careers, revealing the shabby, agonized self-deception beneath. Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT f5fb90c9cb3ac1b88fd73f2c282527b2 2009-11-08T08:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=67880802&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091031_Drama_s_here__but_so_is_inconsistency_in_plot_and_writing.html If ever there were a woman devoid of maternal love, it's Ava Middlebrooks, and now that she's out of prison, she's out for vengeance against the one person she holds responsible for her incarceration - her daughter, Yancey Harrington Braxton. Sat, 31 Oct 2009 07:01:00 GMT 7b6924a95ac1e97b466e33bc0fe2165e 2009-10-31T07:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=67562602&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091101_An_accident_s_consequences.html 'Well, it's a world of accidents, isn't it?" concludes "Cookie" Baciagalupo in John Irving's new novel as random events threaten him yet again. He's right, but in Last Night in Twisted River, it's the consequences of those accidents that really matter, that shatter lives, upset intentions, and send the formerly comfortable scattering in all directions in a vain search for solace. Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:01:00 GMT e402c890558976225c2da9139b6a46f1 2009-11-01T09:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=67562532&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091101_Locale_as_a_key_to_civilization_.html Barry Cunliffe is the emeritus professor of European archaeology at Oxford, and Europe Between the Oceans is perhaps the boldest work of ancient history in recent memory. It draws on an impressive array of scholarship to paint a 10,000-year portrait of European civilization from 9000 B.C. to A.D. 1000. Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:01:00 GMT 8d27e785d28a5ec8d35f600b5a92d519 2009-11-01T09:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=67562597&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091101_What_drove_Vermeil_-_to_the_brink.html He's probably the most popular man ever to coach a professional sports team in Philadelphia, even though he didn't bring home a Super Bowl title and left town burned out. Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:01:00 GMT 62cfe224373d70d38bea57a9a4e994e2 2009-11-01T09:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=65764087&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091025_Detective_Bosch_is_back.html Investigating what initially appears to be a commonplace liquor store holdup and homicide in Los Angeles, LAPD Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch becomes involved in a strange case that will lead to Chinese Triad gangsters, the kidnapping of his teenage daughter, and a desperate and violent confrontation in Hong Kong. Sun, 25 Oct 2009 07:01:00 GMT c9fa9a155e4f7d99ee5f557af56f2202 2009-10-25T07:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=65764092&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091025_There_s_no_burying_vampire_mania.html I'm a vampire, he's a vampire, won't you be a vampire too? Gee, thanks, Count. Thanks, but no. Despite being a lifelong vampire aficionado (um, does that sound creepy?), I'd rather be a vampire hunter right now. We're crypt-deep in vampires, thanks in part to an avalanche of mega-selling books and films, including Twilight, True Blood, the Underworld Trilogy, and their rapidly mutating spawn. Sun, 25 Oct 2009 07:01:00 GMT 0e28ce11a3ea495575ca39b1aac59da7 2009-10-25T07:01:00Z