Roundup

Eric Banks visits Jonestown, 30 years after the murder-massacres:

"We expect our killing fields to be marked a certain way, and with at least a certain rhetoric of rectitude. At Jonestown, in Guyana, there are no markers, no memorials noting what took place, no manicured clearings to mark how the site looked 30 years ago, when more than 900 Americans died there in a still hard-to-imagine moment of mass suicide and outright murder. It is an open field bifurcated by a red dirt road, with knee-high bush to the north and, to the south, thick jungle. You don't even realize you have entered the site until you are already there."

Scott McLemee on Antonio Negri, coauthor of "Empire":

"Four new works by Negri appeared in English in 2008—the year we all found ourselves well downstream from that era when debate over globalization and its discontents took the form of extrapolating long-term trends. The problem now is to find a way through the ruins. I have been studying the books in a state of heightened (indeed, strained) attention—with powers of concentration periodically stimulated and shattered by arteriosclerotic convulsions in the world’s financial markets—but also through tears in my eyes.

"They are tears of perplexity and frustration."

John Freeman talks to Garrison Keillor and considers the latest entry in the McSweeney's "Voices of Witness" series, "Narratives From the Abducted and Displaced People of Sudan,"compiled and edited by Craig Walzer.

Rayyan Al-Shawaf on Nadeem Aslam's latest:

"According to a Chinese proverb, the hardest things in life are three: to love someone who does not love you back, to be exhausted but unable to sleep, and to wait for a friend who never shows. The title of Pakistani-British author Nadeem Aslam's latest novel evokes images of the last of these three afflictions, and in a sense, "The Wasted Vigil" is all about waiting."

Rebecca Skloot suggests you take a look at Snowball, the Dancing Cockatoo...

Jon Stewart says: "Books make great gifts because they’re an amazing way to kill time while your website is buffering," in a cameo appearance on the Association of American Publisher's new BooksAreGreatGifts website, part of a campaign, via Facebook, Twitter, etc, to highlight book buying this holiday season.

Angie Drobnic Holan finds Sarah Vowell's "The Wordy Shipmates" an "entertaining meditation." While Carlo Wolff finds the pictures in "The Narcotic Farm" leave the deepest impression.

The Kansas City Star's John Michael Eberhart writes that the 75th anniversary edition of "New Letters" contains "as good as any piece of nonfiction I’ve read in the last five years," Robin Hemley's "Field Notes for the Graveyard Enthusiast."

Roundup

Scott McLemee waxes enthusiastic about Jeffrey B. Perry’s study "Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918," and Perry's thorough Wikipedia entry for Harrison.

Art Winslow calls the author of "The Norman McLean Reader" a "big two-hearted writer."

Gregg Barrios finds that age (80) has not slowed down Mexican literary lion Carlos Fuentes.

Geeta Sharma- Jensen on lists for book babes and book boys.

Tim Brown moderates a literary smackdown, reported in The New Yorker. Pix on WNYC.org.

Todd Shy alerts us to Yann Martel's new project, sending books to Canada's prime minister:"For as long as Stephen Harper is Prime Minister of Canada, I vow to send him every two weeks, mailed on a Monday, a book that has been known to expand stillness. That book will be inscribed and will be accompanied by a letter I will have written. I will faithfully report on every new book, every inscription, every letter, and any response I might get from the Prime Minister, on this website," Martel writes.

John Domini finds Daniel Grandbois "promising," in his review of "Unlucky Lucky Days" in Rain Taxi.

Roundup

PW profiles former NBCC president John Freeman, "book review crusader," focusing in part for his NBCC work in the Campaign to Save Book Reviewing.

Janice Harayda talks to the Newark Star-Ledger blog about being a book blogger, WordPress, her Mitch Albom post, the Delete Key awards, and more.

Scott McLemee examines the Bill Clinton issues Susan Wise Bauer raises in "The Art of the Public Grovel: Sexual Sin and Public Confession in America."

Amitav Ghosh tells WNYC's Leonard Lopate the his "Sea of Poppies" is just the beginning of his Ibis trilogy. “This is my project for my next ten, fifteen, twenty years,” he says. (Read the first chapter of "Sea of Poppies" here.)

Laura Miller tends her bookshelf. And talks to David Ulin next Wednesday in LA about her new Narnia book, "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia."

Joshua Cohen spends five days focused on Kafka's "Office Writings."

Harriet blog at the Poetry Foundation website considers Kevin Prufer and Wayne Miller's "New European Poets." Prufer, an NBCC board member, moderates a panel on January 23, 2009:

January 23, 2009, 7 pm Housing Works Bookstore Café.
Poetry in Translation panel: Has the US Lost Touch with World Literature?
Panelists Esther Allen, translator, co-director of PEN World Voices,author of International PEN report on Translation and Globalization;Yvette Chrisianse, South African poet, novelist, professor; Elizabeth Macklin, poet, translator from Basque of Uribe; Jill Schoolman, Director of Archipelago Books; Karen Emmerich, translator of NBCC award finalist Miltos Sachtouris, among other Greek writers.

NBCC Balakian awardee Wyatt Mason reacts to his mail after blogging about “A Canticle for Leibowitz.”

Robin Hemley reflects on Yamashita's Treasure.

John Domini admires the clarity of DeWitt Henry's "Safe Suicide."

Midweek Roundup

Ellen Heltzel talks to PW.

NBCC Tech VP Lizzie Skurnick takes time from working on the launch of the upgraded NBCC website and blog to interview Author and Indie Publisher Kelly Link at the 21st annual Indie and Small Press Book Fair in NYC on December 6 at 5 pm.

Marcela Valdes investigates the making and meaning of Roberto Bolaño's final novel "2666."

John Freeman covers the National Book Awards.

David L.Ulin reports on a lost Bob Dylan collaboration.

Jonah Raskin finds Malcolm Gladwell's "The Outliers" "unabashedly inspiring."

Benjamin Lytal says "Americans should be able to read [Clive James's] poetry on its own merits, free from visions of 'Saturday Night Clive.'" But...

Cynthia Haven explores a little-known connection between Czeslaw Miłosz and a controversial Polish saint, Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest, widely accused of anti-Semitism, who nevertheless died in Auschwitz; before his arrest, his monastery had sheltered several thousand Jews.

Michael O'Donnell reminds us of an old Chicago joke in his review of Jay P. Dolan's "The Irish Americans."

Jacob Silverman thinks about Adam Kirsch and "literary balance" on the VQR website. Silverman, a new blogger at VQR, is a new NBCC member and a finalist in the VQR's young reviewers contest.