Bookworm

Rising Up and Rising Down (McSweeney's; abridged, Harper Collins) William Vollmann's mammoth inquiry is a study of the history of violence, which fills seven large volumes...

You Remind Me of Me (Ballantine) However close Dan Chaon's characters come, they can't quite connect. Disconnection rules: in families, in dreams. Even fortunate coincidences subside into spiritless accidents...

Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America (Algonquin) The author traveled our country visiting the stalwart independent manufacturers of classic candies. His beautifully written, wacky essay provokes this melancholy conversation about America's sweet tooth.

Evidence of Things Unseen (Simon & Schuster) Marianne Wiggins returned to live in America after many years in England. Having written two turbulent, disturbing books, her new one, set in American between the world wars, is a surprise...

Czeslaw Milosz, the great Polish Nobel Prize-winning poet, died in August. He was a great humanist who believed in the power of poetry to affect the world and whose own work left an imprint on his century. 

A New Theory of American Poetry: Democracy, the Environment, and the Future of Imagination (Harvard University Press) Angus Fletcher, the literary critic as seer, carefully discerns the difference between American poetry and its more bombastic British forbears. Fletcher demonstrates how, true to the spirit of democracy, Whitman devised an anti-hierarchical style, altering poetry forever.

The Coma (Riverhead) Alex Garland explores the metaphysical underpinning of his pared-down skeletal novel. He feels he took a big risk and expects to be attacked. We offer him, instead, the possibility of being understood.

Cruisers (Shaye Areheart Books) The dark precisions of Craig Nova's Cruisers provoke anxiety. Tension mounts; the book feels like a thriller, but one of a very high order...

The Jane Austen Book Club (Putnam) Karen Joy Fowler's comic romance is filled with sly references to Jane Austen's novels. Is Fowler paying homage or challenging Jane with this look at contemporary attitudes toward love and sex among a group of Janeites?

Natasha and Other Stories (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) David Bezmozgis captures the lives of Jewish immigrants in Canada. The difficulty of starting a new life in a new place is reflected by the prose style, which is tough, spiky and even belligerent...

Michael Silverblatt flew to Dublin for the one hundredth anniversary of Bloomsday, June 16, 1904, the day and night immortalized in James Joyce's Ulysses. He took the opportunity to talk with John Banville and poet Seamus Heaney...

Electric Light (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney celebrates the humanity of Joyce's vision...

In the Shadow of No Towers (Pantheon)Because Art Spiegelman lives within walking distance of the site of the Twin Towers, his graphic novel about 9/11 captures the panicky race to make sure his children are safe, that the world hasn't ended, and, most of all, to ensure that his dread and paranoia don't dissipate in easy ideas about "healing."

Double Vision: A Self Portrait (Knopf) Walter Abish's most-admired novel, How German Is It, was written before the writer had ever set foot in Germany. This new book, non-fiction, finds Abish on German soil, defending his imaginary Germany...

The Daydreaming Boy (Riverhead)Micheline Aharonian Marcom explores the moral, cultural and sexual consequences of genocide...  

Project X (Knopf); Love and Hydrogen (Vintage) Jim Shepard's fondness for the little guy, the day-dreaming Walter Mitty type is the focus of this conversation, leading to the big question...

  This lovely new collection features con men, killers, cult leaders, baby stealers and the occasional prophet. E.L. Doctorow reveals his affection for these disparate, desperate Americans and offers a reason for the centrality of women in these stories.

River of Shadows (Penguin); Hope in the Dark (Nation) In her poetic biography, Rebecca Solnit uses the figure of photographer Edward Muybridge to discuss a whole range of metaphysical issues...

Yellow Dog (Miramax) While examining the mysteries of Martin Amis' enigma-turned-thriller, we speculate about the future of the literary novel...

Getting Mother's Body (Random House) Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks talks about her first novel, rejecting an art of concealment for one that celebrates rollicking immediacy and oddball truth...