Book News
Didion, NPR’s Terry Gross honored
Terry Gross, who has interviewed Didion and other authors as host of National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air” program, won the “Literarian Award” for “Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.”
The honors were announced by the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization that presents the National Book Awards.
Didion and Gross will receive their prizes at the annual National Book Awards ceremony, to be held Nov. 14 in New York City. The Associated Press
Memoirist Frey’s new novel
First Line
Revolution of Hope, by Vicente Fox and Rob Allyn
From the introduction: “In Latin America, presidents do not retire to the farm to write their memoirs. Most flee abroad, to escape extradition. More than one has lived in house arrest.
“Former chief executives of Mexico did not build presidential libraries, crusade against hunger, or run the United Nations. They generally caught the first plane to Europe, turning over power to a designated successor by pointing the dedazo, the ‘finger.’ The traditional cycle of our six-year presidential term, the sexenio, worked like this: A president used his first five years to spend the nation deep into debt. In his sixth year, known as the “Year of Hidalgo,” he cut off the flow of money to the economy and diverted hundreds of millions of dollars from Mexico’s oil revenues to fund the campaign of his successor. Then the incumbent handed the sash to the man to whom he’d ‘given the finger’ and got the hell out of the country, before the economic crisis kicked in.
“Memoirs would have been a bad idea. They might have been used as evidence.”
Booksense Picks
1. An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, by Brock Clarke
2. Away, by Amy Bloom
3. Soul Catcher, by Michael C. White
4. Garden Spells, by Sara Addison Allen
5. The Tree of a Thousand Blossoms, by Gail Tsukiyama
6. The Reincarnationist, by M.J. Rose
7. Life on the Refrigerator Door, by Alice Kuipers
8. Heartsick, by Chelsea Cain
9. The End of the Alphabet, by C.S. Richardson
10. Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand, by Fred Vargas
