Book News
Free-speech struggle
Graphic depictions of violence, suicide and sexual assault in two Pat Conroy books are at the heart of a First Amendment debate in West Virginia, pitting offended parents against high school students who object to being told what they can’t read.
Even Conroy has interjected himself into the debate. In an e-mail to a student, Conroy slams those who would ban his works as “idiots.” A student group is vowing to sue the Kanawha County Board of Education if the removal of “Beach Music” and “Prince of Tides” from two Nitro High School classes is made permanent.
In a move that appeased neither side, the board decided to explore using advisory labels on books that show content for violence, language, sexual content or adult situations. The Associated Press
Memoirs of a Yankee
Joe Torre, named recently as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers after ending a 12-year reign with the New York Yankees, is working on a memoir.
The book, currently untitled, will be co-authored by Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci and will include Torre’s memories of the Yankees, with whom he won four World Series championships, and general thoughts on the game.
Doubleday, an imprint of Random House Inc., will publish the book in spring of 2009. The Associated Press
First Line
Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill
“I seem to have trouble dying. By all rights, I should not have lived this long. But I can still smell trouble riding on any wind, just as surely as I could tell you whether it is a stew of chicken necks or pigs’ feet bubbling in the iron pot on the fire. And my ears still work just as good as a hound dog’s. People assume that just because you don’t stand as straight as a sapling, you’re deaf. Or that your mind is like pumpkin mush. The other day, when I was being led into a meeting with a bishop, one of the society ladies told another, “We must get this woman into Parliament soon. Who knows how much longer she’ll be with us?” Half bent though I was, I dug my fingers into her ribs. She let out a shriek and spun around to face me. “Careful,” I told her, “I may outlast you.”
BookSense paperback
Bestsellers
Fiction
1. Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen
2. Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel García Márquez
3. Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky
4. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
5. The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield
Nonfiction
1. Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert
2. Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
3. Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer
4. The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
5. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, by Bill Bryson
