Lloyd Alexander dies at 83

Author Lloyd Alexander died at age 83; listen to the NPR audio obituary. Author of such classics as The Black Cauldron and The Chronicles of Prydain series, Alexander was a beloved children's fantasy writer who won a Newberry Medal in 1969.

British bookshop lists 25 up-and-coming writers

British bookstore chain Waterstone's lists 25 up-and-coming young writers from such varied genres as cooking and science fiction.

Ian Rankin's writing space

Neat photo of writer Ian Rankin's workspace. The environment where Detective Inspector Rebus was conceived and lives...

Cartoonist ponders Mother's Day

Berke Breathed, cartoonist, ponders the ultimate sacrifice of parenthood -- would he die for his child? In Breathed's new children's book, Mars Needs Moms!, a little boy wonders why anyone needs a mom, but discovers that moms are pretty special when Martians come to Earth and want to take his mom away to their planet.

Now that he's a parent, a cartoonist ponders the ultimate sacrifice

Mothers' fiction

Since I am a first-time mother, it is only fitting that I want to read novels or non-fiction accounts of motherhood. I just finished The Stone Diaries and the novel's account of one woman's journey through a life unfulfilled really affected me. I'm also working on Rachel's Cusk's memoir of her experiences as a first-time mother, A Life's Work: On becoming a mother, which is both funny and sad in turn. Controversial too, since Cusk doesn't mince words and is honest about her conflicting feelings of being a mother, woman and writer at the same time.
I'm thinking about some other titles that might go into a "mother fiction" category on my bookshelf -- some funny, some sad, some downright disturbing (Re: Loverboy by Victoria Redel and her mother character's desperate obsession with her own son). Motherkind by Jayne Anne Phillips is a great novel about the mother-child relationships, both mother-daughter and the daughter's relationship with her newborn son. What other titles would YOU recommend?

The Stone Diaries

What's up with the Canadian literature kick I've been on? First, The Blind Assassin and now Carol Shields. This novel was deeply affecting and is probably one of the best I've read so far this year. Winning the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Shields' novel is an exploration of one woman's life -- from witnessing her own birth in 1905 through her death sometime in the 1990s. What is so affecting about the story is the telling of a life that did not seem to make an impression on others, how women can be marginalized and how one woman didn't take her life and live it to the fullest. Amazing...