Kansas City Star: Books

Book review | 'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' is a 'Catch-22' for 2012

Thu, 17 May 2012 16:00 CDT

There's a moment early on in "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk," a masterful gut-punch of a debut novel by Ben Fountain, when readers will discern a clear literary echo.

The unruly world of words

Thu, 17 May 2012 16:00 CDT

Let's face it: Word books get a bad rep (#57), especially if they're about English (#13). So David Crystal's brisk, exuberant "The Story of English in 100 Words" is all the more welcome.

Book review | 'Blood of Heroes' is the best true Alamo telling

Thu, 17 May 2012 16:00 CDT

As Walter Lord noted in 1961 in "A Time to Stand," the epic of the Alamo caught America's imagination almost from the day the mission fortress fell. "And the end," he noted, "is not yet in sight."

Remembering Carlos Fuentes, Mexico's literary legend

Thu, 17 May 2012 16:00 CDT

Whatever they may have thought of his politics, anyone lucky enough to have conversed with author Carlos Fuentes couldn't help but be taken by his love affair with language.

New book, new prize: At home with author Toni Morrison

Tue, 15 May 2012 13:00 CDT

Toni Morrison has a new novel out, "Home," a brief, poetic story of Frank Money, a traumatized Korean War veteran who returns to the states in the 1950s. Morrison has long used fiction as a private and alternative history. With "Home," she wanted to add some truth -- about war, about racism -- to the standard '50s narrative.

Fourth volume of Robert Caro's biography traces LBJ's return to power

Thu, 10 May 2012 05:00 CDT

Coming as it does in the midst of a presidential election season, "The Passage of Power," the new fourth volume of Robert Caro's towering biography of of President Lyndon B. Johnson, conveniently illuminates the elements of character, will and desire that go into the ultimate pursuit of political power.

Robert Caro gives his legions of fans another LBJ fix

Thu, 10 May 2012 05:00 CDT

Robert Caro has been writing about Lyndon B. Johnson for almost 40 years, and fans, as anxious in their own way as followers of "Harry Potter," have waited a decade for the latest volume.

Novelist Richard Ford's 'Canada' chronicles a life diverted by violence

Thu, 10 May 2012 16:00 CDT

In "Canada," the first novel in six years from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Independence Day," Richard Ford deftly examines the invisibility of a family in Great Falls, Mont. -- a family about to be ruined by the parents' robbery of a North Dakota bank.

Readorama | Leawood poet Wyatt Townley details trees in new collection

Thu, 10 May 2012 16:00 CDT

In the preface to her recent book, "The Afterlives of Trees," Leawood poet Wyatt Townley reminds readers of what needs any one tree can fulfill. "It once held you in its branches," she writes. "Now you hold it in your hands, a fusion of word and image, ink and pulp."

FYI Book Club | 'The Fault in Our Stars'

Fri, 11 May 2012 13:00 CDT

Hazel Lancaster is 16 and alive, but that's only because an experimental cancer drug has kept her so.

'Wild Things' author Maurice Sendak dies at age 83

Tue, 08 May 2012 22:38 CDT

Maurice Sendak didn't think of himself as a children's author, but as an author who told the truth about childhood. Sendak, who died Tuesday at age 83, revolutionized children's books by leaving in what so many writers before had excluded. He won the Caldecott Medal in 1964 for "Where the Wild Things Are," his signature book.

Small-town novel gets big-time book awards

Tue, 08 May 2012 13:00 CDT

Zombies and aliens: If you knew 28-year-old author John Corey Whaley when he was an even younger writer -- say age 11 or 12 -- you'd have predicted his debut novel would be chock-full of them. But the only alien world in "Where Things Come Back," awarded the prestigious Printz Award in young adult literature, is small-town Arkansas.

Book review | Alluring 'The Newlyweds'

Thu, 03 May 2012 16:00 CDT

Eventually, Nell Freudenberger will have written so many wonderful books that we'll stop gossiping about how success fell into her lap at age 26.

Book review |

Thu, 03 May 2012 16:00 CDT

The Olympics will be held in June in London, and the world-record holder in the marathon will not compete. Patrick Makau dropped out of the London marathon last month with a hamstring injury. That should heal in six weeks, but for Kenya's Olympics selectors, the man who ran 2:03:38 would not be good enough for the Olympics.

Anne Lamott revisits parenting in new book

Thu, 03 May 2012 16:00 CDT

Without Anne Lamott, the entire subcategory of contemporary parent writing -- which includes Brett Paesel, Christie Mellor and Ayun Halliday, as well as all those mommy bloggers -- probably wouldn't exist.

Readorama: Writers Place turns 20; author Cathy Maxwell to speak in Olathe

Thu, 03 May 2012 16:00 CDT

The Writers Place is 20 years old.

KC poet Linda Rodriguez dives into mystery writing

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:00 CDT

Somebody has bashed in the skull of the student newspaper's editor. The new chief of campus police finds his body on page 6, and more grim discoveries soon follow. But that's not all that goes on in "Every Last Secret," the first mystery novel by Kansas Citian Linda Rodriguez.

A spy is born in Vienna in 'Waiting for Sunrise'

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 05:00 CDT

In the early pages of "Waiting for Sunrise," William Boyd's cunning tale of espionage in World War I, a Viennese soldier warns Lysander Rief, the book's naive hero, not to be fooled by the apparent placidity of the Austrian capital.

Readorama | Young adult novel will represent Missouri at National Book Festival

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:00 CDT

"Hate List," a young adult novel by Jennifer Brown of Liberty, will be the showcase Missouri title at the National Book Festival in September.

Men are fans, too, of `Fifty Shades of Grey'

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 05:00 CDT

They're young and old, doctors and churchgoers, gay and straight -- and those are just the men who have devoured oh-so-naughty "Fifty Shades of Grey," an erotic trilogy that has earned millions of women fans in a matter of weeks.

Kansas writers win Edgar Awards

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 05:00 CDT

Two writers with area ties have won Edgar Awards, the top annual prizes of the Mystery Writers of America.

'Louise: Amended' is an unflinching memoir

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:00 CDT

In 2004, 22-year-old Louise Krug graduated from the University of Kansas and moved to California. She was tall and blond, pretty and in love. She had California things to do.

'Oklahoma City' questions whether justice was served after bombing

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 05:00 CDT

On April 19, 1995, a massive explosion in downtown Oklahoma City destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, home to government agencies, killing 168 people. Law enforcement agencies eventually arrested and punished Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, not only solving a heinous crime but also putting a gaping hole in the domestic terrorist movement. End of story, right?

'Prague Fatale' evokes a darker Agatha Christie

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 05:00 CDT

At the core of "Prague Fatale," author Philip Kerr crafts a puzzle that's pure Agatha Christie. On an estate outside Prague, a German SS officer is found dead in a room locked from the inside. The corpse bears bullet wounds, yet none of the other SS officers heard gunshots on the night of the murder.

Readorama | Lee's Summit man is Missouri's new poet laureate

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:00 CDT

The new state laureate of Missouri lives in Lee's Summit. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon this month named William Trowbridge as the state's third poet laureate. "I was given no agenda," Trowbridge said, adding that he anticipates speaking and reading across the state.

Pulitzer board stiffs 'Swamplandia!' and other well-regarded novels

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:00 CDT

It was the best of years; it was the worst of years. That might be one interpretation of the announcement Monday that no Pulitzer Prize would be awarded in fiction. While other major prize-awarding outfits have found a diverse array of books to honor, the Pulitzers this year passed by the literary category.

John Grisham steps up to the plate with 'Calico Joe'

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 16:00 CDT

John Grisham's legal thrillers are dense and hefty, full of twists and turns and tension. His latest novel, "Calico Joe," is not like that at all. It's a sweet, simple story, a fable really. And like all fables, it has a moral: Good can come out of evil; it's never too late to confess your sins and seek forgiveness.

'College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be' surveys the higher purpose of higher education

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 16:00 CDT

As its subtitle suggests, "College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be," is an overview of how we in higher education got here, and where we ought to go. Columbia University professor Andrew Delbanco's choice of "college" as his subject of inquiry is specific and deliberate.

'1616: The World in Motion' explores pivotal year in creation of global village

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 16:00 CDT

In his preface to "1616: The World in Motion," Thomas Christensen describes waking up one morning "with the date 1616 in my head and the resolution to research and write about that year already formed." That resolution, he says, "seemed to come out of nowhere," which sounds about right for a book that explores so many unimagined and unprecedented connections.

Readorama | Manchester's Churchill returns in fall; Henri Cole wins Jackson Poetry Prize

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:00 CDT

The third and final volume of the late William Manchester's beloved series on Winston Churchill is coming out this fall, almost 25 years after the previous book. In November, Little, Brown and Co. will publish "The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965."

Book review | 'The Last Hundred Days' tells a compelling story

Thu, 24 May 2012 16:00 CDT

Toward the end of his very good new novel about the 1989 revolution that toppled Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's vicious, paranoid regime, Patrick McGuinness' central character relates a joke he heard from an acerbic friend. Venereal disease, according to this mordant wisecracker, "brought out the good communist in everyone: it was the only thing that really got shared around."

Book review | 'Bring Up the Bodies' is a riveting sequel to 'Wolf Hall'

Thu, 24 May 2012 16:00 CDT

The dead cluster around Thomas Cromwell in this darkly magnificent sequel to "Wolf Hall."

Readorama: Frank Deford on sports, age and endurance

Thu, 24 May 2012 16:00 CDT

In Frank Deford's new memoir, "Over Time," he details the awkward moments when a sportswriter realizes he is getting older.

James Salter wins lifetime short story prize

Mon, 21 May 2012 14:19 CDT

James Salter, author of prize-winning books including "Dusk and Other Stories," has received a lifetime achievement award for short fiction.

Readorama: Author's workshop will boost local preservation efforts

Thu, 17 May 2012 16:00 CDT

Several of Steve Berry's historical thrillers involve antiquities long missing or seemingly impossible to find.