What we're reading, what we're liking
1000 Extra/Ordinary Objects
This collection of photographs of interesting items (categories include food, fashion, animals, body, soul and leisure) with attendant bits of text, makes for piquant browsing. The book has been assembled by the people who edit the wonderful, Benneton-sponsored magazine Colors, and it reflects their socially conscious but always stylish sensibility. The objects range from liquid cheeseburgers and canned Barbie-shaped pasta in tomato sauce to pubic wigs, an AK-47 tote bag, beef-flavored bottled water for dogs, a Jesus doll, canned air from Israel and a panoply of racist figurines and fetishes.
-- Laura Miller
Mating by Norman Rush
Quit waiting for Norman Rush to write another book -- go back and read "Mating" again. This 1991 novel might be old news, but so is Mozart and sliced bread, and those still get recommended. In a fictional, utopian, women-centered community in Botswana, the narrator, an American anthropologist, falls in love with the community's founder. We get the inside of their love affair and the minutiae of their great, exacting brains to boot. The love and the brains get woven together, but like all potentially pretentious developments in this geniusy book, exciting prevails over obnoxious. On a given page you can learn of the socioeconomics of monkey hunting, or that prostitutes in Gabarone sometimes squeeze lemons over questionable penises to find lesions. But the book is far too thoughtful to linger in colonial guide mode. It examines society and love as they currently exist, and then proceeds to examine some alternatives that Rush has proposed. The novel is about ideas and sadness and just about every detail of the world as we know it, and just when the scope seems impossibly vast, you learn that no animal but the lion eats porcupines.
-- Chris Colin
Recent books praised by Salon's critics
Salon Book Awards
Salon's book editors pick the 10 books from 2000 we wished would never end.
By Laura Miller and Maria Russo
[12/18/00]
White-Collar Sweatshop by Jill Andresky Fraser
Bullying bosses, 24-hour on-call weeks, shrinking benefits -- and corporate workers never got their cut of the '90s boom.
Reviewed by Suzy Hansen
[03/01/01]
"Dreamcatcher" by Stephen King and "Ordinary Horror" by David Searcy
King's latest book takes a page from "The X-Files," while an elegantly literary debut tells of creeping, formless suburban terror.
Reviewed by Laura Miller
[02/22/01]
Love, etc by Julian Barnes
The eternal triangle returns in this story of a woman who has left her stolid, successful husband for a charming wastrel.
Reviewed by Amy Benfer
[02/21/01]
The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
A grieving woman, an almost empty house and a very strange visitor add up to a metaphysical puzzle by this American master. Reviewed by Maria Russo
[02/21/01]
A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore
In this Gothic wonder of a novel, madness, incest and even worse follow a mother's ruthless desertion.
Reviewed by Suzy Hansen
[02/21/01]
Rides of the Midway by Lee Durkee
With this full-tilt novel of youthful catastrophe and hellbent debauchery, a bartender kicks in the door of Southern literature.
Reviewed by Jonathan Miles
[02/21/01]
The Lecturer's Tale by James Hynes
In this academic satire with a supernatural twist, a beleaguered adjunct lecturer acquires the power to fulfill his dreams -- for good and evil.
Reviewed by Amy Reiter
[02/21/01]
English Passengers by Matthew Kneale
This tale of a misbegotten quest to find the Garden of Eden in Tasmania effortlessly blends the hilarious and the heartbreaking.
Reviewed by Laura Miller
[02/21/01]
Everyday People by Stewart O'Nan
In a neighborhood on the brink of exile, the author of "Prayer for the Dying" sets a family of criminals, converts, adulterers and saints.
Reviewed by Amy Benfer
[02/21/01]
The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan
The bestselling author returns to the epic, cross-generational storytelling that made "The Joy Luck Club" an international hit.
Reviewed by Maria Russo
[02/21/01]
Crooked River Burning by Mark Winegardner
This unexpected but moving fictional tribute to Cleveland teems with real-life figures like Elliot Ness and Alan Freed.
Reviewed by Amy Reiter
[02/21/01]
The crime of my life
Election and recession getting you down? Check out the mystery novels that got me through a very tough year.
By Charles Taylor
[01/03/01]
"Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser
A stomach-churning critique of the health and labor practices of the burger business argues that Americans should change their dietary habits. Good luck.
Reviewed by Maria Russo
[02/08/01]
Our man in the shadows
With his romantic, complex spy novels about prewar Europe, Alan Furst is the heir to John le Carri.
By Charles Taylor
[01/24/01]
The Man Who Found the Missing Link by Pat Shipman
A new biography recounts the story of the brilliant scientist who fought priests, politicians and jungles to prove Darwin right.
Reviewed by Edward McSweegan
[01/18/01]
The Adversary by Emmanuel Carrire
A new book probes the case of the phony doctor who killed his family rather than confront a life of lies.
Reviewed by Laura Miller
[01/12/01]
The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi
A disfigured girl spins out the secrets of her family's disastrous history in this Booker Prize-nominated novel by a new Welsh writer.
Reviewed by Maria Russo
[01/11/01]
The Biographer's Tale by A.S. Byatt
A disillusioned student forsakes literary theory to unearth the truth about an enigmatic writer in the latest feast for the mind by the author of "Possession."
Reviewed by Laura Miller
[01/11/01]
True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
A legendary Australian outlaw relates his adventures in this rousing tale of injustice and defiance from the prizewinning author of "Oscar and Lucinda."
Reviewed by Laura Miller
[01/11/01]
Demonology by Rick Moody
A collection of inventive and passionate stories by one of today's most acclaimed young writers.
Reviewed by Amy Benfer
[01/11/01]
The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri
Life, death and forbidden love feed the feuds in a Bombay apartment building in this elegant, clever first novel.
Reviewed by Suzy Hansen
[01/11/01]
Gob's Grief by Chris Adrian
History and fantasy combine in this powerful story of a twin killed during the Civil War and his brother's strange scheme to bring him back to life.
Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Williams
[01/11/01]
Cloning: Responsible Science or Technomadness? by Michael Ruse and Aryne Sheppard, editors
A new book shows that ethical questions about replicating humans are less consequential than the procedure's threat to our biological diversity.
Reviewed by Michael Scott Moore
[01/04/01]
On Cukor by Gavin Lambert
Back at last -- a gorgeous, discreetly gossipy cult-classic book of photos and interviews with the elusive film director.
Reviewed by Charles Taylor
[12/21/00]
The Century of the Gene by Evelyn Fox Keller
A new book argues that there may be no such thing as a gene.
Reviewed by Carolyn McConnell
[12/19/00]
Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found by Jennifer Lauck
A memoirist who survived a childhood of neglect and catastrophe reinhabits her younger self, with powerful and harrowing results.
Reviewed by Brigitte Frase
[12/14/00]
Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood by Gary Taylor
A look at eunuchs through the ages offers a provocative take on what it means to be a man.
Reviewed by Greg Villepique
[12/13/00]
Blood Poets: A Cinema of Savagery by Jake Horsley
A new book says the violence of great movies, from "The Wild Bunch" to "The Matrix," has a beauty that can't be denied.
Reviewed by Charles Taylor
[12/11/00]
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