Week 5: Building Base Knowledge (Part II)

I've been following NPR Books and it is a fantastic resource for author interviews and book reviews. My favorite part, though, has been the book news through a feature called The Two-Way. Each day they give a roundup of book news, gossip and interviews from a variety of sources. This is where I found out that Lydia Davis had won the Man Booker International Prize and that Amazon will now be selling fan fiction. It is also where I read this great quote from a book review in the New York Times, "Calling a writer 'Midwestern' seems like a way to start up that familiar and imaginary battle between Plain Novels Full of People With Integrity and Dirty Fingernails versus Showoffy Books About People Having Martinis in Penthouses." I will definitely continue to use this site.

EarlyWord has so much information packed into one little site that it will take some time to sift through it all. One thing I found interesting to look at was the OverDrive 'best seller' list. It isn't something I'd seen before and is interesting to compare to other best seller lists, since not all books are available on OverDrive.

Happiness, Like Water, a debut story collection from Nigerian American author Chinelo Okparanta, caught my eye on the Huffington Post Best Books of 2013. This book may be of interest to readers who have enjoyed other recent works by Nigerian authors, including Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Open City by Teju Cole. It may also appeal to readers of short stories about women and families, including those by Alice Munro and Edna O'Brien.