Book Buzz

• Book six in the Artemis Fowl series, The Time Paradox, came out Tuesday. I tried reading the first book, but I just couldn’t get into it. The blend of fantasy and mean characters was too much for me. I guess other people don’t have the same problem.

• Breaking Dawn will be released in two weeks, and I keep stumbling over Stephenie Meyer. Entertainment Weekly featured The Twilight Saga on its cover. According to this article in the LA Times, though, fans weren’t so hot on it. The New York Times also carried an Op-Ed about the series. Gail Collins suggests the series is developing “a generation of women who expect their boyfriend to crawl through their bedroom window at night and just nuzzle gently until they fall asleep.”

• If you’re getting tired of vampires—and who isn’t—The New York Times Sunday Book Review featured two young adult books about zombies: Brian James’s Zombie Blondes and Daniel Waters’s Generation Dead.

• On a more serious note, everyone is talking about David Maraniss’s Rome 1960: The Olympics that Changed the World. USA Today gives it a positive review. And Amazon calls it one of the best books of the month. The New York Times wasn’t as hip, saying the book is “a silver medal of a study of a bronze medal of a topic” (talk about prepositions).

• For those still looking for a summer read, The Root features “Page Burners: Fourteen hot reads to go wherever summer takes you.” The list includes Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon. The Times recommends it as well.