Book Buzz

• This is a good week for new releases. Just in time for the DNC: Michael Moore’s Mike’s Election Guide. Fantasy fans will want to pick up Terry Brooks’s The Gypsy Morph and the fourth Book of Ember The Diamond of Darkhold. A new Temperance Brennan novel, Devil Bones, is out from Kathy Reichs, and even Dick Francis (with son Felix) is still in the game with Silks.
  

• Speaking of politics, USA Today reviews Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife. Alice Blackwell, the book’s protagonist, is “loosely” based on Laura Bush. How a librarian could marry a playboy, I will never understand.
  

• Are you tired of reading books and just want to write your own? Check out Keri Smith’s Wreck This Journal, which gives the reader/writer ideas for constructing—and deconstructing—her life story. I’m buying this book for my 13-year-old niece and will report back on its success (or lack thereof).
  

• School must be back in session. The APA style guide is #6 on Amazon’s bestsellers, and the MLA Handbook is #21. #14? Biology with MasteringBiology. Thank goodness I never have to take a science (or math) class again.
  

• Speaking of bad school memories, The New York Times reviews Edith Hall’s The Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer’s Odyssey. Personally, I have never recovered from reading the epic in 10th grade.