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January Magazine

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Book reviews, book-related news and author interviews
URL: http://januarymagazine.com/
Updated: 7 min 43 sec ago

New this Week: Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman

4 hours 53 sec ago
I’m never sure where to place Carol Goodman’s work. And I’m not the only one. Though she tends to weave elements of suspense into her novels -- books that have included the luminous The Ghost Orchid and the lovely The Seduction of Water -- it’s a mistake to say she writes novels of suspense or that she only writes novels of suspense. Goodman’s voice is mature and strong, her work is masterful,

Mark Twain Anniversary Approaches

9 hours 42 min ago
With the 100 year anniversary of the death of Mark Twain coming up on April 10, look for armloads of books to be published or republished with a Twainish theme between now and then. A couple of good ones recently became available from The Library of America.The Mark Twain Anthology collects the work of great writers on the topic of Twain. “Several of Mark Twain’s books are bound to survive,”

Wizarding World of Harry Potter Will Bring Books to Life

Tue, 03/09/2010 - 22:26
The millions of fans who were saddened when J.K. Rowling came to the end of of her fabulous seven-book saga in 2007 can take heart: the books might be over, but the magic is far from gone. If proof of this was needed before, it isn’t anymore. Universal Studios in Orlando is currently at work on a “theme park in a theme park” called The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Scheduled to *open in May,

Art & Culture: How to Speak Zombie by Steve Mockus

Tue, 03/09/2010 - 14:00
If you’ve been wondering when -- or even if -- you’d hear the final word on zombies, you’ll be relieved to get a load of How to Speak Zombie (Chronicle Books), the book that calls itself “A Guide for the Living.” Here’s some of what the book says about itself:In a world overtaken by zombies, the only hope for survival lies in learning the language of the undead. How to Speak Zombie demonstrates

Children’s Books: Solace & Grief by Foz Meadows

Tue, 03/09/2010 - 09:00
Out now in Australia, Foz Meadows’ Solace & Grief won’t be available in other parts of the world until later this year.The newest entry from Paul Collins’ Ford Street Publishing is a debut. Hearing the author speak at her launch and seeing her sign books, I think she’s going to do nicely as a professional. She’s also lucky enough to have a surname that puts her novel on the bookshop shelves right

New Book Club Intended to “Build Community”

Mon, 03/08/2010 - 23:32
GalleyCat, the self-styled “First Word On the Book Publishing Industry,” have announced that their new book club will launch in New York Tuesday night. In a posting earlier today, GalleyCat’s Jason Boog explains:You can read all the publishing blogs in the world, but nothing beats a conversation with a published author -- real-world interaction and publishing experience will always trump the

Crime Fiction: The Devil’s Star by Jo Nesbø

Mon, 03/08/2010 - 17:29
(Editor’s note: With the publication of this review, January Magazine welcomes a new contributor. She’s Gretchen Echols, a Seattle writer, artist and bookstore employee with a longstanding fondness for crime and mystery fiction, especially the works of Ross Macdonald, Reginald Hall and Tana French.)It is a July hell in Oslo, the Norwegian city gripped in a blistering heat wave. A young woman is

Biography: Tupac Shakur: The Life of an American Icon by Tayannah Lee McQuillar and Fred Johnson

Sun, 03/07/2010 - 10:48
While the death of Tupac Shakur may not have a universal “Where were you when you heard the news?” sort of reverberation, for some people it was as intense a moment as the death of Elvis, JFK or Michael Jackson might have been for others. That is to say that a great many people remember exactly where they were and what they were doing on September 13, 1996 when they heard the news that Tupac

Penguin’s Big Thoughts About Electronic Books

Sat, 03/06/2010 - 18:33
Commenting on Penguin’s head-long plunge into iPad waters, CNET points out that this is a publishing house that was founded on the idea of innovation:Penguin Books came into existence because of a realization on a train platform. Penguin’s founder, Allen Lane, was returning from a weekend with the famous mystery writer Agatha Christie, and looked in the train station’s book stall for something to

Eaten Any Good Books Lately?

Sat, 03/06/2010 - 17:40
It’s that time of year again and organizations around the world are getting ready to participate in The International Edible Book Festival.“Everyone is invited,” says the Festival’s Web site, “individually and collectively, to this world banquet where delicious, surprising bookish foods will be consumed.” From the site:April 1st is the birthday of French gastronome Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (

Crime Fiction: The Cold Room by J.T. Ellison

Thu, 03/04/2010 - 13:00
J.T. Ellison’s latest Nashville-based novel, The Cold Room (Mira), finds her series homicide detective, Taylor Jackson, chasing an unusual serial killer. He starves his victims to death, violates their bodies and then poses them in elaborate re-creations of famous paintings. What bothers Jackson and her FBI profiler boyfriend, John Baldwin, is the scope of these slayings. It appears he has struck

Non-Fiction: I See Rude People by Amy Alkon

Thu, 03/04/2010 - 08:05
Hannibal Lecter would have loved Amy Alkon. Actually, upon consideration, they might have adored each other. Where Thomas Harris’ notorious fictional Hannibal the Cannibal only ate the rude, Alkon stands up to them with the sort of glorious panache that sometimes makes you want to stand and cheer.I See Rude People (McGraw Hill) is a kind of post-modern Miss Manners or rather, as the subtitle

New Brangelina Tell-All Will Link Jolie with Jagger and Fiennes

Thu, 03/04/2010 - 01:30
The big book news on the celebrity blog circuit today was word of a “soon to be published” book about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s courtship. From Canoe:An explosive new tell-all about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s courtship is set to stun star watchers thanks to suggestions the actress once briefly romanced rocker Mick Jagger, while he was married to model Jerry Hall.Author Jenny Paul has

Shutter Island Spoiler? Not Here!

Thu, 03/04/2010 - 00:11
I’m a little bit sad today. January Magazine’s stats pages are set up in such a way that if there’s a significant bump on one page, I notice fairly quickly. And so here is something I noticed today: in the last month or so -- since the release of the film version of Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island, we’ve had a little traffic bump: thousands of people are finding their way to January by searching

New This Week: Oath of Fealty by Elizabeth Moon

Tue, 03/02/2010 - 13:00
A steady string of fantastic books since her debut in the 1980s has earned ex-marine Elizabeth Moon a place at the very top of the SF/F stratosphere. Including collaborations, Moon has written over 20 books and won the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award and the Robert A. Heinlein Award.Oath of Fealty (Del Rey) is the fourth novel in Moon’s tremendous Paksenarrion novels, the first one to be added to

Non-Fiction: The Power of Half by Kevin Salwen and Hannah Salwen

Tue, 03/02/2010 - 09:17
The story will not be completely unfamiliar to you: you’ve heard versions of it before.A family of some wealth and relative western privilege chuck it all -- or, at least, a bunch of it -- in order to make their lives more meaningful by giving back. The big difference in the Salwen family’s story is dad, Kevin: a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal for close to two decades. Salwen

Fiction: A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta by Paul Theroux

Mon, 03/01/2010 - 16:27
Literary heavyweight and the writer most often accused of single-handedly changing the way the world anticipates travel writing, Paul Theroux delivers another engaging work of fiction with A Dead Hand. Like all of this author’s work, A Dead Hand is infused with moments of pure beauty. Theroux has that gift and is never shy about sharing it: he’s a wonderful writer. Images and characterizations

Children’s Books: Woods Runner by Gary Paulsen

Fri, 02/26/2010 - 08:10
Readers 12 and up who have a taste for history and adventure will enjoy veteran children’s author Gary Paulsen’s Woods Runner (Wendy Lamb Books). Woods Runner is a boy’s eye view of the Revolutionary War.Thirteen-year-old Samuel returns home from hunting to discover war has come to his valley: his neighbors have been killed and his parents are missing. Samuel takes to the woods to track the

New This Month: The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology edited by Christopher Golden

Thu, 02/25/2010 - 18:30
Despite current evidence to the contrary, our love affair with zombies goes way back. Even though, as Christopher Golden (The Myth Hunters, The Boys Are Back in Town) points out in the foreword to The New Dead (St. Martin's Press), zombies have never been exactly hot. The erotic nature of vampires? That can be pretty sexy, says Golden. “But zombies? Not so much. Eating brains, my friends, is not

Rushdie to Write About Fatwa

Thu, 02/25/2010 - 17:30
More than 20 years after the Ayatollah Khomeini ordered him killed, knighted author Salman Rushdie has said he’s finally going to talk about the experience in a book. From The Guardian:Salman Rushdie is planning to write a book about the decade he spent in hiding after Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against him."It's my story, and at some point, it does need to be told. That