Books & Literature

For some, the summer is a time to indulge in frothy beach reading: the latest chick lit or globetrotting, highly unbelievable thriller. But book critic Maureen Corrigan has taken a different tack this year: She's catching up on more substantial reading that she hasn't had time for yet.

While Harry Potter has grown to become a huge a marketing event, the book series is still, at its heart, a literary event. Critic-at-large John Powers considers kids today lucky to have that experience. He compares it to his experiences purchasing and reading the Hardy Boys mysteries as a child.

Edward Bunker died Tuesday at age 71 of complications from diabetes. He went to San Quentin prison at age 17 and was their youngest inmate. While incarcerated, Bunker wrote the crime fiction classic No Beast So Fierce. He also acted in more than 20 films, including Reservoir Dogs. This story was originally broadcast on July 12, 1993.

Author and actor Martin Moran's new memoir is The Tricky Part: One Boy's Fall from Trespass into Grace. As a boy, he was sexually abused by a male counselor at a Catholic boys' camp. Nearly 30 years later, Moran went to see the man again at a convalescent home.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the Walt Whitman-inspired, time-traveling novel Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham. He is also author of the best-seller The Hours.

Journalist Karl Fleming's new book is Son of the Rough South: An Uncivil Memoir. As a civil rights reporter for Newsweek in the 1960s, he wrote about major events such as the Birmingham church bombing, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the murders of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Miss. While at the 1966 riots in the Watts section of Los Angeles, Fleming was severely beaten.

Evan Hunter died Wednesday at the age of 78. Under the pen name Ed McBain, he was best known for his finely detailed "87th Precinct" novels. Mystery fans call McBain's books "procedurals" for their close attention to police procedures.

A novel about vampires prowling around dark forests and damp crypts in Central Europe may not seem like ideal summertime reading, but The Historian, a debut novel about Dracula by Elizabeth Kostova, is shaping up to be one of this season's big beach books. Book critic Maureen Corrigan has a review.

Paul Feig is the creator of the cult classic TV series Freaks and Geeks. His new book Superstud: Or How I Became a 24-Year-Old Virgin, is the follow-up to his 2002 book Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence. Feig was an actor before moving on to writing for TV and film.

Civil War historian and novelist Shelby Foote died Monday night at age 88. He is best known for his three-volume, 3,000-page history entitled The Civil War: A Narrative, and for narrating Ken Burns' 11-hour PBS series The Civil War. We rebroadcast an interview with Foote from July 27, 1994.

Clowes' new book is called Ice Haven. It's the story of a small Midwestern town populated by characters including poet laureate Random Wilder, Julie Patheticstein and Blue Bunny. Ultimately, it's based on the story of Leopold and Loeb.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the biography Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft by Lyndall Gordon.

The publishers of Poetry Magazine have been using the proceeds of a large bequest to encourage the practice of memorizing poetry. Linguist Geoff Nunberg comments.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews two new novels set in Cuba: Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban, the debut novel by Lisa Wixon, and Adios Hemingway by Cuban writer Leonardo Padura Fuentes. Translated by John King, Adios Hemingway is the latest in Fuentes' award-winning Inspector Mario Conde mysteries.

Jack Coughlin, a gunnery sergeant in the Marines, is the author of the new book Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper. He grew up in a wealthy Boston suburb and joined the Marines at age 19, spending the next 20 years behind the scope of a long-range rifle as a sniper. He has more than 60 confirmed kills, 38 of which took place during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The latest novel from best-selling English author Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down, focuses on a group of suicidal people who accidentally meet atop a tall building — and how that meeting changes their fates. He also writes "Stuff I've Been Reading," a column for The Believer magazine. Many of Hornby's novels have been made into films, including About a Boy, High Fidelity and Fever Pitch.

Writer, actor, lawyer Edwin John Wintle has written his first book, a memoir about what happened when his 13-year old niece came to live with him. His book is Breakfast with Tiffany: An Uncle's Memoir.

The new novel Thirty-Three Swoons by Martha Cooley is a detailed intrigue set in Manhattan, interweaving the worlds of theatre and the perfume industry. Cooley's previous work includes The Archivist. Book critic Maureen Corrigan has a review.

Actress Brooke Shields has written a new memoir about what she experienced following the birth of her daughter: Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression. After struggling to become pregnant, Shields was faced with more difficulties.

Meg Wolitzer's new novel, The Position, is about a 1970s couple who write a Joy of Sex-style book, complete with illustrations of them making love. Their lives — and those of their children, who get their hands on the book — are never quite the same afterward.