Critical Notes

In the Chicago Tribune, NBCC member Donna Seaman reviews Peter Ferry’s Travel Writing. Meanwhile in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, NBCC member Steve Weinberg takes on New York Times columnist David Carr’s

NBCC board member David L. Ulin speaks about the annoying “embargo” question. NBCC member Donna Seaman finds Peter Ferry’s new novel, “Travel Writing,” “funny, poignant,” and more. Former NBCC prez

Several weeks back the Chicago Tribune book section, edited by NBCC board member Elizabeth Taylor, took a savvy appoach to inevitable change, soliciting reader suggestions. Among the 1,000-plus responses was

Perhaps it’s a critic thing: Even when reading at leisure (as opposed to on assignment), I tend to divide literature into two broad categories: books I wish I’d reviewed, and

Pity the poet laureate? In Time, Sarah Fay looks at Kay Ryan and the duties of the new post. The experience is practically “On the Circuit.” Labels: Kay Ryan, Poetry,

We recently heard from NBCC member Carole Goldberg and the Hartford Courant’s editorial cutbacks, which included her position as books editor. After 23 years at the Courant, 7.5 as books

In The Nation, Eric Alterman writes on the future of newspapers. “The dearth of decent ideas designed to save newspapers—or reinvent them for the digital age in ways that preserve

Lara Vapnyar is one of the increasingly impressive roster of authors who have emigrated from Russia and other Eastern European countries and are now producing, in graceful and nuanced English

Balakian award winner Sam Anderson on “a history of hooch”: “The popular history of a humdrum object—that faddish genre in which the most boring items on your dining-room table (salt,